Published in 2007, Ram Guha’s history of post-Independence India remains the best one-volume account of politics and the underlying social changes driving it till that point. From political personalities to social movements, from foreign policy challenges to institutional health, Guha’s span is impressive and his writing elegant.
The big political story of the last decade has been the rise of Narendra Modi’s BJP. And this BJP has become the central pole of Indian politics because it has become a more inclusive Hindu formation. Journalist and scholar Nalin Mehta captures these changes through caste-based data in a book on the BJP.
While political scientist Milan Vaishnav’s book was published only in 2017, his central intellectual quest — of understanding the intersection between democratic politics, elections, and crime — helps explain what came to be called the criminalisation of politics and the politicisation of crime, especially in the Hindi heartland.
With Indian interests expanding globally, and India’s connections with the rest of the world deepening, a new India needed to contend with a changing world order. External affairs minister S Jaishankar is among the rare diplomat-thinkers who has, while in office, published a candid assessment of Delhi’s interests and strategies to accomplish them.
The fate of Indian democracy rests on its institutions. In this excellent collection of essays, some of India’s finest scholars examine formal political structures, accountability institutions, and the regulatory State.
