Avijit Pathak review's Rajmohan Gandhi's new book "India After 1947: Reflections & Recollections" in The Tribune of India

Uma Mahadevan-Dasgupta reviews Rajmohan Gandhi's new book "India After 1947: Reflections & Recollections" in The Hindu

"Rajmohan Gandhi’s ‘India after 1947’ can be read in one sitting – and needs to be reread several times these days", writes Governance Now.

Hindustan Times podcast: 1947: Road to Indian Independence. Prashant Jha with Rajmohan Gandhi.

What is at stake are the bonds that keep India and the Indian people united. And the nation's moral and educational tone is involved. Are we to go forward in trust and friendship - or will we frighten one another into cooperation?

It may prove foolish to think that the ongoing war between Russia and Ukraine, or the rising inflation that currently troubles almost every nation, will be so preoccupying that the world will ignore the persecution of the government's critics, or silently watch the emergence in India of a state that suppresses minorities and dissenters.

But leaders in government can also choose to offer their cooperation and their trust to the Indian people, including to people who do not belong to the majority community. Trust cannot flow only in one direction.

Human beings, however, have long agreed that exacting revenge on those whom you somehow connect to an earlier wrong done to you is unjustified and unlawful.

Surely it is now time for influential countries like India, Turkey, South Africa, and Brazil (all of them neutral thus far in this horrific conflict) to work actively, and if possible unitedly, for a cease-fire, to be followed by serious peace talks.

Sometimes, going beyond comment or analysis, a columnist must advise, for he or she is a citizen as well, and citizens have the duty to speak to their leaders... It is about the bulldozer becoming the instrument of choice for governing India, and about the patently selective use of that and other instruments. It is about the frequent picking of helpless Muslims as targets for the coercive arm of the state and of vigilante groups.