On 6 March, 2013, Ramachandra Guha visited the Department of International Relations and gave a lecture titled as “India: the Challenge of Building National Unity while Nurturing Cultural Diversity”. Mr. Guha presented his analysis on Indian society and culture from two axes: axis of diversity and axle of disparity.
From the axis of diversity, Mr. Guha elaborated the historic roots of Indian civilization, tolerance of democracy and ethnic diversity, stressing that such a large democracy was self-evident from the fact that a large population of 1.2 billion lived there with various religious beliefs, 17 official languages and huge income gap. Nevertheless, Mr. Guha didn’t ignore social problems in India and gave his observation on caste, class and gender issues, which he believed were not alleviated along with the rapid economic development, and hence summarized his elaboration of current India as “fifty fifty democracy”.
Ramachandra Guha, a known columnist and writer, has teaching experience in Yale and Stanford and is Phillipe Roman Chair in History and International Affairs in London School of Economics in 2011-2012. His writings include: The Unquiet Woods (Oxford University Press, 1989); Savaging the Civilized (University of Chicago Press, 1999), A Corner of a Foreign Field (Picador), India after Gandhi (Picador, 2007), A life of the anthropologist-activist Verrier Elwin(Picador) .
