Is Narendra Modi the Indian Trump? And might he succeed where Trump failed? with Ramachandra Guha, historian, author and biographer of Gandhi
In conversation with Simon KuperWhen Narendra Modi became Indian prime minister in 2014, he departed aggressively from Mahatma Gandhi’s vision of India, as a country where people of all faiths and ethnicities could live together in peace.
Modi, a former member of the Hindu nationalist paramilitary volunteer organisation RSS, regards himself as the strongman leader of the Hindu majority. As chief minister of the state of Gujarat in 2002, he stood aside during sectarian riots in which more than 1,000 people, mostly Muslims, were killed. He was barred for entering the US for almost a decade before he became prime minister.
Is Modi attempting to dismantle multicultural India? And could he also dismantle the world’s largest democracy? More seriously than Trump in the US, Modi aims to take control over institutions such as courts and media. Historian Ramachandra Guha explains the threats to India.
Ramachandra Guha’s most recent works are a two-volume biography of Mahatma Gandhi, and a new memoir, The Commonwealth of Cricket: A Lifelong Love Affair with the Most Subtle and Sophisticated Game Known to Humankind. His other books include an award-winning social history of cricket, A Corner of a Foreign Field, chosen by The Guardian as one of the ten best books on cricket ever written; India after Gandhi, chosen as a book of the year by the Economist, the Washington Post, and the Wall Street Journal, and as a book of the decade in the Times of London and The Hindu; and a pioneering environmental history, The Unquiet Woods. He lives in Bangalore..
Simon Kuper Is a columnist for the Financial Times.
