In 1931 Mahatma Gandhi and Dr. B R Ambedkar met in London and clashed on the future of India's electoral system. Later in 1932 when the British announced reserved seats for dalits, Gandhi went on a fast unto death. Ambedkar saved his life by agreeing to the changed terms of representation, which changed the course of electoral system of India. The Gandhi - Ambedkar engagement was only on the electoral system and method of election by separate electorates which Muslims enjoyed till then. Till the partition of India in 1947, the draft Constitution provided reserved seats for minorities and Dalits, which Sardar Patel chose to abolish. The fate of India's electoral system shifted to Ambedkar and Sardar Patel after Gandhi's assassination in 1948. Sardar Patel tried to abolish reserved seats for Dalits also in 1948 only to be thwarted by Ambedkar. Those reserved seats continue. Based on a singular pursuit of tracing the electoral system and methods that define India-the world's largest democracy, this book is the first to document the evolution and account of electoral history of colonial and independent India. Do we know how Sardar Patel and Gandhi used electoral system to integrate India? Since the first provincial elections in 1937, do we know that double member constituencies existed till 1961, only to be abolished by Jawaharlal Nehru? Do we know that Ambedkar lost his first election in independent India because voters threw away their ballots? If we need women reserved seats, we need to know that we might have to try to double member constituencies. This book tells all. The story of electoral thoughts and ideas of Ambedkar, Gandhi and Patel and Ambedkar's struggle to get a representative electoral system appear for the first time in a book. In India only election results are predicted, analysed and compiled. The electoral method that determines India's every election comes into focus in this book. Can any political party get away without offering tickets to one minority community or Dalits? The history is the answer to the future - through this book.

Ramachandra Guha’s India after Gandhi is a magisterial account of the pains, struggles, humiliations and glories of the world’s largest and least likely democracy. A riveting chronicle of the often brutal conflicts that have rocked a giant nation, and of the extraordinary individuals and institutions who held it together, it established itself as a classic when it was first published in 2007. In the last decade, India has witnessed, among other things, two general elections; the fall of the Congress and the rise of Narendra Modi; a major anti-corruption movement; more violence against women, Dalits, and religious minorities; a wave of prosperity for some but the persistence of poverty for others; comparative peace in Nagaland but greater discontent in Kashmir than ever before. This tenth anniversary edition, updated and expanded, brings the narrative up to the present. Published to coincide with seventy years of the country’s independence, this definitive history of modern India is the work of one of the world’s finest scholars at the height of his powers.

Here is the first volume of a magisterial biography of Mohandas Gandhi that gives us the most illuminating portrait we have had of the life, the work and the historical context of one of the most abidingly influential—and controversial—men in modern history. Ramachandra Guha—hailed by Time as “Indian democracy’s preeminent chronicler”—takes us from Gandhi’s birth in 1869 through his upbringing in Gujarat, his two years as a student in London and his two decades as a lawyer and community organizer in South Africa. Guha has uncovered myriad previously untapped documents, including private papers of Gandhi’s contemporaries and co-workers; contemporary newspapers and court documents; the writings of Gandhi’s children; and secret files kept by British Empire functionaries. Using this wealth of material in an exuberant, brilliantly nuanced and detailed narrative, Guha describes the social, political and personal worlds inside of which Gandhi began the journey that would earn him the honorific Mahatma: “Great Soul.” And, more clearly than ever before, he elucidates how Gandhi’s work in South Africa—far from being a mere prelude to his accomplishments in India—was profoundly influential in his evolution as a family man, political thinker, social reformer and, ultimately, beloved leader. In 1893, when Gandhi set sail for South Africa, he was a twenty-three-year-old lawyer who had failed to establish himself in India. In this remarkable biography, the author makes clear the fundamental ways in which Gandhi’s ideas were shaped before his return to India in 1915. It was during his years in England and South Africa, Guha shows us, that Gandhi came to understand the nature of imperialism and racism; and in South Africa that he forged the philosophy and techniques that would undermine and eventually overthrow the British Raj. Gandhi Before India gives us equally vivid portraits of the man and the world he lived in: a world of sharp contrasts among the coastal culture of his birthplace, High Victorian London, and colonial South Africa. It explores in abundant detail Gandhi’s experiments with dissident cults such as the Tolstoyans; his friendships with radical Jews, heterodox Christians and devout Muslims; his enmities and rivalries; and his often overlooked failures as a husband and father. It tells the dramatic, profoundly moving story of how Gandhi inspired the devotion of thousands of followers in South Africa as he mobilized a cross-class and inter-religious coalition, pledged to non-violence in their battle against a brutally racist regime. Researched with unequaled depth and breadth, and written with extraordinary grace and clarity, Gandhi Before India is, on every level, fully commensurate with its subject. It will radically alter our understanding and appreciation of twentieth-century India’s greatest man.