Guha's book is a meditation on how a large area of contemporary India's cultural and intellectual life has in fact been fashioned by exceptional individuals who have, in diverse ways, imbibed the spirit of liberalism, secularism, personal integrity and social commitment. Guha's heroes and heroines include environmentalists and social activists, teachers and scholars, scientists and writers, politicians and bureaucrats. Quietly purposeful and publicity-shy figures are described and discussed in finely crafted pieces, as are others whose career and achievements have been more public and prominent.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Ramachandra Guha
Ramachandra Guha is a historian and columnist based in Bangalore. He has taught at the universities of Yale, Stanford, and Oslo, and at the Indian Institute of Science. His books include a pioneering environmental history, The Unquiet Woods (University of California Press, 1989), and an award-winning social history of cricket, A Corner of a Foreign Field (Picador, 2002). India after Gandhi (Macmillan/Ecco Press, 2007) was chosen as a book of the year by the Economist, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, the San Francisco Chronicle, Time Out and Outlook; and as a book of the decade in the Times of India, the Times of London, and The Hindu. Guha's books and essays have been translated into more than twenty languages. The New York Times has referred to him as "perhaps the best among India's non fiction writers"; Time Magazine has called him "Indian democracy's preeminent chronicler".Ramachandra Guha's awards include the Leopold-Hidy Prize of the American Society of Environmental History, the Daily Telegraph/Cricket Society prize, the Malcolm Adiseshiah Award for excellence in social science research, the Ramnath Goenka Prize for excellence in journalism, and the R. K. Narayan Prize. In 2008 Prospect and Foreign Policy magazines nominated Guha as one of the world's hundred most influential intellectuals. In 2009 he was awarded the Padma Bhushan.
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