In his tome-like book, India After Gandhi: The History of The World's Largest Democracy, Ramachandra Guha accepts that his reader probably has a fixed opinion about whatever he has written. Yet, it had to be written because Guha felt the need to "unravel a puzzle... why (with so much cultural political and social diversity) is there an India at all?"

We've been through umpteen textbooks which talked of what led to the first war of independence in 1857, the Salt Satyagraha March, independence and Partition. This book catalogues the six decades that followed. You may agree or disagree with what's written, but it's important to know.u00a0