Gandhi who shaped and pioneered a unified India in the twentieth century, wanted congress dissolved after independence.But it eventually remained, with Nehru as it's leader. As an architect of India he foccused on making India.1. A secular state ( an oposition to pak )2. A truly democratic state.Although many infant democracies became autocratic, Nehru made sure India doesn't. He also kept Congress democratic, with Kamraj having the power to choose the next leader. However, in 1955 after death of Sardar Patel, he moved far away from the mixed economic model, pushing India towards socialism.

Nehru & New India

Shastri who lead India after Nehru, carried the same principles of the freedom struggle. But after his suspicious death. Indira, grabbed power.Indira approach to congress was different from Shastri or Nehru. She at first undermined congress democray by splitting it up. And then the national democrary by emergency rules.It was Sanjay Gandhi who de-facto ruled the country, with regressive nationalisation. This was more of autocracy than a socialist policy.After the death of Sanjay and then Indira, Rajiv was a confused leader. It was under him that the secularism began to thin away.

Indira's Era

Most of other coalition govts of India has been short lived and insignificant. Except for Rao. His legacy of liberalisation, makes him one of the most divisive face of modern India.However, by his time, the demand of right wing had gathered momentum. And allowing thr demolition of Babri Masjid was a nail in the coffin.The author points here, how Indian history was delhified and the atrocities of Muslim invaders whitewashed, to make Europeans a culprit for India's decadence. The lack of description of Hindus plight gave RSS a political mileage.

P. V. Narasimha Rao

The government of Vajpayee and Manmohan Singh, were banking the benefits of the liberalisation. However, ethenic tensions were on rise within the country.Both were often hijacked by the coalition partners, and the Singh govt hd become too corrupt. The attacks on 26-11 and the Anna Hazare movement made the last half of Singh's govt a debacle.All of this contributed to the making of Modi, who had by then risen through ranks of BJP to the top job.The rest of the book, analysizes the failings of Modi govt. which is a commentary on the current govt.

Until Modi

The book malevolent republic offers a critical reviews of the past leaders of India and analyses the rise of Narendra Modi. It also offers a commentary on the current Indian politics.

After decades of imperfect secularism, presided over by an often corrupt Congress establishment, Nehru's diverse republic has yielded to Hindu nationalism. India is collapsing under the weight of its own contradictions. Since 2014, the ruling BJP has unleashed forces that are irreversibly transforming the country. Indian democracy, honed over decades, is now the chief enabler of Hindu extremism. Bigotry has been ennobled as a healthy form of self-assertion, and anti-Muslim vitriol has deluged the mainstream, with religious minorities living in terror of a vengeful majority. Congress now mimics Modi; other parties pray for a miracle. In this blistering critique of India from Indira Gandhi to the present, Komireddi lays bare the cowardly concessions to the Hindu right, convenient distortions of India's past and demeaning bribes to minorities that led to Modi's decisive electoral victory. If secularists fail to reclaim the republic from Hindu nationalists, Komireddi argues, India will become Pakistan by another name.

books

Books

K.S. Komireddi

Malevolent Republic

Premise : When humans started agriculture, different species of plants adapted in various ways to make use of agriculture. 1. More than usual produce :Some plants, like wheat started producing bigger seeds than usual so that humans would select them. 2. Losing the protection :Seeds like almond which in wild could be poisonous and bitter, turned sweet and edible so that humans can harvest them. 3. A step in the opposite :In the wild, pods are designed to burst open after ripening, to disperse easily. However, the ones that didn't burst, were chosen by humans as food and cultivated.

The various paths for evolution

Premise : In the book "Anna Karenina" it is stated that 'Happy families are all alike;every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.J. Diamond uses this analogy to suggest why some species were domesticated and others not.1. Elephants were seemingly rejected because of the gestation period. It becomes difficult to ramp up breeding such a species. 2. Zebras are not easy to be roped or tamed, along with their nasty attacking habits. Thus though they are close to donkeys and horses, they aren't domesticated.3. Gazzele and antelopes due to their panicking nature and irregular social structure.

Anna Karenina principles

The two important factors that lead a disease to become a epidemic, is <ul><li>Massive infection rates</li><li>Considerable life cycle to cause infection</li></ul>How does this reflect in the symptoms.1. Involuntary spread : Symptoms like sneezing and diarrhea, cause the patient to spread the germs into nearby humans. 2. No manifestation : Diseases like AIDS don't manifest long time after the infection, allowing the infection to spread undetected.3. Behaviour change : Rabies causes dogs to bite, like many other diseases that transmit from animals to humans.

The intelligent symptoms of disease

'A book of big questions, and big answers' Yuval Noah Harari, bestselling author of Sapiens Why has human history unfolded so differently across the globe? And what can it teach us about our current crisis? Jared Diamond puts the case that geography and biogeography, not race, moulded the contrasting fates of Europeans, Asians, Native Americans, sub-Saharan Africans, and aboriginal Australians. An ambitious synthesis of history, biology, ecology and linguistics, Guns, Germs and Steel is a ground-breaking and humane work of popular science that can provide expert insight into our modern world. **WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE** **Over One Million Copies Sold**

**WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE** 'A book of big questions, and big answers' Yuval Noah Harari, bestselling author of Sapiens Why has human history unfolded so differently across the globe? And what can it teach us about our current crisis? Jared Diamond puts the case that geography and biogeography, not race, moulded the contrasting fates of Europeans, Asians, Native Americans, sub-Saharan Africans, and aboriginal Australians. An ambitious synthesis of history, biology, ecology and linguistics, Guns, Germs and Steel is a ground-breaking and humane work of popular science that can provide expert insight into our modern world. 'The most absorbing account on offer of the emergence of a world divided between have and have-nots... Never before put together so coherently, with such a combination of expertise, charm and compassion' The Times

Malevolent Republic

Guns, Germs and Steel

Phantom