Ramachandra Guha (born 29 April 1958) is an Indian historian, biographer and columnist. His book India After Gandhi (2007) is the best-known history of independent India, and his two-volume biography of Mahatma Gandhi is regarded as a standard work. He has also written pioneering studies of environmental history and of cricket. He received the Padma Bhushan in 2009.
Quick Facts
| Full name | Ramachandra Guha |
| Born | 29 April 1958, Dehradun, Uttar Pradesh (now Uttarakhand), India |
| Age | 68 |
| Occupation | Historian, biographer, columnist |
| Education | The Doon School; St. Stephen’s College, Delhi; Delhi School of Economics; IIM Calcutta (doctorate) |
| Spouse | Sujata Keshavan |
| Children | 2 |
| Honours | Sahitya Akademi Award (2011), Padma Bhushan (2009) |
| Lives in | Bengaluru |
Early Life
Guha grew up in Dehradun, where his father worked at the Forest Research Institute and his mother was a schoolteacher. He studied economics at St. Stephen’s College, where he played cricket for the college, and at the Delhi School of Economics. His doctoral research at the Indian Institute of Management Calcutta was on the social history of forestry in the Himalayas and the Chipko movement.
Career
His first book, The Unquiet Woods (1989), grew out of his thesis and helped found the study of environmental history in India. With the ecologist Madhav Gadgil he wrote This Fissured Land (1992). He taught at Yale, the Indian Institute of Science and other universities before becoming a full-time writer in 1995.
A Corner of a Foreign Field (2002) told the history of Indian cricket through caste, religion and empire, centring on the Dalit bowler Palwankar Baloo. In 2017 the Supreme Court appointed him to the committee administering the Board of Control for Cricket in India; he resigned after a few months, criticising conflicts of interest in the game.
India After Gandhi: The History of the World’s Largest Democracy (2007) won the Sahitya Akademi Award. Gandhi Before India (2013) and Gandhi: The Years That Changed the World (2018) drew on archives in several countries. Other books include Savaging the Civilized, a life of Verrier Elwin, and Rebels Against the Raj (2022).
Guha writes regular newspaper columns. He describes himself as a liberal and has criticised both the Congress party’s dependence on one family and Hindu majoritarianism. He was briefly detained in Bengaluru in December 2019 while protesting against the Citizenship (Amendment) Act.
Personal Life
He is married to the graphic designer Sujata Keshavan, and they have two children.
Selected Books
Frequently Asked Questions
When and where was Ramachandra Guha born?
Ramachandra Guha was born on 29 April 1958 in Dehradun, Uttar Pradesh (now Uttarakhand), India and is 68 years old.
What is Ramachandra Guha’s occupation?
Occupation: Historian, biographer, columnist.
What honours has Ramachandra Guha received?
Sahitya Akademi Award (2011), Padma Bhushan (2009).
Featured image: Ramachandra Guha speaks at the Kerala Literature Festival, Kozhikode, February 2017. Photo by Sreejithkoiloth, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
