The Gentle Colossus

Krishna Raj and the Economic and Political Weekly

01 December 2012
Krishna Raj with trustees of the Sameeksha Trust, publishers of EPW, at the journal’s Hitkari House office.
COURTESY EPW
Krishna Raj with trustees of the Sameeksha Trust, publishers of EPW, at the journal’s Hitkari House office.
COURTESY EPW

A magazine is a despotism or it is nothing. One man and one man alone must be responsibile for all its essential contents - HL Mencken

THE BRITISH HISTORIAN EP THOMPSON once remarked that “India is not an important country, but perhaps the most important country for the future of the world. Here is a country that merits no one’s condescension. All the convergent influences of the world run through this society: Hindu, Moslem, Christian, secular; Stalinist, liberal, Maoist, democratic socialist, Gandhian. There is not a thought that is being thought in the West or East which is not active in some Indian mind.”

Thompson may have been reading the Economic and Political Weekly (EPW), the Bombay journal where these thoughts and influences converge and meet. Rich in information and glowing with polemic, its pages are an index to the life of India. On subjects as varied (and important) as the economy, caste politics, religious violence, and human rights, the EPW has consistently provided the most authoritative, insightful, and widely cited reports and analyses. Among the journal’s contributors are scholars and journalists, but also activists and civil servants—and even some politicians.

Ramachandra Guha books include India After Gandhi and An Anthropologist Among the Marxists and Other Essays. He lives in Bengaluru.

Keywords: memoir academia EPW Krishna Raj Ramchandra Guha
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