- Thursday, April 24, 2025
Guha’s rebels include seven people from Britain, America and Ireland who adopted India’s struggle for independence and in doing so, found their own destinies.
By: Shubham Ghosh
EMINENT INDIAN historian and writer Ramchandra Guha has won the Elizabeth Longford Prize for Historical Biography 2023 for his book Rebels Against the Raj: Western Fighters for India’s Freedom published by William Collins.
The 65-year-old won a prize money of £5,000 and a bound copy of The Pebbled Shore, Elizabeth Longford’s memoir. He was in London on Monday (12) to collect the prize.
It was rather an unusual book penned by Guha which is mainly about white Brits who went against the British establishment of their day to support the cause of India’s independence.
The jury said the book has a particular relevance to today’s India. Roy Foster, the chair of the judges’ panel said, “Oppression does not disappear with the ending of colonial rule, and the ideas and priorities incisively drawn out in this book deserve urgent attention in today’s India.”
The panel included Elizabeth Longford’s daughter and granddaughter — Antonia Fraser and Flora Fraser, respectively, and Rana Mitter of Oxford University.
Foster said the judges chose, from an immensely strong field, a book where the author’s “deep empathy and impressive scholarship are lit up by a passionate regard for his subjects”.
He said Guha’s rebels include seven people from Britain, America and Ireland who adopted India’s struggle for independence and in doing so, found their own destinies.
“The focus of this book is on individuals who decisively changed sides, identifying completely with India, meeting Indians on absolutely equal terms as friends and lovers, and as comrades on the street and in prison too,” Guha told The Telegraph daily, where he is a columnist.
Guha, who is now back home in Bengaluru, India also told the daily that he could not extend his foreign travel beyond what is absolutely necessary because of his ailing mother who stays with him.
Some of the rebels who Guha wrote about in his award-winning book are Annie Besant, the first woman president of the Indian National Congress; Mira Behn, an admiral’s daughter who had changed her name from Madeleine Slade; Samuel Stokes, an American Quaker who changed his first name to Satyanand and took an Indian wife; among others.
Guha is currently a distinguished university professor at Krea University and has previously taught at Yale, Stanford, and the London School of Economics. His many books include an authoritative biography of Mahatma Gandhi.
Founded in 2003 by Flora Fraser and Peter Soros (patron) to commemorate Elizabeth Longford’s name, the Prize, which celebrates its 20th anniversary this year, rewards annually a historical biography which, like those she wrote, combines scholarship and narrative drive. Previous winners include David Gilmour’s The Long Recessional: The Imperial Life of Rudyard Kipling, Frances Wilson’s How to Survive the Titanic: The Sinking of J. Bruce Ismay, Charles Moore’s Margaret Thatcher: The Authorized Biography, Volume 1: Not for Turning and Julian Jackson’s A Certain Idea of France: The Life of Charles de Gaulle.
