Book review
A vivid, captivating history of India, in the words of the men and women who shaped it

At their best, speeches highlight the concerns of the times and inspire a nation to great acts. From Surendranath Banerjea’s 1878 speech addressing the issue of Indian unity to M.A. Jinnah’s address in 1940 calling for the creation of Pakistan, from Homi Bhabha’s espousal of the peaceful uses of nuclear energy in the 1960s to Rajiv Gandhi’s remarkable address on disarmament in 1988, from Gopal Krishna Gokhale’s first budget speech in the imperial legislative council in 1902 to Manmohan Singh’s equally epoch-making one in 1992, great speeches have shaped the development of India as we know it today.

The Penguin Book of Modern Indian Speeches brings together over 150 of the most influential and important speeches in our history. Included here are classics like Dadabhai Naoroji’s maiden address to the House of Commons in 1892, Bhagat Singh’s soul-stirring statement in court during his trial, Jawaharlal Nehru’s ‘Tryst with Destiny’, as also speeches on an eclectic range of subjects—politics, economics, science, social and religious reform—by some of the best minds of India: C.V. Raman and Jagadish Bose, Sir Syed Ahmad and Pherozeshah Mehta, Rabindranath Tagore and Mahatma Gandhi, P.C. Mahalanobis and Amartya Sen, among others. Thematically arranged and skilfully introduced and contextualized, each speech proves the enduring potential of human oratory to motivate and enrich. The result is a definitive and inspirational chronicle of a nation in the making


About the author Rakesh Batabyal was educated at St Xavier’s College, Ranchi, and Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, from where he did his master’s and earned a doctoral degree in modern history. He was a postdoctoral fellow at the Indian Institute of Advanced Study, Shimla (1996–99) and later at the National Institute of Panjab Studies, New Delhi. He is presently the assistant director of the Academic Staff College of Jawaharlal Nehru University where he trains university and college teachers from across the country. His book Communalism in Bengal: From Famine to Noakhali, 1943-47 has been widely received as an authoritative work on communal politics in Bengal in the 1940s and on Mahatma Gandhi’s Noakhali visit. He is currently engaged in writing a book on the institutional history of modern India.