SBR: Understanding the Founding Fathers promised to be interesting, by its title as well as by the credentials of its author. However, the book is written not really to “understand the founding fathers” (Gandhi, Nehru, Patel), but to defend them against some rather comical criticism. That was a disappointment to me. The criticisms the author refutes are from Swami Sachidanand, a spiritual Guru with as much ahistoricism in his blood as such people usually come with, and Perry Anderson -a Marxist historian who wrote “The Indian Ideology”. I have not read either of these people nor do their views (at least as quoted in Understanding the Founding Fathers) inspire any credulity in me. So, reading this book did not bring me any intellectual satisfaction.

To read or not to read: Read only if either you are rattled by the criticisms of people like Swami Sachidanand and Perry Anderson, or there are people around you who hold those beliefs and you need some help in countering them, or if you are a person holding those views!