Strange Burdens is not a biography but a book of political commentary. It examines and analyses Rahul Gandhi’s ideas and leadership since he officially entered politics in March 2004. It journeys all the way to the conclusion of the Bharat Jodo Yatra in Srinagar on 30 January 2023 and captures the dilemmas of his disqualification a couple of months later.
The narrative here crawls across two decades with the intention of understanding Rahul Gandhi’s politics and predicaments, confusions and contradictions, triteness and triumph, as well as his burdens and benignity. It is not the purpose of this book to understand his failures and successes in tabular columns but speculate in the best traditions of political commentary why he is where he is, both politically and as an individual. The book does not seek to answer questions about his suitability or unsuitability for a public role but is rather focused on how he has been caught in the currents of history. It is not a myth-busting or myth-making exercise, nor is it an inquisition; it is a pursuit of political insight.
Since the book is about Rahul Gandhi and the Congress party, it cannot not be about Narendra Modi and the Bharatiya Janata Party. Examining one automatically illuminates the other. The book looks at the contrasts and convergence of the two personalities and the two parties they represent.
About The Author
Sugata Srinivasaraju is a bilingual journalist, author and columnist. He has editorially led some of the leading print, television, and digital news brands in the past. He has been a Chevening scholar in the UK, fellow of the Aspen Institute in the US and is currently a Homi Bhabha fellow.
Sugata’s books include Furrows in a Field: The Unexplored Life of H.D. Deve Gowda; Keeping Faith with the Mother Tongue: The Anxieties of a Local Culture; Pickles from Home: The Worlds of a Bilingual; and in Kannada, Kittale NeralePerale: Avasarakke Yetukida Maatu Baraha, which won him the ViChi literary prize. His book Phoenix and Four Other Mime Plays won him the translation prize of the Karnataka Sahitya Academy.
Advance Reviews
“Eschewing the scorn of critics as well as the adulation of supporters, Strange Burdens invites readers to take seriously the singular political life of Rahul Gandhi. Sugata Srinivasaraju examines his ideas, speeches and actions during key historical moments sympathetically yet critically. In doing so, he raises questions and pursues enigmas that demand further rumination. A rich essay distinguished by its psychological insight and literary flair.”
— Sanjay Ruparelia, author of Divided we Govern: Coalition Politics in Modern India and Jarislowsky Democracy Chair, Toronto Metropolitan University
“This book is an enchanting invitation to understand the personality and politics of Rahul Gandhi. It helps to navigate someone who represents paradoxical togetherness of hope and hopelessness; the dynastic and the democratic; eminence and emptiness; clarity and confusion, problems and prospects. Sugata Srinivasaraju, an unconventional media person, has enviable command over the facts of modern India and party politics, which has made this narrative about Rahul Gandhi also an engaging excursion into the making of the Indian nation and its post-colonial trajectories including Jawaharlal Nehru and Narendra Modi. The lucidity of text and interconnection of contexts makes it a classic in the crowd of books on Indian leaders today.”
— Anand Kumar, sociologist, political activist and former professor at Jawaharlal Nehru University.
“The analysis here is far-reaching and profound since Rahul Gandhi is an emblem of social and economic change, a symbolic figure in a landscape disfigured and made unrecognisable by ideological earthquakes. I really felt that what Sugata has written here reaches far into areas rarely understood as ‘political’, although indeed they are. The book is dense and deep, and ought to be obligatory reading for every member of the Congress party – although it is more likely that the BJP will heed its multiple messages more attentively. I was thoroughly captivated by this book.”
– Jeremy Seabrook, British author and columnist
Written with empathy, the book tries to demystify the persona and politics of Rahul Gandhi—as an alternative to the Modi phenomenon.
— Neerja Chowdhury, senior journalist and columnist
“This unusual book is an astute political commentary on the present times. Sugata places the truly courageous but beleaguered Congress leader Rahul Gandhi in a wider context and very perceptively analyses both the state of the man and his party, which is still emblematic of cherished democratic principles that grew out of the struggle for freedom from British rule.
— Partha Chatterjee, filmmaker and writer
Releasing on August 28th
