The Hindu Lit Fest 2024 | Ramachandra Guha on his mercurial relationship with his editor Rukun Advani

Chennai historian and writer Ramachandra Guha discusses his relationship with editor Rukun Advani in his latest book.

While it is common for editors to write about the authors with whom they have worked, it is rarely the other way round. In the session titled ‘The Cooking of Books’, after Ramachandra Guha’s latest book of the same name, the historian and writer spoke to Nirmala Lakshman, Chairperson, The Hindu Group Publishing, about the mercurial relationship he shares with his “self-effacing” editor Rukun Advani, the “kind of man you will never see at a literary festival.”

Dr. Guha described the book, the shortest one yet, as an “eccentric, idiosyncratic personal memoir of a relationship of more than 40 years.” The idea for the book emerged during the pandemic, when Dr. Guha, a man of habit, could not make his regular pilgrimages to archives. Confined at home, he began leafing through his own private archives and realised that his letters with Mr. Advani formed the bulk of it. The letters formed the basis of the book. 

He read out portions of the book: delightful anecdotes by writers Mukul Kesavan and Amitav Ghosh. He then recalled how he and Mr. Advani found each other. Both were Stephanians — while Dr. Guha was a chatty, budding cricket player with little interest in history or music then, Mr. Advani spoke little and spent his evenings listening to Beethoven. Their professional relationship began when Dr. Guha sent his first work, on Verrier Elwin, to Mr. Advani for edits. Each draft would come back with suggestions and rewrites and comments such as, “This is fine as a study of Elwin, a scholar and public intellectual, but where is the human being?“ and in then the next draft: “This is a fine work of Elwin the son and lover, but where is the scholar?” It was only after several drafts that Mr. Advani was satisfied.  

Mr. Advani is as famous for being reticent as Dr. Guha is known to be outspoken — so much so that Dr. Guha dedicated the book to the “second-best editor he knows”, his wife Sujata. Mr. Advani was delighted by this clever tribute, recalled Dr. Guha: “He said, ‘I’m not there on the page, yet I’m on the page!’”

Mr. Advani is not just Dr. Guha’s editor but has made “at least 50-60 sociologists writers in India,” Dr. Guha said. They include Romila Thapar, Partha Chatterjee, Upinder Singh, Jean Dreze, and A.R. Venkatachalapathy. Despite staying in the wings and allowing others to take credit for his formidable work, Mr. Advani was fired by Oxford University Press. Later, he went on to establish Permanent Black, an academic imprint, along with his wife, novelist and editor Anuradha Roy.

Dr. Guha was keen to note that while Mr. Advani is reserved, he is very caring. When a scholar was denied a visa in India, he pulled out all stops to ensure that he somehow got it, he said. 

When Dr. Lakshman asked how the redoubtable Mr. Advani reacted to the book, Dr. Guha said, “He didn’t edit very much, it was edited mostly by others. And he very sweetly said, ‘this is the longest thank you note that anyone has written for anyone’.”