There is a dearth of scholarly biographies in India: Dr Ramachandra Guha

Biographies make for an interesting read because they give readers a peek into the life and mind of the subject of the biography. However, historian Dr Ramachandra Guha feels that there is an acute dearth of scholarly biographies in India.

At his recent talk in Mumbai, Dr Guha noted that there were no quality biographies of Indian political leaders, musicians, writers, artists and sports personalities. There weren't even scholarly, independent biographies of business leaders.

"Those that exist tend to be hagiographies," Dr Guha said. "There could be one exception — Medha M Kudaisya's book on GD Birla. Probably in the field of business history, it would be one book by a scholar that is not by definition a biography of a business leader."

The talk was held at the Chhatrapati Shivaji Museum. The audience included Nadir Godrej, Phiroza Godrej, former TCS CEO S Ramadorai, Bharat Doshi of Mahindra Group, Sunil Mishra of PropTiger and former Mumbai police commissioner Julio Ribeiro.