About A. D. Gorwala
A. D. Gorwala was a civil servant-turned-activist/journalist, who resigned from the prestigious Indian Civil Service in 1947, in protest at the Government of India's refusal to accept the need for food rationing restrictions during a food crisis.
In the early 1950s he was very much part of the Nehruvian "nation-building" apparatus, having authored the famous Report on Public Administration (1951), and chaired the All-India Rural Credit Survey Report (1955) which recommended the formation of the State Bank of India.
By the late 1950s, Gorwala's political leanings took on an increasingly anti-establishment tone, which lead him to found the weekly journal Opinion in May 1960 (the first article in this publication was titled "The Cost of Shri Nehru.").
Gorwala's run-ins with the establishment continued through the 70s, including a memorable series of conflicts with Mrs Indira Gandhi during the Emergency, as detailed for instance in the Shah Commission Enquiry Report.
This site is an attempt to catalogue Gorwala's life and work, part of a wider effort to document histories of political dissent in independent India.
Writings about Gorwala
- Jehangir Patel, How two men refused to bend to press censorship during the Emergency (Scroll.in, June 2026)
- Ashok Mahadevan, Astad Dinshah Gorwala, The Man Who Would Not Be Silent (Reader's Digest, July 2019)
- Ramachandra Guha, Kashmir, Then as Now (The Hindu, November 2006)
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Selections from Say Not the Struggle: Essays in Honour of A. D. Gorwala (OUP, 1976) — a Festschrift edited by H. M. Patel and presented to Gorwala on his 75th birthday:
- H. M. Patel, Introduction [pdf]
- H. M. Patel, Gorwala's Justice [pdf]
- Gauri Deshpande, The Editor [pdf]