Ranbir Vohra was born in pre-partition Punjab and grew up in a political environment: his maternal grandfather was a well-known member of the Indian National Congress, who spent years in jail for his involvement in Mahatma Gandhi’s pacifist freedom movement. One of his uncles was a socialist revolutionary who, at the age of twenty-four, was hanged by the British in the infamous Punjab Conspiracy Case in 1931. When India was partitioned in 1947, Professor Vohra’s family was forced to flee their home in Lahore and seek refuge in India. After graduating in 1946 from Government College in Lahore, Professor Vohra joined the government-run All India Radio (AIR) as a program officer. In 1956, the Indian government sent him to study Chinese language and culture at Beijing University; on his return in 1959, he took charge of the Chinese Broadcasting Unit of AIR. During his eighteen years with AIR, he was in a unique position to observe first-hand the reshaping of the polity in Independent India, and his stay in China helped to sharpen his understanding of the reasons why India’s path of modernization would always be different from that of China. Professor Vohra left AIR in 1964 to gain a Ph.D. in Chinese studies at Harvard; at the completion of his thesis in 1969, Harvard offered him a lecturership, the first doctoral candidate to be given this honor in eighteen years. From 1969 to 1997 Professor Vohra taught a variety of courses dealing with the history and politics of China, Japan, and India at a number of institutions of higher learning in the U.S.A and Canada. Professor Vohra has published widely and, apart from his edited work The Chinese Revolution 1900-1950 (Boston:  Houghton Mifflin, 1974), is the author of Lao She and the Chinese Revolution (Harvard University Press, 1974); Inqilab-e-Chin (English Edition: China’s Revolutionary Experience; Tehran: Iranian Center for the Study of Civilizations, 1978); China: The Search for Social Justice (Penguin/Viking: India, USA, Canada, England, New Zealand, 1990-1991), China’s Path to Modernization (Prentice-Hall, 1987, 3rd edition: 2000 ); and The Making of India (M. E. Sharpe, 1997, 3rd edition: 2013).

Publications:

• Vohra, Ranbir. The Making of India, a Historical Overview. M. E. Sharpe, 1997 (2nd Revised and Updated Edition, 2000; 3rd Revised and Updated Edition, 2013) (New Delhi: Vision Books, 1999, reproduction of First Edition).
• Vohra, Ranbir. China, The Search for Social Justice & Democracy. Penguin/Viking: India, USA, Canada, England, New Zealand, 1990-1991.
• Vohra, Ranbir. China's Path to Modernization: A Historical Review from 1800 to the Present. PrenticeHall, 1987. (2nd Revised & Updated Edition, 1992; 3rd Revised & Updated Edition, 2000). 
  Chinese translation: A Chinese version of the book was published in 1989, by Liaoning People’s Publishing House, under the title Zhong Guo : Qian Xian Dai Hua de Zhen Tong [China: The Early Pain of Modernization].
  
• Vohra, Ranbir.  Inqlab-E-Chin (China's Revolutionary Experience). Tehran, Iran: Iranian Center for the Study of Civilizations, 1978.
• Vohra, Ranbir. Lao She and the Chinese Revolution. Cambridge: Harvard U. Press, 1974. (Published twice in Chinese & Japanese).
• Vohra, Ranbir, ed. The Chinese Revolution 1900-1950. Boston:  Houghton Mifflin, 1974.