Gandhi

The Man, his People and the Empire
By Rajmohan Gandhi

This monumental biography of one of the most intriguing figures of the 20th century, written by his grandson, is the first to give a complete and balanced account of Gandhi’s remarkable life, the development of his beliefs, his political campaigns, and his complex relations with his family. It was a life of contrasts and contradictions: the London-trained lawyer who wore the clothes of India’s poorest and spun cotton by hand; the apostle of non-violence who lead an Indian ambulance corps in the Boer War and urged Indians to enlist in the First World War; the champion of Indian independence who never hated the British.

Gandhi’s development during his long life and the conflicts in his own personality are as much a part of this book as his campaigns against racial discrimination in South Africa and for ‘Swaraj’ in India. It covers his development of non-violent resistance (‘satyagraha’), and the problem of Hindu-Muslim conflict, the resolution of which was one of the passions of Gandhi’s life and which is still of vital significance today.

Written with unprecedented insight and access to family archives, this definitive biography of Gandhi sheds new light on the life of a man who was far more complicated and conflicted than his received public image suggests. For the first time, this book gives us the true Gandhi, the man as well as the legend.

 

'Rajmohan takes us at a leisurely pace through the broad sweep of Gandhis personal and public life. His Gujarati background is given its due, as also his London years, his campaigns in South Africa, and his struggles and travels in India.’
Ramachandra Guha, The Times Literary Supplement
 
Gandhi - The Man, his People and the Empire was also reviewed in the Financial Times Weekend Magazine Books Essay by William Dalrymple, you can read it here.



Rajmohan Gandhi, grandson of Mahatma Gandhi, is Visiting Professor in the Program in South Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. A former member of the Rajya Sabha (the upper house of the Indian Parliament), he led the Indian delegation to the UN Human Rights Commission in 1990. His other books include Ghaffar Khan: Nonviolent Badshah of the Pakhtuns, Revenge & Reconciliation: Understanding South Asian History, and Eight Lives: A Study of the Hindu-Muslim Encounter.