Book Review | If only our netas read Gandhi, instead of making him a deity
Deccan ChronicleMohandas Karamchand Gandhi told Richard Symonds, the Quaker relief worker, that his books sold more copies than Jawaharlal Nehru’s. Four lines after admitting “I used to be restless as mercury, not sitting still even for a little while”, Gandhi stresses how “revolting” he found the spectacle of “cows freely eating human faeces”. A letter from his son Harilal, with whom relations were strained, prompted Gandhi to ask himself if he had “failed to take sons’ interests into account”. One can understand the intense frustration that must have inspired South Africa’s General Smuts’ “The saint has left our shores, I sincerely hope forever” when Gandhi returned to India for good in 1916. In much the same vein, Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar claimed that Gandhi’s national status owed something to a tendency to speak less than “the whole truth.” But the Dalit leader should have known there was no conscious suppression: Gandhi merely shared what he thought relevant.
History of this topic
The Hindu on Books | Remembering Gandhi, countdown to Jaipur Literary Festival and more
The Hindu
Andhra Pradesh: Gandhi’s ideals more relevant today, says Justice Ramana
The Hindu
Gandhi: A determined chronicler
Hindustan TimesDiscover Related
)
)
)
