Gandhi Before India



Name : Gandhi before India
Author : Ramachandra Guha
Year of Publication : 2013
Genre : Non-fiction,Biography
Rating : ***** (5 stars out of 5)

It is natural to question the need for another Gandhi biography when there is already a surfeit of tomes but anyone who finishes this book will question the research and rigour of biographers who had merely skimmed the surface all these years. While other biographies saw the 20 years spent by MK Gandhi in South Africa as mere title credits to an engrossing movie that follows, the scholar-author Ramachandra Guha makes a blockbuster out of the same period. 

Stellar research (unearthing previously unknown nuggets like the first correspondence between MK Gandhi and MA Jinnah, the first person to address MK Gandhi as Mahatma and eerily prescient words in 1909 where he talks about his death uniting Hindu and Muslim communities) combined with highly readable prose make this a winner. Finishing this book which covers MK Gandhi's life from 1869 to 1914 makes one feel as to what else is left for this man to accomplish but he is just sailing back to India.

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