I wanted to go beyond Gandhi’s point of view: Ramachandra Guha

After chronicling the past 60 years of Indian history, eminent historian and author Ramachandra Guha is presently exploring lesser known facets of Mahatma Gandhi, especially his days in South Africa in an upcoming multi-volume book.

Guha, had looked at the story of modern India in his 2007 book “India after Gandhi: The history of the world’s largest democracy” for which it won the Sahitya Akademi award for English in the year 2011.

Guha’s upcoming book “Gandhi before India”, takes into account the life of Mahatma Gandhi from the time he was born in Porbandar in 1869 till his departure to India from South Africa in July 1914.

“Before I come to the argument about the man, I thought that I should first understand the man. During my research, I realised that virtually everything written on Gandhi was in Gandhi’s own words, all that he said or wrote. I wanted to go beyond Gandhi’s point of view, everything that he wrote on including caste, culture, and religion,” said Guha.

The author was here to participate in the Spring Fever, an annual literary festival organised by Penguin Books India.

Guha’s new book covers more than half of the Bapu’s life from the year 1869 to 1914, a major part of which he spent in South Africa.

“As I worked my way through these writings it came to my notice that everything about him is derived from collections and publications. I was interested in seeing what other people have to say about Gandhi. You really can’t understand the complexity of the man that Gandhi was unless you understand material outside the creative world. The aim of my work is to accomplish this,” said the author.

Recalling his days of his stint at University of California, Berkeley prior to starting writing on Gandhi, he said, “Initially, I had been invited to teach a subject related to environmental history as I was yet to write on Gandhi and my work on environment were quite well known. But, I insisted on teaching a course on Gandhi.

“Many tried to discourage me saying, ‘you wont get students there for this subject except ABCD (America Born Confused Desi) and if u try really hard, ABCDEFG (America Born Confused Desi Emigrated From Gujarat) might show some interest. All this made me apprehensive to some extent but I went with a positive mind and lastly all went fine, I had a fairly decent class-size with students from all walks of life and various countries.”

The author said he had a difficult time collecting and collating various works on Gandhi.

“The works on Gandhi in form of archives are scattered all over the world. You have to travel to South Africa, to Gujarat, to Delhi to get little from here and there to actually gather the required information.

Ramachandra Guha said, “Archives are the salt of the earth, and young readers, literary minds and travellers don’t mind travelling to unearth the valuable information and knowledge present in these archives despite facing difficulties.”

The upcoming book also mentions the diverse career of Gandhi from being an attorney to a freedom fighter to a social reformer to a journalist and writer, all embedded in one complex personality.

“Not many people know Gandhi had these five full-fledged careers, most of us can’t manage even one, and the base of these five flowing careers was developed in South Africa itself which Gandhi nurtured all of them with vigour and passion,” said Guha.

Guha categorically said that it was impossible to straitjacket Gandhi into any one category as his thought encompasses strains of all the “isms”.

The 10 day long Spring Fever Festival is scheduled to culminate on March 24.

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