A Frank Friendship: Gandhi and Bengal
Compiled and edited by Gopalkrishna Gandhi
Seagull, Rs 950

Mahatma gandhi was the most fascinating personality India has seen in the past century, if not more. It is no wonder then, that people are still interested in learning about him. But they face a daunting task. The available documentation is so huge that a lifetime is not sufficient to master it. More than that, there were so many facets to Gandhi’s life, that one can easily concentrate on one aspect, without touching upon any other, despite Gandhi’s own insistence that his life was a seamless whole.

The problem would be solved if one were to concentrate only on Gandhi’s own writings, right? Wrong. The official edition of his writings, as complete as it can be, numbers 100 volumes. It is currently unavailable and difficult to use. An easier way to approach Gandhi is through the medium of an anthology. There have been countless such books over the years, with Raghavan Iyer’s three-volume selection taking pride of place.

Now, Gopalkrishna Gandhi, a grandson of the Mahatma and governor of West Bengal, follows up his anthology Gandhi And South Africa with not one, but two different compilations relating to Gandhi. Is there anything to distinguish them from any other run-of-the-mill collection? Certainly. In the case of The Oxford India Gandhi, he has given us a connected narrative of Gandhi’s life, in own words. But didn’t Gandhi write an autobiography? Yes, but is The Story of My Experiments With Truth really an autobiography? It appears to be more an exemplification of the values Gandhi professed to live by, and how he reached them, in the grand 19th century style of a moral tract. Just compare Gandhi’s descriptions of his Africa days in Satyagraha in South Africa and the autobiography later — the difference is striking. And anyway, Experiments appeared in the 1920s — more momentous events were yet to follow. Gandhi biographer Martin Green published a similar book a few years back as Gandhi in India, but on a much smaller scale.

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