Gandhi Before India

RAMACHANDRA GUHA was born and raised in the Himalayan foothills. He studied in Delhi and Kolkata, and has lived for many years in Bengaluru. His many books include a pioneering environmental history, The Unquiet Woods; a landmark history of his country, India after Gandhi; and an authoritative biography of Mahatma Gandhi, both volumes of which were chosen by the New York Times as a Notable Book of the Year. Having previously taught at Oslo, Stanford and the London School of Economics, he is currently Distinguished University Professor at Krea University. Guha's awards include the Leopold-Hidy Prize of the American Society of Environmental History, the Howard Milton Award of the British Society for Sports History, and the Fukuoka Prize for contributions to Asian culture. He is the recipient of an honorary doctorate in the humanities from Yale University.

In 1893, when Mohandas Gandhi set sail for South Africa, he was a briefless lawyer who had failed to establish himself in India. In this remarkable biography, Ramachandra Guha argues that the two decades that Gandhi spent in the diaspora were the making of the Mahatma. It was here that he forged the philosophy and techniques that would ultimately destroy the British Empire.
Based on archival research in four continents, this book explores Gandhi's experiments with dissident cults, his friendships and enmities, and his failures as a husband and father. Gandhi Before India tells the dramatic story of how he mobilized a cross-class and inter-religious coalition, pledged to non-violence in their battle against a racist regime.
Deeply researched and beautifully written, this book will radically alter our understanding and appreciation of modern India's greatest man.

"Remarkable. . . . [A] moving portrait."Guha is a brilliant historian who combines the gift of a storyteller, the discipline of an academic and the critical ability of seeing Gandhi as a fascinating human being, by not placing him on a pedestal. . . . [He] has re-created the past by connecting scattered dots . . . to weave a rich tapestry.Striking. . . . Guha ably shows, for all that Gandhi influenced events in South Africa, it was he who experienced the greater change.Deeply contextualized, dexterously researched, and judiciously written, this deserves to become the landmark biography of the early Gandhi.Fascinating. . . . A biography with a remarkable ear for the resonances of Gandhi's work and time-for the fan-mail and hate-mail; for overheard disagreements with family and colleagues; for his exchanges with political acquaintances, including his enemies. . . . As exhaustively researched a biography of the African Gandhi as we will have for some time."[A] magisterial study. . . . Guha summarizes the traits of Gandhi's character and the stages during the first half of his life that prepared him for the much more difficult journey he would undertake once he returned to India. . . . I was rewarded beyond all of my expectations [by Gandhi Before India]Fascinating. . . . [Gandhi Before India] reveals how an impossibly shy young man, who donned top hat and tails as a student at Inner Temple, transformed himself into Churchill's 'half-naked fakir,' dedicated to his spinning wheel while simultaneously challenging the might of the Empire.The portrait offered in historian Ramachandra Guha's biography is of Gandhi as a human being, not just a hero.Gandhi Before India should be required reading for the student of contemporary affairs. . . . Guha's carefully rendered observations about class, religion, and ethnicity-how they divide people and how they can be bridged by common concerns and simple decency-are the heart of this book. . . . Remarkable.A magisterial history. . . . In Ramachandra Guha, a great man has found a great biographer, a wise, persistent and elegant historian who has done justice to perhaps his nation's greatest story. . . . One senses, in the author's approach, something of Gandhi's own intensity and rigour. . . . [The] book never ceases to inform and intrigue.What sets [Gandhi Before India] apart from other recent biographies . . . is Guha's resolutely non-scurrilous perspective. . . . What emerges in the end, with the slow magic of a film being developed in an old fashioned dark room, is a sharp picture of the intellectual growth of a remarkable man.Many will come to this biography wanting to know more about Gandhi himself. . . . Guha relates all this wonderfully. His book is clearly a labour of love, though not of uncritical infatuation. What distinguishes it is the breadth of the context-Indian, British and South African. Guha marshals his material sensitively and empathetically in order to give shape, colour and depth to the life of this saint-like figure.Excellent and exhaustive. . . . Guha has done heroic work in reconstructing this period of Gandhi's life ...Gandhi emerges here as a fascinatingly complicated and contradictory figure . . . rich and absorbing, it will doubtless serve as the fundamental portrait of Gandhi for many years to come.Guha is India's best-known historian, who marshals his wide scholarship in contemporary and modern history with a raconteur's lucid felicity.