Ramachandra Guha's books include the award-winning
India After Gandhi and
A Corner of a Foreign Field. The first volume of this biography,
Gandhi Before India, was chosen as a New York Times Notable Book, as was
Gandhi: The Years That Changed the World. Having previously taught at Yale and Stanford universities, and the Indian Institute of Science, he is now Distinguished University Professor at Krea University. He is a winner of the Fukuoka Prize and the recipient of a honorary doctorate in the humanities from Yale University.Beginning in July 1914, as Mohandas Gandhi leaves South Africa to return to India,
Gandhi: The Years That Changed the World, 1914-1948 traces the Mahatma's life over the three decades preceding his assassination. Drawing on new archival materials, acclaimed historian Ramachandra Guha follows Gandhi's struggle to deliver India from British rule, to forge harmonious relations between India's Hindus and Muslims, to end the pernicious practice of untouchability and to nurture India's economic and moral self-reliance. Guha shows how, in each of these campaigns, Gandhi adapted methods of non-violence that successfully challenged British authority and influenced revolutionary movements throughout the world. A revelatory look at the complexity of Gandhi's thinking and motives, the book is a luminous portrait of the man himself, as well as his family, friends, colleagues, rivals and adversaries.
Guha is the quintessential storyteller . . . Some storytellers entertain, others disrupt the categories we think with. These are not Guha's projects. He displaces Gandhi from the pedestal generations have placed him on. He shows us a man
who was known for taking political time by the forelock, for shaping history, and for his readiness to admit his own mistakes.
Guha covers him [Gandhi] in a variety of shades. A human, a moralist, a politician, a tactician, a guardian, a deeply passionate and idiosyncratic man. The book is moving without being sentimental; convincing without being polemical.Rich in the kind of anecdote and detail that is now a trademark of the Ramachandra Guha biography . . .Wise, graceful and entertaining . . .
Gandhi: The Years That Changed the World, 1914-1948 will not be bettered, and it is essential reading even for those who do not think of themselves as India buffs, because Gandhi is a maker of our whole modern world.An important biography . . . Guha admires Gandhi's achievements, but does not gloss over the man's flaws.
