No Title
T.C.A. Srinivasa Raghavan
MY EARLY LIFE: AN ILLUSTRATED STORY by M.K. Gandhi Oxford University Press, 2012, 154 pp., 295
November 2012, volume 36, No 11

This is an annotated version of Gandhiji’s works, first published in 1932. This volume has been annotated by Lalita Zachariah who is a noted expert on Gandhiji’s works. The pur-pose, says the publisher’s note, is to contemporize Gandhiji’s views for a generation of Indians for whom he is almost a mythical figure. For that reason alone, the book is valuable and it is to be hoped that millions of parents whose awareness of Gandhiji may be as of a treacly saint, will also benefit.

Since most Indians have not read Gandhiji in the original, they have what might be called an official view of him: a sort of 20th century Rama. That sort of saintliness, however, was just one aspect of him. He had tremendous wit and it was of the best kind possible: the self-deprecatory type where he had no difficulty in laughing at himself.

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