The slimness of this book is its first surprise, seeming almost at odds with the weighty title. As Judith Brown states in the Introduction, the aim was to reach a wide audience ‘at university level and even among school students’, as also readers ‘who may know little about India but wish to know more about such a significant and intriguing figure’ as Gandhi. (The locus of this interest was apparently sighted abroad.) Writing together in the Conclusion, the two editors again offer this volume ‘to readers perhaps unfamiliar with Gandhi and his life [as] a starting point for informed understanding (…)’. This popularizing brief may well have dictated the lightweight appearance. As for how the book achieves its compression, and what this entails for both Gandhi and the intended reader, the Table of Contents reveals a stellar list of contributors (nothing lightweight there) and a clear-eyed division into three principal segments: the historical life, with three essays; Gandhi as thinker and activist, with six; and the contemporary Gandhi (three again)-this last dealing with his historical legacy.
The sym-metry of the arrangement is striking, as is the heft of the middle section with its partiality for theoretical assessment. Editorial authority is manifest also in the appearance of the essays: almost exactly of a length, and nearly every one of them divided into handy sub-sections. This is clearly no come-as-you-are anthology but a closely coordinated work, the editorial hand firm at the steerage.