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Gandhi: The Man, His People, and the Empire. By rajmohan gandhi. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008. 759 pp. $34.95 (cloth).
There are only a handful of personalities as much known, researched, and written about as Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (1869 -1948). While the number of his biographies continues to soar, one wonders about the relevance of yet another book on him. The book under review neither makes a new argument nor renews our insight into a hitherto hidden Gandhi, but it stands out by presenting Gandhi in a comprehensive, encyclopedic, and exhaustive manner. It must be mentioned that this book was originally published as Mohandas: A True Story of a Man, His People, and an Empire by Penguin, New Delhi, in 2006. The biographer, Rajmohan Gandhi, has been working on his grandfather's life history for several decades now, and it is the integration of a vast range of sources on Gandhi-from both public and personal archives-that makes this book informative and authoritative. Rajmohan Gandhi portrays the "father of the Indian nation" through various phases of his life and engages with multiple issues and contemporary personalities that Mohandas Gandhi encountered.
While our shelves, libraries, and bibliographies are flooded with biographies on Gandhi, this book manages to find its place in two respects. First, it surely is an intense, single piece of information on the evolution of Gandhi as a leader, statesman, and human being. Most other biographies focus either on one aspect of Gandhi or a particular time period of his life. Second, this biography attempts to bring together the man, Mohandas Gandhi, and the legend, the Mahatma ("the Great Soul"). This attempt should be seen as a way to understand Gandhi not as someone resting on a high pedestal but as one who was susceptible to flaws and follies in his life and deeds. Indian critiques of Gandhi have come from various groups of people including Hindu nationalists, Muslims, Christians, and dalits or the lower caste Hindus, both during his lifetime...