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Arun Gandhi and Sunanda Gandhi, Huntsville, Arkansas: Ozark Mountain Publishers, 1998, 314pages
Arun Gandhi, grandson of Kastur and Mahatma Gandhi, and Arun's wife, Sunanda Gandhi, endeavor to recast the legend of Kastur in more accurate light in their book The Forgotten Woman: The Untold Story of Kastur, Wife of Mahatma Gandhi. Kastur has traditionally been labeled as an unschooled woman who followed her man blindly. This image of feeble wife was unfamiliar to Arun and other family members, who knew Kastur, and after much research by the authors, she emerges in their book as a strong-willed, loving, and powerful woman who cared deeply about and played a large part in the nonviolent movement Mahatma Gandhi waged to free Indians from oppression in South Africa and in India.
In fact, Mahatma Gandhi himself credited Kastur with the philosophy of the nonviolent movement. In the introduction on page 2, Arun writes: "In his autobiography The Story of My Experiments with Truth, grandfather confesses that he learned the rudiments of nonviolence from grandmother. She was never passive, nor aggressive, but always stood up for what she was convinced was right and just. When grandfather was in the wrong she did not argue with him but quietly, nonviolently, led him to the realization of the truth. That, grandfather said, is the true essence of the philosophy of nonviolence."
Few records exist of Kastur's life. Family and government records were washed away in floods. Despite this, Arun and Sunanda Gandhi have recreated much of Kastur's life through interviews with those who knew her. Also, after his mother's death in 1988, Arun was given boxes of letters and documents which further helped illuminate Kastur.
The...