Now, Gandhi Katha in paperback

Good news for those who savoured every word of the favourite lecture series, Gandhi Katha - it is now not only available in paperback, but in three languages too. Based on the popularity of renowned Gandhian, Narayan Desai's lecture series, a book on Gandhi Katha was launched on Sunday at the Ahmedabad Management Association (AMA). The book was released in English, Hindi and a second version of the Gujarati edition was re-launched.

The idea of converting the lecture series in the form of a book was that of Narayan Desai, reveals AMA president, Pankaj Patel. "We had organised Desai's lecture series in December 2005. Later Desai expressed his wish to transcribe and translate the audio series into books and we took up the task."

Patel added that the Gujarati version of the book which was earlier launched was quite a hit and it proves that the interest of the people in knowing more about Gandhi has not dipped. "1000 copies were booked soon after the edition was launched. Gandhiji's holistic approach and non violent means will continue to help the people for generations."

Full report here DNA

Gandhi through a Marxian lens

Originally written in Bengali in 1955, an English version is only available now and it reveals the Indian freedom fighter's affinity towards communism and socialism.

Did you know that India’s independence father Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi had leftist leanings? Or that he had no hesitations in calling himself a socialist or even a communist?

In fact, Gandhi’s ideology to develop the nation, which was then under colonial rule, was premised on the concept of socialism, claims a newly published translated version of an original Bengali book on the iconic statesman.

Translator KV Subrahmonyan has done a brilliant job in painstakingly translating “Gandhi Gabeshana” to become “Revolutionary Gandhi”. The book was originally written by Indian author and a top communist leader Pannalal Dasgupta in 1955 and the English version offers an insight into the thinking of Gandhi on socialism and how he thought it could help form a nation.

Full report here Free Malaysia Today

Patrick French on India and Bollywood

He first came to Mumbai in 1996. That was also his first visit to India. He wanted to write about India.

But celebrated British writer and historian Patrick French did not expect the call for ban on his book Liberty or Death — India’s Journey to Independence and Division.

His take on Mahatma Gandhi and Mohammad Ali Jinnah’s role in the Independence Movement wasn’t taken too kindly. The fear of being looked at as an outsider crossed his mind when he started out, but being married to an Indian woman has given him a different perspective.

“Back then, there was a feeling that people were obliged to be more respectable to the father of the nation, Mahatma Gandhi and they felt that I was too sympathetic to Jinnah. But today if somebody wrote a book on 26/11 nobody would be bothered in the slightest bit. I think it is to do with what is acceptable at a particular time,” says French.

Full report here DNA

Marketing students asked to sell Bapu's bio

Professor feels the book is undervalued, while its demand increases pre-Gandhi Jayanti

The Bombay Sarvodaya Mandal (BSM) at Tardeo regularly sells a hundred copies of Mahatma Gandhi's autobiography, My Experiments With Truth.

Recently however, there was a different demand for this organisation that is committed to propagating Gandhi's literature, when Professor Dr P S Prasad of Powai-based institute, NITIE called in asking for 10,000 copies of the book.

Prasad, a faculty of marketing at the institute, has assigned the 180 students of the final year the task to sell the book across the city.

Starting today (Gandhi Jayanti), these students will be seen selling the autobiography at various places in the city including streets, railway stations, and corporate offices, among others.

When asked about the inception of the idea, Prasad said, "Gandhi's book is 24-karat truthfulness. In the educational institution, we have a curriculum but the technique is missing.

Full report here Mid Day

Hitler usurps the Mahatma

Experts at a loss to explain why Mein Kampf is outselling My Experiments... by such a huge margin

This may sound strange, but in Gandhi's India, it is Hitler who is vying for attention. History refers to Adolf Hitler as a dictator and an oppressor. He may be a hate figure in the West but the Nazi leader appears quite popular in India.

Selling his autobiography, Mein Kampf, penned in 1924, is almost blasphemous in Europe. But it's one of the perennial bestsellers in Mumbai and indeed across the country.

The sales are increasing at a dramatic rate. Consider this: At the Strand bookstore in Fort, the sale has shot up by 600 per cent over the last two years. Before 2008, we used to sell barely 50-75 copies of this book per year, whereas last year we sold nearly 300 copies," said P M Shenvi, manager of the bookstore.

The trend in other parts of the country is no different. Jaico, leading among a clutch of publishers and distributors of Mein Kampf, sold nearly 15,000 copies last year. Jaico's editor R H Sharma confirmed the fact.

In stark contrast, Mahatma Gandhi's autobiography, The Story of My Experiments with Truth, is less popular then Mein Kampf.

Full report here Mid Day

Remarkable Ghandhi book

Hind Swaraj is M.K.Gandhi's remarkable book written originally in Gujarati in ten days in November 1909 on a ship from London to Durban. This is the only book that the Mahatma himself translated into English.

Even his famous autobiography, My Experiments with Truth, was first translated into English by his secretary, Pyare Lal. It was written weekly in a serial format for his magazine, Indian Opinion.

The English version of Hindi Swaraj was published in 1910 - this year marks the centenary celebration of this most radical and revolutionary document of the time.

The British Raj banned it; the Indian nationalists condemned it. They perceived it as Gandhi's reactionary thinking against Indians' fight for freedom by any means and the modernization of Mother India on European structures of industrialization.

Few books have been more misread, misinterpreted and misunderstood by a writer's contemporaries. One critic writer described it as an 'incendiary manifesto.'

full report here Fiji Times

Gandhi's autobiography is among top sellers

At a time when the country is ridden with violence, corruption and deceit, it would surprise many to know that Mahatma Gandhi's autobiography, which gives the message of truth, non-violence and peace, is one of the top-selling books, says a Gandhian.

"This is true since 257,000 copies were sold last year," says TRK Somaiya, programme co-ordinator, Bombay Sarvodaya Mandal, an organisation that promotes Gandhian principles.

"And to spread the message of peace of the Mahatma today, when his 141st birth anniversary will be celebrated across the country, more than 15,000 copies of Gandhi's My Experiments with Truth, an autobiography, will be sold by management students of the National Institute of Industrial Engineering at Mumbai's shopping malls, offices, schools and colleges," he said.

The demand for the book went up in 1984 after the release of Richard Attenborough's film Gandhi, at around the same time the Gandhi Book Centre started. Today, the Centre has 250 titles on Gandhi, in different languages. Though sales of these books went down for a while, Somaiya says they have recently increased. "It went up after the release of Bollywood film Lage Raho Munnabhai which dwelt with Gandhian ideals," he said.

Full report here Gulfnews

The future of Gandhian studies

On Gandhi Jayanti, Express checks out the Gandhian study centres of state universities to find what courses they offer and what are their plans.

UNIVERSITY OF MYSORE
It is one of the first Gandhi Bhavans of the country and was inaugurated by former prime minister Morarji Desai in 1962.
The Centre for Gandhian Studies here offers a 10-month diploma in Gandhian Studies.
Candidates with Pre-University qualifications are eligible for the course.

BANGALORE UNIVERSITY
The Gandhi Bhavan was constructed in 1973- 74 at a cost of Rs 2 lakh. The Centre for Gandhian Studies offers a PG Diploma and a certificate course. Director of the Centre D Jeevan Kumar said besides these courses, the Centre was publishing books on Gandhians.
On Saturday, the 42nd book on a Gandhian will be released.
Plans
The centre is planning to start a post graduation course in Gandhian Studies.
Drawbacks Five teaching faculty members handle five different papers for diploma courses.
“Though there is a demand for the course, all faculty members, including the director, is on deputation from other departments like Philosophy, History and Economics,” Umesh said.
Plans
The university plans to introduce courses on Gandhian Studies for prisoners. A similar initiative has been taken at the Mumbai prison, which has reportedly helped the inmates.
Drawbacks While the PG Diploma in Gandhian Studies is very popular, certificate courses have less takers.

Full report here New Indian Express

Gandhigiri is no longer in vogue

Gandhigiri among youngsters had become a rage a couple of years back, thanks to the Munnabhai films. But with time, the hype surrounding the non-violent way and the jaadu ki jhappis seems to have died down. In the past one year, the city has been a silent observer to hot-blooded youngsters going on a rampage in a bid to realise their dreams.

Unprecedented damage to public property, stone pelting, calling for state-wide bandhs, revolts were the order of the day during the Telangana agitation. It’s the age of ‘Forgotten Gandhigiri’ — solution via negotiation and talks is no longer practical for youngsters today and himsa is the only way to make themselves heard claim today’s youth.

Full report here Deccan Chronicle

John Abraham the bookseller!

Jhoota Hi Sahi actor will distribute copies of Gandhi's My Experiments with Truth to people buying books from him as part of film's promotion.

Taking a cue from his character Sid who's a bookseller in Jhoota Hi Sahi, John Abraham will be selling books at a Crossword outlet on Saturday.

Since Gandhi Jayanti also falls on the same day, John will be distributing copies of Mahatma's autobiography My Experiments with Truth to those purchasing books from him. The actor will assist a customer executive at the store and help visitors choose their favourite book.

Full report here 

Tilak as seen by his fervent admirer VOC

That time belonged to sea-green, incorruptible supermen like V.V.S. Aiyar, Sri Aurobindo, Mohandas Kharamchand Gandhi, and Subramania Bharati. No wonder we hail them as Maharishi Aiyar, Mahayogi Sri Aurobindo, Mahatma Gandhi and Mahakavi Bharati. For them patriotism was religion and the phrase ‘Vande Mataram' was mantra. V.O. Chidambaram Pillai (1872-1936), the intrepid nationalist from south India, was a disciple of Tilak and there existed a warm relationship between the two. Pillai referred to Tilak aptly as Maharishi.

POLITICAL GURU
Venkatachalapati, to whom we owe many important retrievals from the past, has brought back to print the life of Tilak written by Pillai for Veerakesari of Ceylon. Tilaka Maharishi carries a critical introduction as also five appendices of vital interest to assess the flow of historical events. A fervent admirer of Tilak, Pillai had also suffered in prison willingly and had trod with a bleeding brow the patriot's way. He was an excellent speaker and writer in English and Tamil. The preface to the biography is actually a Tamil translation of Pillai's article published in the third volume of Reminiscences of Bal Gangadhar Tilak (1927). The words come out clear and ring true: “Lokamanya Bal Gangadhar Tilak is my political guru. From my 21st year … I was closely following his writings and speeches on politics. They made me feel that India was my country, that the British were wrongfully retaining it and that it must be got back from them.” How to do it?

Full report here Hindu

Faith, cyclical and sublime

In the spring of 1907, the London publisher, John Murray, published a book on Persian mystics by one F. Hadland Davis. The book appeared in a series called “The Wisdom of the East”, whose editors desired their publications to be “ambassadors of good-will and understanding between East and West, the old world of Thought, and the new of Action”. Through the books in the series, it was hoped that the Western (and Christian) reader would acquire “a deeper knowledge of the great ideals and lofty philosophy of Oriental thought [which] may help to a revival of that true spirit of Charity which neither despises nor fears the nations of another creed and colour”.

One of the first readers of the book was an Easterner educated in the West, Mohandas K. Gandhi. Then based in Johannesburg, Gandhi may have acquired the book from a local store, or perhaps ordered it from London. At any rate, he was deeply impressed, writing about it in Indian Opinion, the journal he then edited. Of the mystics whom Hadland Davis had profiled, Gandhi was charmed most by Jalaluddin Rumi, who aspired to “a pure heart and love of God”. Gandhi quotes Rumi saying, when asked where one could find god, “I saw the Cross and also Christians, but I did not find God on the Cross. I went to find him in the temple, but in vain. I saw him neither in Herat nor in Kandahar. He could be found neither on the hill nor in the cave. At last, I looked into my heart and found Him there, only there and nowhere else.” Gandhi ended his review by saying that he would “like to recommend the book to everyone. It will be of profit to all, Hindus and Muslims alike”.

Full report here Telegraph

Children create sketches for Gandhi comic book

Think Gandhiji’s values and teachings no longer apply in today’s day and age? Think again. A recently released comic book compilation showcases Gandhian values in contemporary times. What’s more is that the sketches in the book have been created by children and show their perception of Mahatma Gandhi in India 2010. The book has been released in English and Hindi versions.

New works
Titled Understanding Gandhi (English) and Gandhi Se Mulakat (Hindi), these books have been compilated from a ten-day comics campaign organised for children by World Comics India in collaboration with Gandhi Smriti and Darshan Samiti. The participants were mainly from two orphanages — Arya Bal Graha and Chandra Arya Balika Graha (for boys and girls). However, some sketches from children across India have also been incorporated into the books.

The workshops were held in two phases. While the children produced comics on the life of Gandhi in the first session, the second part of the workshop produced sketches on Gandhian values in the contemporary world. Some important events that marked Bapuji’s life like the Dandi March, Non Cooperation Movement and his policy of Satyagraha find a place in the books.

Full report here Hindustan Times

The Monu magic

Bolwar Mahamad Kunhi, the winner of the Kendra Sahitya Akademi Award for his work on Gandhiji for children, says it is a fascinating story of an ordinary boy who became famous by speaking the truth

In the West, most acclaimed writers have written for children. However, such instances are far and few between in our immediate literary context. Bolwar Mahamad Kunhi, a short story writer and novelist of repute is among the few exceptions. This writer has edited what is considered the finest work ever produced in Kannada for children – “Tattu Chappale Putta Magu”, a collection of over 100 poems and “Santammanna”, which is an anthology of 40-odd poems with lively-lovely illustrations. He is now the recipient of the Kendra Sahitya Akademi award for telling children the story of an ordinary Mohandas who became Mahatma Gandhi in his “Paapu Gandhi Bapu Gandhi Aada Kathe”.

Apart from Gorur Ramaswamy Iyengar, it is only Bolwar who has written about Gandhi for children.

Full report here Hindu

The game of life, translated

Wiping away tears, I’m thinking in amazement: “This really shouldn’t work.” But it does. I’ve just finished reading the death of the hero in Premchand’s novel Rangbhumi. The blind beggar Surdas dies like a saint, with forgiveness for those who once beset him and with humility. Almost his last words are “Ram-Ram”. His village mourns him, and when his body is mounted on its funeral pyre every man, woman and child is there. His estranged son comes weeping to light the fire. It’s significant that just a few days earlier the entire village had burned to the ground, after a terrible conflict that had very humble origins, as a struggle over a piece of land.

This is surely too heavy-handed. It sounds like Gandhi and the independence movement, even perhaps Partition. There are other familiar characters: Kunwar Bharat Singh and his son Vinay surely approximate Motilal Nehru and his son Jawaharlal. But Premchand died in 1936, aged just 56, and Rangbhumi was written in the early 1920s, the time of non-cooperation and Chauri Chaura. Call it prescience, or call it pattern-recognition; even the lives of saints and rich men of conscience follow a set of rules.

 Whatever it is, the emotional force of this piece of narrative is surprising — especially for a reader who is, like me, so little acquainted with Hindi-Urdu literature. Somewhere within the Indian reader must be buried the necessary raw material, the understanding of Indian archetypes of character and motivation, and Premchand is able to mine that seam more effectively than Western or Western-inspired contemporary Indian writers. In Western literature this subject would make a tragedy. In India, opposed imperatives never grow monstrous — think of Oedipus confronting his irreconcilable duties as son, king and husband, or Macbeth’s terrible crisis of loyalty and ambition — and altogether consume the individual. Somehow, dharma provides the answer and the solution. From anger comes peace. The universe is what it is. And so on.

Full report here Business Standard

Encounter of the titans

What happens when BR Ambedkar and Mahatma Gandhi look down from heaven? Two brilliantly imagined soliloquies

The Flaming Feet and Other
Essays: Permanent Black,
254 pages, Rs595.

Two voices suddenly pipe up midway through The Flaming Feet, D.R. Nagaraj’s book of essays on the Dalit movement, and they turn out to be those of the principal protagonists of the book: B.R. Ambedkar and Mahatma Gandhi. For once, we see them not spoken about, but speaking in their own voices, as if restored to life.

It is 1997, the 50th anniversary of India’s independence—an independence about which both men were, from the very beginning and for different reasons, sceptical. Ambedkar and Gandhi occupy adjoining rooms in heaven, and look down somewhat disconsolately on an India that has moved on. Ambedkar speaks of his immense antipathy to religious superstition and myth-making, and acknowledges that “my intimate enemy, that Gujarati Bania Mr. Gandhi, also does not like these things”, even if Gandhi is always seen as a man of religion. Gandhi, meanwhile, is found contemplating “how Hind Swaraj would be if my nextdoor neighbour, the learned Babasaheb, had written it”, and thinks that Ambedkar, a trained economist and the quintessential rationalist, would have found an enormous array of statistics to improve the argument.

Full review here Mint 

Khushwant? Absolutely

Khushwant Singh tells how his latest book Absolute Khushwant came about

Is there a universally accepted definition of absolute truth? Just as change is the only constant, the quality of being human militates against the very idea of an absolute. Maybe that's why Gandhiji, whose status as the epitome of truth earned him the epithet Mahatma, only got as far as “experiments with truth”. Seemingly at the other end of the spectrum from the ascetic Mahatma is the irrepressible Khushwant Singh, who states that Gandhiji is his icon, and that in moments of quandary he does as he thinks Gandhiji would have.

This dichotomy, among the many puzzling paradoxes that characterise India's “grand old man of letters”, is what makes the title of his latest book so apt: Absolute Khushwant, a Penguin publication, released this week. But surely the chief of these paradoxes is that Singh, after half a century as a journalist, authoring over two dozen books, being an editor of leading national journals and dailies, and continuing to write two columns a week, should need a co-author. The cover of Absolute Khushwant tells us the book is by “Khushwant Singh with Humra Quraishi”.

One wonders if it could be because he is closer to 100 than 90 and needed a hand. But that is obviously not so. Singh, though tired the day after the launch and (honestly, as always) admitting he couldn't hear much of the proceedings as his hearing aid was not efficient enough, has certainly not ceded his command over the pen. This book was not his idea at all, he states simply. It was Penguin's.

Full report here Hindu

The reading life - Gandhi, Nehru, Ambedkar

As another August 15 passes by, here’s a thought: what would our country have been like if the leaders of the freedom movement had not been readers?

It’s easier to see them as writers. Mahatma Gandhi’s autobiographies, letters and other work have provided gainful occupation for thousands of scholars. Pandit Nehru, incarcerated in jail, bereft of reference books, set pen to paper and produced The Discovery of India, Glimpses of World History and Letters From A Father To His Daughter. B R Ambedkar’s Who Were The Shudras, Castes in India and the autobiographical Waiting For A Visa still hold the attention of readers.

And it is their progression as writers that historians and thinkers like Ramachandra Guha and Sunil Khilnani have written about. But to study the libraries of India’s leaders is to realise how relentlessly, and sometimes restlessly, all of them, from Maulana Abul Kalam Azad to Sarojini Naidu, read as a way of understanding the values by which India would be formed.

Gandhi came to English uneasily; the alien tongue made him a virtual prisoner of silence on his shipboard journey to England. In South Africa, as a lawyer who had got over his initial fear of speaking in public, he put together a formidable and eclectic library.

Full report here Sify

Inspiring colours and notes

Here's the story of the Tricolour and our national anthem...

On Independence day, August 15, the national flag flutters high in almost every school. It is a familiar sight, with orange, white and green stripes and the blue chakra in the middle. Flag stickers, badges, labels, are distributed with sweets every Independence day.

Did you know that the Indian national flag did not become what it is overnight. It went through many changes before it took its present form? As part of the Swadeshi movement, (in which Indians refused to use British products), many flags were designed.

One of the earliest of these was a Tricolour in red band on top, yellow in the middle and green at the bottom. The red band had eight white lotuses, while the bottom green had a sun and crescent moon, and the words “vande mataram” were inscribed on the middle yellow. Pingali Venkayya designed as many as 30 flags. Even British people interested in Swaraj, like Annie Besant, designed flags, but there was not much general interest in the idea of having an Indian national flag. Mahatma Gandhi commissioned Pingali Venkayya to design one with the charkha (spinning wheel) in the middle with two bands, red and green. A white band was later added. This became one of the earliest flags to be hoisted in India.

Just before August 15, 1947, a committee was set up by the Constituent Assembly, which consisted of eminent national leaders, and they decided to modify this flag that had been designed by the Indian National Congress. The spinning wheel of this flag was replaced by the Asoka wheel that represented dharma. The new flag now had three colours: deep saffron, white, and green, with a blue Asoka Chakra in the centre.

S.Radhakrishnan, the first Vice-President of India, made a stirring speech on the flag: “Bhagwa or the saffron colour denotes renunciation or disinterestedness. Our leaders must be indifferent to material gain and dedicate themselves to their work. The white in the centre is light, the path of truth to guide our conduct. The green shows our relation to (the) soil, our relation to the plant life here, on which all other life depends. The “Ashoka Chakra” in the centre of the white is the wheel of the law of dharma.”

Full report here Hindu

Banning books doesn’t work

In an age of digital media and rampant piracy, efforts to keep books away from readers are increasingly meaningless, even counterproductive

This newspaper doesn’t quite like the idea of anybody having the power to ban a book, but isn’t unduly worried that such attempts (and more on these anon) will stop the spread of thoughts, stories or ideas.

Depending on geography, history and background, the list of subjects considered “sacred” in the country include the extended Gandhi family, Ambedkar, Periyar, Subhas Chandra Bose, Rabindranath Tagore, Veer Savarkar and maybe a few thousand more people, some alive, some dead. James Laine’s book has met with opposition in Maharashtra because it is about Shivaji, the Maratha king many people in the state—at least those making a living from politics—hold dear.

The reason such bans do not work is because the nature of the books business has changed. Paper isn’t the only medium through which ideas or stories can now be communicated. Many of them can be communicated through digital media. And while piracy (just to clarify, this newspaper is against it) prevents the creators of content from being rewarded for their efforts, it ensures that books and movies that aren’t meant to be available in a particular region are—freely.

Full report here Mint