Mohandas gandhi was a prolific writer, swapping his pen between hands as they tired. His collected works of speeches, articles, letters, books and essays in English alone run to 100 volumes. These, and a similar number of Hindi and Guja-rati works, have just been made publicly available as part of an official digital archive in India. Padding this trove are other people's studies of the man; one Indian library reportedly holds 45,000 books on Gandhi or the Indian national movement. What can a new biographer add? "Gandhi Before India" by Ramachandra Guha, India's leading historian, offers plenty. The first of two volumes, it deals with Gandhi's life up to 1914, particularly the two decades he spent in white-run South Africa campaigning for civil and political rights for Indians. Gandhi's biographers usually pass over this period in a rush to get to the main show in India. But Mr Guha argues his "African Gandhi" is every bit as worthy of attention as the later man. A fluent writer, Mr Guha is alert to Gandhi's many apparent inconsistencies. He was an "unworldly saint" and a "consummate politician", a man of public integrity who could be terribly harsh to his wife and children. His interest in diet, celibacy and herbal medicine was a reflection of his self-discipline, even if his obsessions verged on quackery.
展开▼
