Ramachandra guha book on gandhi biography

We’re talking about books to read about Gandhi, but it’s hard to do that without mentioning your own biography. There’s the volume that covers Gandhi’s years in South Africa, Gandhi Before India, and then there’s another 900+ page volume, Gandhi: The Years That Changed the World, covering the period from 1914 until his death in 1948.

Especially for younger people who might not be as familiar with Gandhi, can you tell us why he’s so important and why we need to know about him?

We need to know about him for many reasons.

Ramachandra guha book on gandhi biography

One is that he is regarded as the father of the Indian nation, and India is the world’s largest democracy and its second most populous country. He is the major national figure in India, comparable to, say, Lincoln and Jefferson in the United States, De Gaulle in France, Churchill in the UK, Mao in China, Ho Chi Minh in Vietnam and so on.

He was the preeminent nationalist leader of one of the world’s most important and largest countrie