7/27/2019 Did Gandhi and Jinnah Almost Establish a Legal Partnership_ - Hindustan Times

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7/27/2019 Did Gandhi and Jinnah Almost Establish a Legal Partnership_ - Hindustan Times

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Much of the blame for what he calls "one-sided approach to Gandhi", lies with the sole reliance on the

"Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi," a collection of nearly all his writings running into 100 volumes.

"They (scholars) have represented, recreated, analysed, dissected the works, legacy and thought of Gandhi

largely, if not exclusively from the perspective of Gandhi himself," he said.

"As a historian, I felt that there must be other ways of writing about Gandhi," said the historian.

Guha's says his present work arises out of a quest for an alternative Gandhi, who speaks not only through hisown writings, but also through the works of his associates and critics.

"To properly understand Gandhi, one has to look at him from all angles not just his own, from that of his

friends and followers and from that of his enemies and adversaries," Guha said.

This quest for writing "a many-sided portrait" of Gandhi took the historian to many obscure and not so

obscure archives in Delhi, Bombay, Kolkata, Chennai, London, Oxford, Pretoria in South Africa and Haifa in

Israel.

The author acknowledged the importance of South Africa in the making of Mohandas K Gandhi and hence,

strove towards tracing the journey of the 'Afrikaner Gandhi' in the new book

"That's where (South Africa), he became a true Indian; that's where he became more sensitive to gender

rights; that's where he became an early environmentalist; that's where he became a theorist and practitioner of

'Satyagraha' and that's where he acquired his rare moral courage," Guha said.

The historian said he has encountered "the extraordinary, remarkable and alive figure" Gandhi, all through his

professional life spanning nearly three decades as a historian and writer, where he has experimented with

genres like environmental history, biography and social history.

An avid cricket buff, references to Gandhi have been constant in Guha's writings even in cricket, a sport

Gandhi is never known to have watched or played.

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