Ramachandra Guha has taught at Yale and Stanford universities, the University of Oslo, the Indian Institute of Science, and the London School of Economics. His books include a pioneering environmental history, an award-winning social history of cricket, and the award-winning India After Gandhi. He writes regularly on social and political issues for the British and Indian press, including columns in The Telegraph and the Hindustan Times, and his work has also appeared in The New York Times. He lives in Bangalore.
“Remarkable. . . . [A] moving portrait.” —The New York Times Book
Review
“Guha is a brilliant historian who combines the gift of a
storyteller, the discipline of an academic and the critical ability
of seeing Gandhi as a fascinating human being, by not placing him
on a pedestal. . . . [He] has re-created the past by connecting
scattered dots . . . to weave a rich tapestry.” —San Francisco
Chronicle
“Striking. . . . Guha ably shows, for all that Gandhi influenced
events in South Africa, it was he who experienced the greater
change.” —The Economist
“Deeply contextualized, dexterously researched, and judiciously
written, this deserves to become the landmark biography of the
early Gandhi.” —Maya Jasanoff, New Republic
“Fascinating. . . . A biography with a remarkable ear for the
resonances of Gandhi’s work and time—for the fan-mail and
hate-mail; for overheard disagreements with family and colleagues;
for his exchanges with political acquaintances, including his
enemies. . . . As exhaustively researched a biography of the
African Gandhi as we will have for some time.” —The Independent
(London)
“[A] magisterial study. . . . Guha summarizes the traits of
Gandhi’s character and the stages during the first half of his life
that prepared him for the much more difficult journey he would
undertake once he returned to India. . . . I was rewarded beyond
all of my expectations [by Gandhi Before India].” —Charles R.
Larson, Counterpunch
“Substantial enough to be comprehensive, yet concise enough to be
approachable by the general reader. . . . Sharp, insightful,
balanced and impeccably researched.” —Alex von Tunzelmann, The
Times (London)
“A work of vivid social history as well as biography. . . . One of
the surprises in Gandhi Before India is just how much fresh
material it contains. Guha has a gift for tracking down obscure
letters and newspaper reports and patching them together to make
history come alive.” —Patrick French, The Guardian (London)
“Fascinating. . . . [Gandhi Before India] reveals how an impossibly
shy young man, who donned top hat and tails as a student at Inner
Temple, transformed himself into Churchill’s ‘half-naked fakir,’
dedicated to his spinning wheel while simultaneously challenging
the might of the Empire.” —The Sunday Times (London)
“The portrait offered in historian Ramachandra Guha’s biography is
of Gandhi as a human being, not just a hero.” —Financial Times
“Gandhi Before India should be required reading for the student of
contemporary affairs. . . . Guha’s carefully rendered observations
about class, religion, and ethnicity—how they divide people and how
they can be bridged by common concerns and simple decency—are the
heart of this book. . . . Remarkable.” —The Christian Science
Monitor
“A magisterial history. . . . In Ramachandra Guha, a great man has
found a great biographer, a wise, persistent and elegant historian
who has done justice to perhaps his nation’s greatest story. . . .
One senses, in the author’s approach, something of Gandhi’s own
intensity and rigour. . . . [The] book never ceases to inform and
intrigue.” —Sydney Morning Herald
“What sets [Gandhi Before India] apart from other recent
biographies . . . is Guha’s resolutely non-scurrilous perspective.
. . . What emerges in the end, with the slow magic of a film being
developed in an old fashioned dark room, is a sharp picture of the
intellectual growth of a remarkable man.” —The Hindustan Times
(India)
“Many will come to this biography wanting to know more about Gandhi
himself. . . . Guha relates all this wonderfully. His book is
clearly a labour of love, though not of uncritical infatuation.
What distinguishes it is the breadth of the context—Indian, British
and South African. Guha marshals his material sensitively and
empathetically in order to give shape, colour and depth to the life
of this saint-like figure.” —Bernard Porter, The Literary
Review
“Excellent and exhaustive. . . . Guha has done heroic work in
reconstructing this period of Gandhi’s life ... Gandhi emerges here
as a fascinatingly complicated and contradictory figure . . . rich
and absorbing, it will doubtless serve as the fundamental portrait
of Gandhi for many years to come.” —The Sunday Business Post
(Ireland)
“Guha is India’s best-known historian, who marshals his wide
scholarship in contemporary and modern history with a raconteur’s
lucid felicity.” —DNA Mumbai
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