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Summary
Summary
Millions of words have been written about Mahatma Gandhi, yet he remains an elusive figure, an abstraction to the Western mind. In this book, the illustrious writer Ved Mehta brings Gandhi to life in all his holiness and humanness, shedding light on his principles and his purposes, his ideas and his actions.
Author Notes
Ved Parkash Mehta was an America writer and journalist. He was born in Lahore, India on March 21, 1934. He went blind at the age of three. At 15, he came to the United States to attend a school for the blind in Arkansas. He later attended Pomona College in Southern California, graduating in 1956. He earned a second bachelor's degree in modern history from Balliol College, Oxford. He received his master's degree from Harvard in 1961. He became a U. S. citizen in the 1975.
He wrote numerous articles on life in 20th-century India. His first book was Face to Face (1957). But he was best-known work was a 12-volume memoir that also illuminated the history of India. They were collectively known as, Continents of Exile. The first volume was Daddyji (1972). The last book in the series, The Red Letters, was published in 2004. His other books included Walking the Indian Streets; The Fly and the Fly-Bottle: Encounters with British Intellectuals (1963); The New Theologian (1966); John is Easy to Please (1971); Delinquent Chacha (1967); and Remembering Mr. Shawn's New York: The Invisible Art of Editing (1998).
He worked for more than thirty years at The New Yorker magazine. He was hired as a staff writer in 1961 and remained there until 1994. After leaving The New Yorker, he taught at Yale, Vassar, New York University, and elsewhere. He also continued to write.
His work was critically acclaimed. He received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1971 and 1977. In 1982, he received the MacArthur Foundation "genius grant." In 2009, he was elected a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. He was given an honorary degree from Pomona College, Bard College, Williams College, The University of Stirling, and Bowdoin College.
Ved Mehta died at his home in Manhattan on January 9, 2021 at the age of 86.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (1)
Kirkus Review
This is the new style Gandhi biography which knows the importance of its subject but does not ask, as Vincent Sheean's did, for example, that the owner read it on his knees. A substantial middle section gives an account of Gandhi's life from ancestors to assassination. Much of this parallels the ""Autobiography or My Experiments with Truth"" in treating of Gandhi's 25 years in South Africa and the crucial earlier years at home and in England. But the author's real zest is kept for the first and last sections. These deal with the experiences and tawdry present fate of many of Gandhi's personal associates, closely observed in a series of interviews. (There is some crack-of-the-whip comment from the margins--""You all bask in his reflected glory. Well go bask in his reflected hell,"" said the young man to his fiancee who wanted to spend a few more years waiting on Bapu.) They also deal with his final deep-felt failure to end Hindu/Muslim violence at the time of Independence, and with his testing of his bramacharga (celibacy). Although this latter sharing of bed with young women was hidden for many years, it has been referred to in recent books by N. K. Bose, Erik Erikson, and Geoffrey Ashe. Perhaps the pendulum has swung too far; we are confronted with the current shabbiness of Gandhi's Sevagram, but the flourishing medical school alongside is barely mentioned; with the rambling memories of decayed Gandhi retainers, but the weight of his effective dialogue with politicians and viceroys is hardly evident. But if not the final word, this highly readable New Yorker-premiered story of a great oddball is the biography for the Seventies and a useful filling in of the picture. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.