Gandhi, My Father is the only film that has dared to depict the darker side of Gandhi, focusing on the troubled relationship he had with his eldest son, Harilal. It’s a slightly different story on the silver screen. The book, he says, also deals with his ideas about the relationship between sexual temptation and spiritual power, and the bizarre and scandalous behaviour that resulted. Sukumar, shows Gandhi as a difficult and self-obsessed man who believed that changing the world was his destiny. Biographers and historians too are taking a more candid look at Gandhi. It isn’t just family that is going beyond the legend. Gopal Gandhi’s book, OUP managing director Manzar Khan promises, will look beyond the plaster cast image of Gandhi, drawing upon his diary entries, letters and conversations. Rajmohan Gandhi went into details of his romantic relationship with Saraladevi, Rabindranath Tagore’s niece, in Mohandas. Books and films are daring to depict Gandhi as just another man - eccentric, egocentric and a mite selfish.

The Gandhi cottage industry certainly seems to be thriving.īut what it’s churning out isn’t exactly lily-white images of Gandhi.

And Rupa Publications will soon reprint Thomas Weber’s On the Salt March, first published in 1997. HarperCollins has pitched for India selling rights for Kathryn Tidrick’s Gandhi: A Political and Spiritual Life, first published in November 2006 by I.B. Later this year, Oxford University Press (OUP) will publish a book edited by Gopal Krishna Gandhi, West Bengal Governor and Gandhi’s grandson. There are others headed for the printers. In January, two books by Mahatma Gandhi’s descendants came out within 15 days of each other. The launch - by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh with Congress president Sonia Gandhi and Congress bigwigs in attendance - came a week after the release of the critically acclaimed film Gandhi, My Father. “Everybody’s milking Gandhi dry,” sniggered a member of Thursday’s audience.

The occasion: the launch of yet another Gandhi book - the Academic Foundation’s Gandhian Way: Peace, Non-Violence and Empowerment. The place: an air-conditioned crowded tent at Gandhi Smriti in Delhi. REALITY BITES: A scene from Gandhi, My Father (top) and Maine Gandhi Ko Nahin Mara (above)

Life of mahatma gandhi