GANDHI'S EMISSARY

by Sudhir Ghosh ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 8, 1967

The author was a bright young twenty-nine-year-old when Mohandas K. Gandhi appointed him an unofficial go-between in the final round of 1946 discussions leading to the independence of India from Great Britain. Ghosh had a matchless view of four dramatic figures close at hand: Gandhi himself, Sir Stafford Cripps, Pandit Nehru, and the canny Indian conservative, Vallabhbhai Patel. He was also intimately concerned in the partition of colonial India into two antagonistic sovereign states, Moslem and Hindu. English-educated and influenced by the Quakers as well as the Gandhians, Ghosh went on to serve his young government in various capacities. He died in February 1967 while engaged in a West Bengali irrigation project. This, then, is the memoir of an active politician, sorting out two crowded decades. The portraits may be somewhat blurred by subsequent events, but the narrative is subjectively honest. The sections dealing with Nehru, whom Ghosh both mistrusted and admired, are particularly revealing.

Pub Date: Sept. 8, 1967

ISBN: 0415445558

Page Count: -

Publisher: Houghton Mifflin

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1967

Categories: NONFICTION