Arguments with Gandhi by Ramachandra Guha

HarperCollins India is proud to announce the forthcoming publication of Arguments with Gandhi by Ramachandra Guha — the book that puts Gandhi back at the centre of the world’s most urgent debates. Published by Fourth Estate, this Non-Fiction / History title runs to 432 pages.

In Arguments with Gandhi, Ramachandra Guha uses the legacy of Mahatma Gandhi to present a moral and political history of the modern world. The Gandhi of this book is a compelling as well as controversial figure, whose ideas on non-violence, social justice, religious harmony and economic policy have elicited a wide range of responses, affirmative as well as critical. As Guha demonstrates, Gandhi’s debates with his contemporaries, and the arguments of later generations with him, foreground vital questions of human existence that we still confront: how best to resist political tyranny; how to mitigate discrimination on the basis of caste, gender and race; and how to achieve freedom from poverty and deprivation without destroying the planet.

With Gandhi as its pivot, the book features major historical figures who engaged with his ideas, among them B.R. Ambedkar, Albert Einstein, Martin Luther King Jr., Lenin, Nelson Mandela, Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay and V.D. Savarkar. Guha writes of how Bhagat Singh disagreed with Gandhi on non-violence, Ambedkar on caste, Savarkar on religion, and Nehru on economics, and explores Gandhi’s impact beyond India on figures such as Einstein, Bertrand Russell, Martin Luther King, Gloria Steinem and Nelson Mandela.

Ramachandra Guha’s books include The Unquiet Woods, India After Gandhi, and an authoritative two-volume biography of Mahatma Gandhi. He is currently Distinguished University Professor at Krea University and has taught at Oslo, Stanford and the London School of Economics.

Coming soon at Bookshop Near Me — this title will be available for purchase once stock arrives in Sri Lanka.