Publications
Speaking of Gandhi's Death
Edited by Tridip Suhrud and Peter Ronald deSouza
In March of 1948, a group of Gandhi’s closest associates
led by Pandit Nehru, Vinoba Bhave, J. B. Kripalani, Maulana
Azad and Jayaprakash Narayan, among others, met at Sevagram
to reflect and deliberate on Gandhi’s assassination.
Sixty years later, in a contemporary and evocative response
to that moving introspection, a group of scholars, thinkers
and writers gathered at the Sabarmati Ashram to once again
introspect on Gandhi’s death as absence and memory.
In a unique fashion, it decodes the frozen meanings of the
shock that the nation experienced and helps us feel Gandhi
as a force within us, not as a specific individual who lived
in history for a specific time.
This book comprises of these reflections, in all their hesitation,
tentativeness, openness and counter-factual argument. Spontaneous
and engaging, it raises some important questions—what
is it to speak of Gandhi’s death? How do we understand
the meaning of his assassination? How did the new nation comprehend
the nature of his absence? Did his death burden us forever?
Or did it in fact allow the nation and the state to explore
new directions?
The sublime photographs of Henri
Cartier-Bresson that accompany the text, cover the story of
the aftermath of Gandhi’s assassination and his funeral—photographs
that capture, as Sadanand Menon puts it, “not the portrait
of any man, but the portrait of a nation in the deepest moment
of its sorrow.” Be it the brilliantly composed image
of Jawaharlal Nehru on the gate of Birla Ghar, delivering
his moving ‘The light has gone out of our lives and
there is darkness everywhere’ speech, or the spontaneous
rhythm of the crowds gathering around Gandhi’s funeral
cortege moving through New Delhi’s Raj Path and Tilak
Marg to the cremation site—the images provide visual
testimony to the silence and intensity of the event.
Speaking of Gandhi’s Death is a contemplation—an
unusual book of reflections, reminiscent of the person and
persona of the Mahatma.
