<p>Bengaluru: Renowned historian and biographer <a href="https://www.deccanherald.com/tags/ramachandra-guha">Ramachandra Guha </a>captivated a packed audience at Sabha Blr on Monday with a talk titled 'Getting to Know Gandhi,' offering a personal journey into the life and complexities of Mahatma Gandhi.</p><p>The event, organised by RBANM's Educational Charities in collaboration with Servants of Knowledge, also featured an exhibition of rare Gandhi photographs, attracting history enthusiasts throughout the day.</p><p>Guha, whose comprehensive two-volume biography of <em>Gandhi; Gandhi Before India and Gandhi: The Years That Changed the World</em> is considered definitive, detailed the long path that led him to dedicate years of his life to the Mahatma. He revealed that his interest was initially sparked by the work of anthropologist Verrier Elwin, whose complex relationship with Gandhi in the 1930s drew Guha to intellectual work.</p><p>He spoke about unexpected encounters with Gandhi's lasting influence, from studying the Chipko movement in the Himalayas, whose leaders considered themselves Gandhis, to finding 40 index entries for Gandhi while researching his social history of cricket, 'A Corner of a Foreign Field'.</p>.Personality cults in politics will pave way for eventual dictatorship: Ramachandra Guha.<p>A pivotal moment that convinced Guha to take Gandhi seriously as a scholar was witnessing the intense, bipolar hatred the figure generated, even decades after his death. He recounted two incidents from the early 1990s: A follower of Gandhi, Sushila Nayar, advocating Hindu-Muslim unity during the Ayodhya dispute, was booed and had chappals thrown at her as the crowd refused to chant "Ishwar Allah Tere Naam." </p><p>Second, a captured Naxalite leader, Konda Kani Sitaramayya, confessed to travelling 800 miles just to spit on the mug on the floor outside Gandhi's ashram at Sevagram.</p><p>This profound animosity from both the fundamentalist Right and the revolutionary Left intrigued the historian in Guha, spurring the mammoth biographical undertaking.</p><p>Guha also shared the 'Three Laws of Biography' imparted by a mentor, Nicholas Boyle: never anticipate the subject's life, look for sources other than the subject's own writings (such as the 97 volumes of Gandhi's collected works, letters, and police reports), and flesh out the secondary characters. </p><p>He humorously concluded by reminiscing about being approached to write a biography on industrialist Gautam Adani, with a friend jokingly suggesting the title, "Adani After Gandhi". Guha announced his next work on the subject, Arguments with Gandhi, is scheduled for release next year.</p>
<p>Bengaluru: Renowned historian and biographer <a href="https://www.deccanherald.com/tags/ramachandra-guha">Ramachandra Guha </a>captivated a packed audience at Sabha Blr on Monday with a talk titled 'Getting to Know Gandhi,' offering a personal journey into the life and complexities of Mahatma Gandhi.</p><p>The event, organised by RBANM's Educational Charities in collaboration with Servants of Knowledge, also featured an exhibition of rare Gandhi photographs, attracting history enthusiasts throughout the day.</p><p>Guha, whose comprehensive two-volume biography of <em>Gandhi; Gandhi Before India and Gandhi: The Years That Changed the World</em> is considered definitive, detailed the long path that led him to dedicate years of his life to the Mahatma. He revealed that his interest was initially sparked by the work of anthropologist Verrier Elwin, whose complex relationship with Gandhi in the 1930s drew Guha to intellectual work.</p><p>He spoke about unexpected encounters with Gandhi's lasting influence, from studying the Chipko movement in the Himalayas, whose leaders considered themselves Gandhis, to finding 40 index entries for Gandhi while researching his social history of cricket, 'A Corner of a Foreign Field'.</p>.Personality cults in politics will pave way for eventual dictatorship: Ramachandra Guha.<p>A pivotal moment that convinced Guha to take Gandhi seriously as a scholar was witnessing the intense, bipolar hatred the figure generated, even decades after his death. He recounted two incidents from the early 1990s: A follower of Gandhi, Sushila Nayar, advocating Hindu-Muslim unity during the Ayodhya dispute, was booed and had chappals thrown at her as the crowd refused to chant "Ishwar Allah Tere Naam." </p><p>Second, a captured Naxalite leader, Konda Kani Sitaramayya, confessed to travelling 800 miles just to spit on the mug on the floor outside Gandhi's ashram at Sevagram.</p><p>This profound animosity from both the fundamentalist Right and the revolutionary Left intrigued the historian in Guha, spurring the mammoth biographical undertaking.</p><p>Guha also shared the 'Three Laws of Biography' imparted by a mentor, Nicholas Boyle: never anticipate the subject's life, look for sources other than the subject's own writings (such as the 97 volumes of Gandhi's collected works, letters, and police reports), and flesh out the secondary characters. </p><p>He humorously concluded by reminiscing about being approached to write a biography on industrialist Gautam Adani, with a friend jokingly suggesting the title, "Adani After Gandhi". Guha announced his next work on the subject, Arguments with Gandhi, is scheduled for release next year.</p>