‘A book like this sucks you in’

On translating Mahatma Gandhi's grand-nephew’s memoir, Jivannu Parodh, from the original Gujarati

- Chintan Girish Modi

Prabhudas Gandhi was a freedom fighter, satyagrahi, writer, translator and social activist. As ayoung man, he participated in the Non-Cooperation Movement, Bardoli Satyagraha, Quit India Movement, and courted arrest. In addition, he worked with Mamasaheb Phalke in Godhra for the uplift of scavengers in 1921, and with Gulzarilal Nanda in the great strike of the mill workers in Ahmedabad in 1923. He is known for having invented the Magan Charkha, a spinning wheel, named after his uncle Maganlal Gandhi, that could be operated with the legs as the user spun cotton with both hands. But his reputation in Gujarat is primarily based on his book Jivannu Parodh, a fascinating memoir of his years at the Phoenix Settlement in South Africa where, as a child, he witnessed and participated in the Mahatma Gandhi's civil disobedience movement against