Walking with history

The 1940s was a historically important decade for the Indian subcontinent because it set the foundations for independence from colonial rule.

- CHITTAJIT MITRA

The generation that was born in that decade (or slightly earlier), therefore, can trace the history of independent India, or at least a version of it.

Former diplomat and administrator Gopalkrishna Gandhi, grandson of Mahatma Gandhi and C Rajagopalachari, has decided to offer a deeply personal account of the struggle for Indian independence.

Divided into eight chapters, each of them covering a decade or so from the 1940s, it begins with an amusing incident concerning Gopalkrishna's birth in 1945. Born to Gandhi's youngest son, the author was the fourth child to Devadas and Laxmi. After they had had three children, Rajkumari Amrit Kaur wrote to Gandhi saying his son was being irresponsible by having so many children, to which he suggested that she should talk to him about it. The author feels relieved that he was born seven years after the third child, so he wasn't grouped with the others whose birth was possibly deemed to be a result of "blind lust".