Great Soul: Mahatma Gandhi and His Struggle With India by Joseph Lelyveld Page B

and Cochin, later merged into the modern state, all skillfully translated into English for my sake.
Malayala Manorama
—in the person of one its editors, A. V. Harisankar, who became my traveling companion and friend—also arranged meetings for me with Kerala writers and scholars including N. K. Joshi, a popular historian and crusader for Dalit rights; P. J. Cherian of the Kerala Council for Historical Research; Rajan Gurukkal, vice chancellor of Mahatma Gandhi University at Kottayam; M. K. Sanu, a biographer of Narayan Guru; T. K. Ravindran, author of a history of the Vaikom satyagraha; and the Dalit intellectual K. K. Kochu.
    Two distinguished Bengali thinkers, Amartya Sen of Harvard and Cambridge universities, and Partha Chatterjee, of Columbia and the Center for Studies in Social Sciences in Kolkata, graciously endured my recitation of plans for a visit to the two fragments of what was once a united Bengal, then made useful suggestions. In Dhaka, the Bangladeshi capital, I encountered a range of strong viewpoints from scholars and public intellectuals including Debapriya Bhattacharya, Badruddin Umar, Syed Abul Maksud, A. K. Roy, Imtiaz Ahmed, Anisuzzaman (a professor emeritus at the University of Dhaka who uses only one name), and Sharirar Kabir. I also had an opportunity to talk about Gandhi withFazle Hasan Abed, founder and chairman of BRAC, a welfare organization that evolved into a huge bank, becoming a reliable source of credit for the rural craftsmen the Mahatma struggled to uplift. Raha Naba Kumar, director of the Gandhi Ashram Trust in the village of Joyag, was my host and guide during a visit to Noakhali district. Among those I met in Kolkata were Rudrangshu Mukherjee, Ranabir Samaddar, the historian Amalendu De and economist Amlan Datta; Pushpakanjan Chatterjee, a centenarian Gandhi follower; and Supriya Munshi, longtime director of the Gandhi Memorial Museum at Barrackpore. I’m especially grateful to resourceful journalistic colleagues who smoothed the way for me in these places: Chandra Sekhar Bhattacharjee in Kolkata, Julfikar Ali Manik in Dhaka, and Pradip Kumar Maitra in Nagpur. And while I’m rolling the credits, I should mention the bed, board, and warm friendship provided by old pals—Bim Bissell in Delhi, Lily and David Goldblatt in Joburg, and Lindy and Francis Wilson in Cape Town.
    The tutor on whom I leaned most shamelessly was David Lelyveld, a scholar in Indian Muslim history who never once accused me of trespassing on his turf. That could be because long exposure to Indian cultural values has left him with undue regard for the status of elder brother, but I don’t really think so. Nor, at this late stage, can it be explained by the fact that I got there first (given that my affair with India, intermittent though it has been, started a couple of years before his own). The only explanation is the obvious one: that my brother truly is a generous person. I hope he won’t be embarrassed by this effort and thank him with a full heart for his painstaking reading of my manuscript, on account of which there are certainly fewer errors and examples of weak reasoning in this book than otherwise would have been the case. The same can be said for the thoughtful backstopping I received from two other readers: E. S. Reddy, a retired United Nations official living in New York who has devoted years to assembling—and sharing—an archive of Gandhi materials, with particular attention to the South Africa period; and Jon Soske, a young Oklahoman I first met in Toronto whose doctoral dissertation takes a searching look at relations between Indians and Zulus in Natal in the last century.
    I was helped to the finish line by Catherine Talese, who gathered nearly all the photographs that appear in these pages and efficiently secured the rights for me to use them. Hassim Seedat of Durban allowed me to browse in his extensive library and copy a rare photo of Gandhi in 1913 on which he claims copyright. Archie Tse, a