Hello, my name is David Ronsman and this is Talking Politics. Today we've got an extra

episode, a Sunday supplement, talking about a really important book about perhaps the

most important political figure of the 20th century, Gandhi.

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This is a conversation that I recorded with Ramachandra Guha who is one of India's leading contemporary

historians and public intellectuals and he's written an absolutely epic two volume biography

of Mahatma Gandhi. He's just published the second volume, Gandhi the years that changed

the world, 1914 to 1948. So this is about the period where Gandhi really did change everything.

We've talked a bit about Indian politics on this podcast in the past but probably not

enough and we haven't talked enough about this period of history but also this is about

a completely different way of doing politics and we're going to discuss that too. We began

by talking about who in the Western tradition or outside of India could we possibly compare

to Gandhi too. So Gandhi is maybe unique, almost unique in 20th century politics and that

he kind of transcends politics, he's the father of the nation. It's very hard to think

of anyone to compare him to maybe Mandela in South Africa, maybe Abraham Lincoln going

further back. He sort of stands above politics and yet as you show in your book, as we know

about Mandela as we know about Lincoln, it was a deeply political life. He fought against

...