The Hindu Lit for Life 2026 | Review of Gopalkrishna Gandhi’s India and Her Futures

To study the past, says Confucius, is to divine the future. The moral historian Gopalkrishna Gandhi does precisely this in India and Her Futures, a collection of essays across nearly four decades of public writing – not as prophecy or nostalgia, but as sustained ethical and intellectual inquiry.

The term ‘essai’ was first used by the French philosopher Michel de Montaigne to represent an attempt at self-discovery through curious, unstructured, and even whimsical reflection. In India, essays took on a more sober quality as they dwelt on questions of freedom and public responsibility.

Today, much has changed. Social media delivers news and opinions in reels, blog posts, and 140-character bursts. Even mainstream publications favour short, fast-paced, and immediately topical commentary over sustained depth.

Reflective cadence

This makes Gopal Gandhi’s collection of clearsighted essays feel quietly different. In a reflective cadence, these essays combine historical reach with introspection. While not rejecting the immediate, they remind the reader that moral clarity takes time.

Many of the most memorable moments in the book come when history is allowed to speak through remembered encounters and their simple retellings, rather than grand pronouncements. One early piece contains a remarkable exchange with Indian birdman Salim Ali in 1987. Ali describes his first meeting with Gandhi. It was 1917. Gandhi had just returned from South Africa. Salim’s brother Hamid was an Assistant Collector. The village patel had been charged with some case of disloyalty or sedition, and Gandhi had come to speak in his defence. What impressed Salim Ali most was “his unassuming simplicity and his humour.”

Another highlight of the book is a long essay on “Badshah” Abdul Ghaffar Khan, known as “Frontier Gandhi” – the great Pathan leader from the North West Frontier Province. The essay quotes an incident described by Nehru in his autobiography showing the moral solidarity forged in struggle. It was 1932. Nehru had been incarcerated in Dehra Dun jail. He writes, “In the heat of a summer afternoon I dozed off, and I remember having a curious dream. Abdul Ghaffar Khan was being attacked on all sides and I was fighting to defend him. I woke up in an exhausted state, feeling very miserable, and my pillow was wet with tears.”

Commitment to service

The essays also bring to the reader telling glimpses of iconic figures: the Gandhian Acharya Kripalani, who noted, “As human creations, I consider all governments to be imperfect, only some less so than others;” Dadabhai Naoroji, elected to the House of Commons in 1892 by a margin of just three votes, earning him the moniker of “narrow majority;” and MS Swaminathan’s leadership of the Pugwash Conference on Science and Technology. What unites these figures is their commitment to service and their stubborn willingness to work for change, even through contingent and imperfect institutions.

He is equally attentive to the lives that history has nearly forgotten. Such as Kamla Chowdhry, who studied in Tagore’s Santiniketan with Mrinalini Swaminathan (later Sarabhai). After Kamla’s husband, civil servant Khem Chowdhry, was killed in his bed by a tribesman from NWFP, she continued her studies, completing a PhD at Michigan. With Vikram Sarabhai’s support, she set up and effectively ran the Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad for the first few years – though institutional sexism ensured that she was never made Director.

Seeing ghosts

These essays do not miss the telling details that make up a life: such as the popularity of ‘MS Blue,’ the aquamarine of M.S. Subbulakshmi’s Kanjeevaram sarees; or Landour-based writer Ruskin Bond’s dry reply when asked about the supernatural: “I don’t believe in ghosts. But I see them all the time.” Such details are not ornamental. They reveal Gopal Gandhi’s feeling for the texture of cultural life.

The prose sparkles with philosophical wisdom – such as the “dukkha” that the Buddha counsels about; the “karuna dhara” of Rabindranath Tagore; the “kshurasya dhara” (razor’s edge) described in the Kathopanishad; and the “mrigasirsha” star, named for the deer that bows its head at the advent of the first rains. Most important, the principle of duty, “Om krato smara kritam smara,” from the Isha Upanishad: “The work alone is to be remembered, the work alone.”

Philosophy coexists with poetry in these essays, such as William Blake’s sharply anguished image of the hunt in Auguries of Innocence: “Each outcry of the hunted hare/A fibre from the brain does tear”; Rumi’s image of the journey: “It has been said, first the Comrade,/Then the way”; and Vikram Seth’s sublime one-line autobiography: “I am so lonely, so content.” Incidentally, Gopal Gandhi’s essay on Seth notes that the poet’s first book of poems, Mappings (1980), had been published by the remarkable publisher P. Lal from Calcutta, who had launched the work of so many Indian writers in English.

Unforgettably, Gopal Gandhi reminds us that in the City of Joy, poetry is meant to be spoken aloud. The visiting Hugo Chavez recites Tagore’s celebrated lines, “Where the mind is without fear, and the head is held high,” from Gitanjali in Spanish translation, while the Chief Minister of West Bengal, Buddhadeb Bhattacharya, recites it alongside in the original Bangla, “Chitto jetha bhoyshunno, uchcha jetha shir,” to a delirious audience in Calcutta’s Rabindra Sarovar Stadium.

The useful 21-page index, thick with the names of people and places, reflects the wide scope of this enterprise. The volume would have benefited from a chronological arrangement and minimal contextual footnotes. This can easily be done in a later edition.

He writes not as a superficial raconteur but as a thoughtful and humane voice – one who, as grandson of Mahatma Gandhi and Chakravarty Rajagopalachari, as public servant and diplomat, and as aide to two Presidents of India, has been witness to India’s history at close quarters.

This is not a book to be read lightly. It demands sustained moral attention. In returning us to the questions and moments of inflection in history, India and her Futures fulfils Confucius’s counsel, as a meditation on the past and its intellectual inheritance in the present.

India and Her Futures: Essays by Gopalkrishna Gandhi

Bloomsbury

₹899

The writer is in the IAS

Gopalkrishna Gandhi will discuss his book with musician T.M. Krishna at The Hindu Lit for Life in Chennai on January 18. Click here to register.

Published – January 09, 2026 06:00 am IST