Gandhi: The Years That Changed the World, 1914–1948

In this second and final volume (after Gandhi Before India) chronicling the life of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (1869-48), historian Guha (India after Gandhi) tells the story of his subject's return to India from South Africa in 1914. Over the ensuing three decades before his assassination in 1948, Gandhi led the Indian subcontinent's independence movement, evolving a philosophy and mass movement of nonviolent resistance (Satyagraha) against British colonial rule. Drawing from hundreds of sources, including some never before available to historians, Guha presents a nuanced portrait of a brilliant spiritual and political leader with egalitarian principles and a vision for a nonsectarian India. He also acknowledges Gandhi as an overbearing patriarch who demanded his family members and associates conform to his own strict standards of asceticism. Overall, Guha puts a positive spin on Gandhi, skirting most scandalous speculations and refraining from critical reappraisal. An impassioned but similarly insightful work is Gandhi: The Man, His People, and the Empire by Gandhi's grandson Rajmohan Gandhi. As the sheer length of these works may deter casual readers, some may consider starting with Bhihku Parekh's Gandhi: A Very Short Introduction.