Gandhi awes the colonists too

A French minister has written a 600-page biography of Mahatma

AHMEDABAD: Now, the new Sarkozy-led French regime is all set to get a flavour Gandhi’s ideologies. One of the most influential politicians in the Sarkozy cabinet, Jacques Attali subscribes to Gandhian ideology so much that he has written a 600-page biography of Mahatma Gandhi in French titled Gandhi ou l’eveil des humilies (‘Gandhi or Awakening of the Humiliated’).

The French author, philosopher and economist’s new book has reportedly created a sensation in Europe and the Francophone world. Attali holds a powerful position in the newly appointed French regime as head of the economic committee of reconstruction.
 
The success of Mahatma Gandhi’s ideology has been reasserted several times over but this would certainly give Gandhians here much to cheer. For it is none other than the French - erstwhile colonisers themselves - who seem to have taken a massive fancy to Gandhi’s success story of Satyagraha to combat two centuries of British Raj in India.

Released in November 2007 in Paris, the book has already sold nearly 82,000 copies and according to sources, an additional print order of 60,000 copies has been placed with publisher Fayard. The book is priced at 23 euros (Rs1,450), and is available at all leading bookstores. Besides France, the book is sold in Canada, Switzerland, North Africa, Belgium and several other Francophone countries. The book will soon be translated in other European languages too.

“Most great men have changed the world by their action; Gandhi has done through his ideas. Gandhi is a star illuminating the utopia of India. He embodies the humiliation of almost all mankind by a handful of whites, symbolised by the scene where he jumped off the train on his arrival in South Africa,” says Attali.

The successful run of the book in past four months has surprised Gandhians, and certainly heartened them that Gandhi’s ideologies are accepted and found relevant today in the European world.

“The war-weary and crisis-ridden world finds Gandhi more relevant in the 21st century. It raises fundamental questions of the relationship between identity and uniformity and between humiliation and non-violence. The issue of terrorism is also there,” says Ahmedabad-based Hemang Desai, who did the ground research and translation of Gandhi’s original works, from Gujarati to English, which was then translated to French.

Interestingly, this is the second time Gandhi’s biography has been documented in French, the first was authored by a famous French writer Romain Rolland in 1924, titled Mahatma Gandhi: The Man Who Became One with the Universal Being.

What makes Attali’s effort special is that he did not just translate from the existing material on the icon. Attali himself collected material about Gandhi from Gujarat and personally got Gandhi’s writings in Gujarati translated to French. He worked on the book for 11 months during which he visited Porbandar, Rajkot and Ahmedabad.

s_jumana@dnaindia.net