Book on Gandhiji?s Hind Swaraj to be released by RSS Sarsanghchalak Dr Mohan Bhagwat on January 1

Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh Sarsanghchalak Dr Mohan Bhagwat will be releasing the book “Making of a Hindu Patriot: Background of Gandhiji’s Hind Swaraj”, authored by J.L Bajaj and M.D Srinivas. The book is published by the Centre for Policy Studies with Har Anand Publications. The book will be released on January 1, 2021, Friday, 3:30 to 5:30 pm and a discussion on the book will be held on the next day, January 2, 2021, Saturday, from 10:30 am to 4:30 pm. Satyagraha Mandap, Gandhi Darshan, Rajghat will be the venue for the book launch and the subsequent discussion meeting.

The book narrates the story of the evolution of the ideas and concepts he presented in his seminal book Hind Swaraj as also his own evolution as a consciously committed Hindu Patriot through his studies and struggles during the two and half decades of his stay away from India, in England and South Africa. The book tells this fascinating story in Gandhiji’s own words. The authors have meticulously documented every idea and event that they describe here. The book includes, in addition to an introduction of about 250 pages, more than 650 pages of extracts from Gandhiji’s writings. At a few places, the authors have also included extracts from the writings of others, mainly Shri Pranjivan Mehta, Gopalkrishna Gokhale, Mahadev Desai and Leo Tolstoy.

The book narrates several events that have not been fully discussed elsewhere. In the jails of South Africa, Gandhiji, along with his family and followers, was treated as a common criminal, made to break stones on the roadside and paraded in handcuffs through the streets of Pretoria and Johannesburg. The treatment meted out to him was especially severe during his third imprisonment at Pretoria in 1909. The book describes how Gandhiji suffered all this with fortitude and came out of this hellfire purified like tempered metal and anchored even more securely and deeply in his religion and his patriotism.

When in 1914, Gandhiji finally left South Africa on his way to India, his religious commitment and his patriotism had begun to shine through and become patently visible to the world. In the farewell meetings organised in Durban by the Indians in his honour, he was formally addressed as Deshbhakta Mahatma. The book poignantly describes these developments.