Refocusing on the ‘Writing Life’

Noted Gandhian scholar, Professor Tridip Suhrud, has written a new book, 'Writing Life', the story of three of Gujarati's finest thinkers: Narmadashankar Lalshankar (the person most know as 'Narmad'), Manibhai Nabhubhai and Govardhanram Tripathi. 'Writing Life' is one of the first works on the 19th century Gujarati intellectual milieu in the English language.

To understand Gandhi, one needs to understand the socio-cultural ethos that allowed for and gave birth to the man and his ideas. The 19th century, poised ever so interestingly as it is between the old and the so-called 'modern' is a heady field of study - largely uncharted, especially in the Gujarati context and it is to address just this need that professor Suhrud undertook the writing of this book.

"Most people consider Gandhiji's 'The Story of My Experiments with Truth' the finest example of autobiographical writing in Gujarati. My attempt, in trying to better place this text, and in so doing its maker too, was to explore what came before Gandhiji - to highlight that he was part of an established literary tradition which sought to understand the socio-political world of its time, through an understanding of the self. Most people think of Narmad only as a great poet. I hold he is important because he is one of the language's earliest historical theorists. In addition, he was the one of the first Gujaratis to write autobiography," explains Dr Suhrud.    

"Secondly, Gujarati identity has become an issue we need to contend with in the present - to trace its roots into modern times, and analyse what is essentially the colonial impact of university education, dating back to the early 19th century. Also, Gujarat does not figure except in the works of thinkers such as Achyut Yagnik and Riho Isaka - we don't associate readily, for example, reform movements with Gujarat - only Bengal. And we haven't thought about the Gujarati 'society' that was, in a bid to understand what it is in the present, in the English language, as part of an on-going debate in Social Sciences and literary discourse. Any attempt to engage in this, needs to be in the debate's own linguistic universe - English, in this case," he adds, elaborating on the impetus behind the writing of this book.