Publisher's Synopsis
Indulal Yagnik's Autobiography is an indispensable key to understanding: modern Gujarat and many of its leading personalities; the congress organisation of Mahatma Gandhi, Sardar Patel and Morarji Desai; grass root peasant and tribal movements and their clash with the Congress; international dimensions of the freedom struggle; the Mahagujarat movement for a separate Gujarat state. On a more personal level, it reveals a brilliant but 'unstable' soul searching for his place in an unsupportive family and a political world that he found stifling, but with an array of friends and causes which sustained him. These volumes reveal Indulal's evolution from a young man of the elite Nagar Brahmin caste exploring the byways of his hometown of Nadiad; winning a series of scholarships to study philosophy, science, and law; beginning a life-long commitment to journalism by establishing Navajivan ane Satya, and later turning it over to Gandhi and moving to Ahemedabad; losing out in political struggles with Patel and deserting the movement; taking up filmmaking in Bombay; spending five years in England and Europe spreading propaganda for and sometimes against the Congress; returning to India to organise peasants and tribals and finally undertaking the defining struggle of his later years, the campaign for a separate state for Gujarat. Indulal presents his inner struggles and his relationships with friends and colleagues with unusual candour. From its first publication, Indulal's Autobiography was regarded as a classic of Gujarati literature, politics, and culture. Now English readers can share in its richness.
