On April 22, 2020, I had posted a thread on Twitter (then not yet X) marking “the 75th birthday of one of the most remarkable living Indians: Gopalkrishna Gandhi, public servant, diplomat, writer and scholar”. The thread spoke of his contributions to his country, the grace and dignity of his character and, in the end, of then personal debt I owed him. Gopal Gandhi, I wrote then, “has taught me more about modern Indian history and Mahatma Gandhi than anyone else”.

Five years on, on the eve of his 80th birthday, Gopal Gandhi has placed me (and many other Indians) even more emphatically in his debt by gifting us with a rich, nuanced, enjoyable, and immensely educative book on the progress – as well as the regress – of the Republic whose journey has run parallel with his own life.

The narrative interweaves personal memories with descriptions of larger historical events, the latter drawing on his formidable range of reading and his deep understanding of India. The prose is enriched with an array of wonderful, and often never seen before, photographs of the principal actors and incidents in the tumultuous journey of the writer and his country. And there are many tender references to individual films (made in Hindi, English, Bengali or Tamil); clearly, cinema has shaped Gopal Gandhi’s life as much as literature, scholarship, and public service.

The book, bearing the title, The Undying Light: A Personal History of Independent India, begins with a vivid account of the first, fraught years of Independence, featuring Mahatma Gandhi’s last fasts and his death, and the Nehru-Patel rift and their reconciliation. The narrative then proceeds chronologically, each year marked by a short, crisp chapter devoted to it, ending with a consolidated chapter on the last decade-and-a-half.

Born just before Independence and Partition, growing up with the Republic, Gopal Gandhi’s mind was shaped by his quietly patriotic parents, Devadas and Lakshmi. Their influence on him, as of his equally remarkable siblings, Tara, Rajmohan, and Ramchandra, is sketched with love and care. Hundreds of other intriguing or influential characters people the pages of the book, from celebrated and controversial prime ministers to previously unsung teachers and social workers.

A central figure in the book is the author’s maternal grandfather, C Rajagopalachari........

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