Inhaling the Mahatma - Review

4

REVIEW Inhaling the Mahatma by Christopher Kremmer It's a catchy title, and there are clever little quotes - the back flap has "When a Gandhi dies, nobody is safe", while the title page has Gandhi's own "One has to dare to believe". And indeed, a sense of earnestness pervades Inhaling the Mahatma. Written by Australian journalist Christopher Kremmer, who's done his time in India (from 1990 to 1993 and then 1997 to 2001), there is a certain wide-eyed wonder that you can't get away from throughout the book, because face it, well, that's pretty much the reaction India gets. But in this case, it's wide-eyed wonder, tempered by the inklings of a deeper undercurrent of understanding...Or, at the very least, an author striving to understand. Which is a plus point, and not always a given, for any correspondent, foreign or otherwise. A lot of this....