Goodbye to Gandhi? Travels in the New India

Swiss anthropologist, journalist and writer Bernard Imhasly's book 'Goodbye to Gandhi? launched [dated December 2007]

Pro Helvetia - Swiss Arts Council and Penguin Books India will jointly launch 'Goodbye to Gandhi? Travels in the New India' by Bernard Imhasly on Friday 14 December 2007 at the India International Centre. Madhu Trehan, journalist and Urvashi Butalia, publisher Zubaan Books will discuss the book with the author.

About the author:
Bernard Imhasly, a linguist and anthropologist by profession, has been the South Asia correspondent for European newspapers since 1990, notably the Neue Zuercher Zeitung. In 1972–73 he undertook anthropological fieldwork in Bangladesh, which resulted in a book, The Process of Modernisation in Bangladesh, co-authored with H.P. Müller and H. Grombach. He was subsequently appointed as lecturer in linguistics at Zurich University. In 1978, he joined the Swiss Foreign Service, with postings in London, Geneva, Berne and Delhi. Deciding to stay on in India, he then took up the assignment as a foreign correspondent.

About the book:
Bernard Imhasly, anthropologist, journalist and writer, journeys from Imphal to Cyberabad and Bangalore, and from Champaran to Porbandar, looking at a new India keeping Gandhi’s ideas and values in mind. He finds a society where Gandhi is alive but his virulence is missing, a polity which worships him but easily forgets his guiding principles, and a morality which thrives on oppression rather than on the search for truth, a principle Gandhi held paramount. While many of his interlocutors decry Gandhi, there are a surprising number of people for whom he remains a yardstick of their life and work. Goodbye to Gandhi?: Travels in the New India examines how the choices that India made as an independent nation have shaped the country’s politics, its culture and its people. While India acquires a new-found confidence and optimism in its economic future, Bernard Imhasly, in his engaging travels through current-day India, listening for echoes of Gandhi’s voice, finds a cacophony of voices—alluring, exciting and sometimes exasperating.