By Gopalakrishna Gandhi.

26 Pages | First edition 2001 | Softcover | Theosophical Publishing House, Adyar | ISBN: 8170594324.

‘Where does the real India reside?’‘ asks the author, for India is a land of enormous disparities and contradictions. In 1916, his grandfather Mahatma Gandhi denounced before an august assembly at Varanasi the existence of pomp and wealth amidst degrading penury, filfth around holy places, and the domination of a foreign language over native tongues. He also pronounced other unpalatable truths.

This lecture contains and eloquent description of the same contradictions, existing even today all over India, because the same attitudes of callousness and cruelty continue. But there is also an aquifer of goodness that is essentially Indian, which must be tapped and never allowed to run dry.

‘What we are, the world is’. Here is a compelling call to every Indian to tap that goodness and be what is needed for the redemption of the nation.

From page 10:

” Where does India, the real India, reside? Not in cities, surely, where money grows but humanity shrinks; where you have, for example, this hush so wonderful, this air so pure, but just beyond, a steaming slum which bravely, hopefully (perhaps sarcastically?) is called ‘Jasmine Town’ (mallippoo nagar). Soweto in Johannesburg, the world’s most famous informal settlement, is an eldorado compared to the slums in India’s cities, slums that are home to what Valentine Chirol in his essay on Kalighat described as ’tangled knots of perspiring humanity’. Is this, the Theosophical Society, which affords divine knowledge (brahmajñana), the real thing, or is it mallippoo nagar? “

By Rajmohan Gandhi.

32 Pages | First edition 1994 | Softcover | Theosophical Publishing House, Adyar | ISBN: 8170592275.

The deep commitment of this grandson of Mahatma Gandhi to the well-being of India led him to participation in the public life of the nation and to being a member of the Rajya Sabha. The present publication consists of the Besant Lecture delivered at the annual international convention of the Theosophical Society, Adyar, Madras in 1993.

Rajmohan Gandhi is Research Professor at the Centre for Policy Research, New Delhi and was formerly Editor of Indian Express and Himmat. Among his well-known publications are: The Rajaji Story; A biography of his grandfather C. Rajagopalachari: a biography of Vallabhbhai Patel; and Eight Lives: A Study of Hindu-Muslin Encounter.

From page 20:

” Was God absent-minded then when designing the Indian character? Is the Indian Soul inferior in quality? No! No with a dozen exclamation marks! Often the Indian citizen is heroic in his or her response to the trials of every day, fighting for standing room, for elbow room, for space in the place of work, in the home and on the way from one to the other, for a place in school or college, or for a job. Where in the world do you see greater endurance? Our failing is that we evoke one another’s worst rather than best. “

By Maneka Gandhi.

182 Pages | Published in 1994 | Softcover | The Other India Press in association with People for Animals | No ISBN.

This is a cult book. It is a selection from the columns by Maneka Gandhi, which reach 10 million readers through a huge network of newspapers and magazines in India. It is also telecast on six TV channels reaching fifty nations. It is a practical book that makes ahiṃsā (non-violence) the key to a new world. By suggesting simple ways to combat exploitation and cruelty towards animals. It recommends, in the process, a more humane and sustainable lifestyle. Five editions in five months is an all time record. You must read the book to know why. Why it has converted so many to the cause of ahiṃsā and vegetarianism worldwide.

From Part I – ‘All in the Name of Food: Milk, Meat and Violence’ (p. 39):

” We all know that the planet needs healing – and everyone I have come across has asked me what they can do to contribute. After years of trying to discover where the problem begins, I believe now it is with our food choices. These merely don’t affect your own health, but have an impact that extends all over the globe bringing up questions of land use and water use and waste and right to life and forest decimation. Our food choices affect not this one body of yours but your genes – which means the children you will bring into this world. Do you really want to walk around in a poisoned and defective body? “