Gandhi & Churchill: The Epic Rivalry that Destroyed an Empire and Forged Our Age by Arthur Herman; Bantam Books; Price: $30; 609 pp Two icons — master spirits of the first half of the 20th century who changed the course of world history — are profiled by historian Arthur Herman who has conceptualised this book as a dual, comparative biography. As the evocative title indicates, irresistible force — tenacious World War II British prime minister Winston Churchill who master-minded the destruction of German dictator Adolf Hitler whose Nazi war machine had overrun most of Europe by 1941 — clashed with immoveable object — Mahatma (‘great soul’) Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi during India’s freedom movement. And even as Churchill triumphed in Europe, he lost India — a loss which marked the beginning of the end of the global British empire, upon which it was famously remarked, the sun never set. Herman picks up the history of the subcontinent dramatically with a prologue that describes anti-British violence at Cawnpore, Meerut, Allahabad, during the 1857 Mutiny. It marked a significant watershed in which “the seeds of future violence had been sown” even as the power of empire prevailed. Against this political backdrop, Herman cuts to the sleepy port-town of Porbandar, unaffected by the uprising and ruled by a local prince. The birth of Mohandas Gandhi in 1869 into a devout Hindu family, was marked by local rituals rather than great fanfare. On the other hand Winston Churchill descended from the glorious military heritage of the Duke of Marlborough and was born in 1874 in Blenheim Palace, sited on a 3,000 acre estate. The estate however, was bankrupt and prompted Winston’s father Randolph Churchill to enter politics. With the power and glory of the British empire at its zenith in the Victorian Age, Randolph embarked on a successful tour of India as a Conservative Party grandee in 1884, and was elected secretary of the colonial office soon after. Thus faith and belief in the ‘white man’s burden’ was infused into Winston’s early education and world view. Mohandas Gandhi (1869-1948) was a fully qualified barrister-at-law of the Middle Temple, London, who was at best a successful failure in the Bombay high court upon his return to India. His inability to make an impression on the closed fraternity of the Bombay bar forced him to retreat to his native Saurashtra to practice law. And there (in Rajkot) Gandhi would have remained but for a lucky break, when he accepted a brief to represent a wealthy Muslim merchant of Indian origin who was embroiled in a legal dispute with a cousin in Natal, South Africa. In unapologetically racist South Africa of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the evil doctrine of apartheid or strict segregation of races was being shaped by Dutch Boer settlers. After the famous incident on the train ride to Pretoria when Gandhi — a pucca barrister — was thrown out bag and baggage from a railway carriage claimed by a nondescript white man on…
