Book Review-A Man Called Bapu by Pratham Books

All of us have written several pages long essays during our school days about Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi. But tell me how much can you recall about Bapu today? An almost forgotten personality, no doubt brought back to limelight recently by Lage Raho Munna Bhai, Mahathma Gandhi’s principles and values are seldom given any consideration by youngsters today.

A recent survey conducted in Britain says teenagers there feel Mahathma and Churchill are imaginary characters…
Why am I writing all these? Because I happened to read a copy of the recently released book, "A man called Bapu" written by Subhadra Sen Gupta, a prominent author of children books and illustrated by Neeta Gangopadhya and published by Pratham Books, Bangalore.

The book, priced at an extremely affordable Rs 25, is well written and gives an almost comprehensive coverage of Gandhi’s life. The book is meant for Children but makes a good reading even for adults, because of simple English used and the interesting way in which several incidents in Bapu’s life are narrated.

I spent some time reading the book and it made a good read. Other than school textbooks I hadn’t studied any book on Gandhi in detail, mainly because reading books hundreds of pages long takes time and sometime may not be interesting. This book was short, sweet and to the point. I liked the extract on page 26, which quotes the instruction given by Gandhi to villagers during Dandi march.

Right: Karnataka Governor Rameshwar Thakur releasing the book.

The book doesn't say much about Bapu's family matters,(not a good thing to write about, certainly not in a children book) for which you may better watch the movie produced by Anil Kapur.

Besides outlining chronicles of Gandhiji's life, the book also gives brief account of few other eminent personalities like Abdul Gaffar Khan, Martin Luthar King Jr, Nelson Mandela and Aung San Suu Kyi. The book is available in multiple languages and makes a good buy. You can read it yourself once and then may be gift to some youngster in your family.

Pratham Books an NGO and leading publisher of children books, have wide range of children books in their catalog (covering different age groups and in multiple languages). You can have a look if interested.

Other Book Reviews: It Happened in India (Kishore Biyani) | Not a Penny More Not a Penny Less (Jeffrey Archer)|The 3 Mistakes of my life- Chetan Bhagat| Merchants of Deception- Eric Scheibler * Zero percentile by Neeraj Chhibba * 2 States-by Chetan Bhagat

July 2020 update: removed some links to media sites as they were not working anymore.