We know that Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi was a prolific correspondent who wrote letters on everything from the mundane to how to win independence. What of his correspondents? Who were the people who wrote to him? What did they write about? The Collected Works give us all that Gandhi wrote, but not what his correspondents wrote to him. That gap is now being rectified.
We now have the first volume of an ambitious project to publish all such letters that have been maintained at the Sabarmati Ashram. There are apparently 8,500 of them in Sabarmati. The aim is to publish a multi-volume, multi-language annotated collection of these letters.
The first volume covering the years 1889-1900 has been put together with great care by the editors, and gives a glimpse of a journey in the making.
