Prelude to the Search of Truth (An Old and Rare Book)

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The author, J. R. Kokandakar, born on 6.6.1962 is a science graduate working in bank. Throughout First class in his academic career, he was highly influenced by Mahatma Gandhi's autobiography.

In this book, the author touches some of Gandhi's basic concepts; his role in the partition of India and removal of untouchability. While Gandhian principles are acclaimed throughout the world, our Indian youth is sceptic about them. The present book helps youth see Gandhiji in the right perspective and reassess their misconceptions about him. It is the inmost desire of the author that the youth should form their opinions on the facts and not on prevalent thought.

"Mahatma Gandhi is inescapable in India' said late Dr. Martin Luther King (Jr.), during his only visit to India that was in the beginning of 1959, just eleven years after the Prophet of the twentieth century was assassinated by a fanatic Hindu. Since then hundreds and thousands of books, tracts, essays etc., covering Gandhi's life and work, have been published in India and abroad. These have been written not only by his eminent and not so eminent contemporaries, but also by those who belong to the post - Gandhi generation.

Like most of his contemporaries, Sri Kokandakar as a college student enjoyed Gandhi's birthday anniversaries as holidays. All that he learnt about Gandhi was from the rhetoric speeches made on these anniversaries and whatever little that found place in prescribed text books of his school-days. His academic career was the 'be all and end all of his life at that stage. After graduation in science with a first class, he joined a bank. As his circle widened, he also heard about Gandhi now and then. But now Gandhi was not called a saint, emancipator or seeker of truth, as made out by speakers on Gandhi's anniversaries. He was depicted as 'a coward, anti-Hindu person wholly responsible for the partition of India, a madman with all outdated ideas and so on.'

Yet the image of Gandhi as a saint and an ardent seeker of truth could not be easily dismissed by the author. He now extended his range of readings. Works of Shakespeare, books on Western Philosophy etc. became his staple diet. It was by sheer chance that he got to read "An Autobiography - or The Story of My Experiments with Truth" by M. K. Gandhi. He was stunned.