Books Behind Bars: Mahatma Gandhi’s Community of Captive Readers

Abstract

Mohandas K. Gandhi, popularly known as the Mahatma, first discovered the power of reading in the confines of colonial penitentiaries. Although Gandhi had been exposed to the routines of rigorous reading as a law student in London, he maintained a sceptical attitude toward the benefits of bibliographic pursuits well into his adulthood. Gandhi rhetorically eschewed book learning for much of his life, and yet he also developed a sophisticated print-based knowledge enterprise, including thousands of books that served as the intellectual basis of his engagement with imperial rule and efforts toward the development of an independent India. Ironically, the origins of this knowledge enterprise evolved from Gandhi’s experiences in colonial prisons during the first part of the twentieth century. From his first imprisonment in 1908 until his final jail sentence, between 1942 and 1944, Gandhi developed and refined a reading programme that played a major role in his public life. He extended this programme to include his most trusted colleagues and advisors so that jail sentences became opportunities for collective engagement with books and collaborative mobilization of the information and ideas within them. These reading practices were exported from one penitentiary to another, meaning that the colonial system itself helped circulate the very conditions, materials and people that ultimately were able to overcome its power.