Rajmohan Gandhi Reflects on India's Founding Fathers

Ideas of India

Today my guest is Rajmohan Gandhi, a historian and biographer involved in efforts for trust-building and reconciliation and author of more than fifteen books, of which the most recent is Fraternity: Constitutional Norm and Human Need. He taught history and politics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign from 1997 until his retirement in 2022. His most recent initiative is We Are One Humanity (WAOH), a writers collective responding to the worldwide thrusts against democracy and equality. We spoke about his reflections on his biographies of the founding fathers, Vallabhai Patel, Mohandas Gandhi, C Rajagopalachari, and Gaffar Khan, their competing visions, debates with others like Ambedkar and Nehru, constitutional values, the civil rights movement, his faith, and much more.

Recorded April 18th, 2025.

Read a full transcript enhanced with helpful links.

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Timestamps

Intro - 00:00:00

Patel - 00:01:34

Rajaji - 00:31:20

Ghaffar Khan - 00:51:53

Gandhi - 01:05:53

Competing Visions - 01:17:32

Biographies of Family Members - 01:18:54

Serendipity in the Research Process - 01:23:40

Civil Rights in the US - 01:27:23

Pessimistic or Optimistic? - 01:35:16

Role of God and Faith - 01:36:27

Outro - 01:38:20