Ramachandra Guha: A tribute to ES Reddy, the father of my journey as a Gandhi scholar
After E.S. Reddy died on November 1, I wrote an obituary in the Financial Times, covering the major aspects of his life and work. In this column I offer a more personal tribute, of what he meant to me and to other scholars of Gandhi like myself..
I first met Enuga Sreenivasulu Reddy in New York in 1994. I was carrying an introduction from Gopalkrishna Gandhi, who had described him to me as a “great Gandhi-reservoir”. For the next 25 years I was witness to the truth of that appellation, some of the evidence contained in my desktop computer in Bengaluru, which has three large folders entitled: “ES Reddy Material, Instalment I, II and III”. These house hundreds of files, gifted to me over the years by Gopal Gandhi’s friend (now also mine), sometimes as attachments to emails, at other times through CDs sent by courier. The material my benefactor so generously shared includes newspaper and magazine articles in half-a-dozen languages, profiles of Gandhi’s associates in three countries, critical commentaries published after his death, and much more.
Before he became the world’s greatest Gandhi scholar, ES
Reddy had achieved distinction in another field. Born in 1924, raised in
Southern India in a family of freedom fighters, he spent his professional life
working in the United Nations headquarters in New York, much of it directing
the UN’s Centre against Apartheid. In this capacity, Reddy perhaps did more
than anyone outside South Africa itself to undermine and eventually dismantle
the racist regime in that country. It was only in his sixties, after his
retirement, that he was able to devote himself to scholarship.
He wrote or edited more than a dozen books on Gandhi, his
influence and his legacy; two further books that he had completed are in the
process of publication. But, unlike other scholars in this (or other fields),
Reddy had not a trace of possessiveness; the materials he had were made
available to anyone who asked. Apart from aiding individual scholars, he
donated thousands of rare documents to institutions such as the Nehru Memorial
Museum and Library and Yale University. It was also Reddy who paid for the first
computer at the Sabarmati Ashram in Ahmedabad, which enabled the digitisation
of the Ashram’s priceless collection of letters to Gandhi….
More Gandhi-related posts
