One of the most remarkable individuals I have known was K Swaminathan, a professor of literature from Madras who went on to become chief ed...
One of the most remarkable individuals I have known was K Swaminathan, a professor of literature from Madras who went on to become chief editor of the Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi. Swaminathan was born in the town of Pudukkottai on December 3, 1896. When his centenary was observed in 1996, I wrote a biographical profile of him in The Hindu (published in expanded form in my book, An Anthropologist among the Marxists and Other Essays).
Now, a quarter-of-a-century later, I shall use the occasion of his birth anniversary to focus instead on the great project of editorial scholarship which he oversaw and brought to fruition.
After the Mahatma was murdered, the Congress Working Committee set up a National Memorial Fund in this name. Apart from promoting inter-faith harmony and the constructive work programmes so dear to Gandhi, this resolved to “collect, preserve and publish all his writings and teachings in various languages, and to maintain a museum where articles connected with Gandhi may be preserved”.
Vast output
The memorial fund, known as the Gandhi Smarak Nidhi, was established in 1949. With the aid of the Sabarmati Ashram, it began collecting the scattered writings of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi in different genres, on an astonishing variety of topics, and in English and Hindi as well as...
