Gandhi in La La Land

We try not to deal in superlatives, but Rajmohan Gandhi’s conversation at Algebra was, by many accounts, one of our finest sessions yet.

It would be myopic to attribute Rajmohan’s erudition to genes – despite the fact that he is grandson not just of Mahatma Gandhi but also C Rajagopalachari. Because while the influence of the Mahatma is inarguable, Rajmohan is very much his own person – independent thinker, knowledge-seeker, thorough historian – and with an endearing combination of grace, vulnerability and conviction, he took us on a journey that brought some of the greatest men and moments of Indian history alive in ways most of us have never experienced before.

The almost hour-and-half long conversation was laced with personal anecdotes and humour; with incisive comment – such as when he said Gandhi’s error may have been that he distanced his family too much; Nehru’s, that he didn’t distance them enough –and with insight into some of the foundational challenges of Indian democracy. And he was, in the tradition of the world’s finest thinkers, optimistic about our ability to course correct even as he served up a scrupulously fair assessment of Prime Minister Modi, of Rahul Gandhi, and of the state of Indian politics today.

It was a conversation that covered the broad sweep of history even as it revealed intimate insider details, and no matter where you stand on the spectrum of political or ideological belief, there’s something to be gained from watching it. And if there was a universal lesson in it for our times, it was when Rajmohan framed his personal life philosophy as “living by appreciation, not by comparison”.

Watch the full session above.