‘English version of Gandhi’s autobiography is not authentic’

London based Gujarati NRI Lord Bhikhu Parekh in his speech delivered at Ahmedabad on Saturday said Mahatma Gandhi’s autobiography book’s presently available English version is not authentic. Following is a summary of Lord Bhikhu Parekh’s part of the speech mentioning this interesting issue:

‘When I read Mahatma Gandhi’s autobiography in Gujarati and English both, I found the English translation was not authentic. I noticed that Gandhiji had said something in his Gujarati original version, and it was quoted differently in the English version. I talked about this to my friend and noted Gujarati literate late Shri Umashankar Joshi way back in 1980s. Later I sat with him and his neighbor Nagindas Parekh and we thoroughly studied both the versions for two and half hours. We concluded that there were many translation related gaps in preface itself. We couldn’t go ahead towards further chapters of the book.’

‘I went into this issue further and found that Gandhiji had ordered Mahadevbhai Desai to translate his autobiography into English, but Gandhiji gave him a very little time to complete each chapter. When Mahadevbhai told Gandhiji about this, Gandhiji replied him to just summarized the chapters to get the work done faster. So, whatever Mahadevbhai just summarized went to print ultimately as a full fledged translation, and we got the English version of Gandhiji’s autobiography thus.’

I penned down a detail article on this issue in Indian Express in 1984, that sparked lots of discussion countrywide. Shri Birlaji wrote me a letter and said proper translation of Gandhi’s autobiography should be done again.’

‘But since then till now, I have not been able to materialize this task.’

‘Some time back I contacted a suitable person based in Ahmedabad, and offered him, but as I am based in Britain, he wanted to be paid according to British standards. We couldn’t proceed further.’

‘As a Gujarati, I feel ashamed that I have not been able to move the things in this regard, but I think, we all should feel same.’