Note on Code Swaraj
Carl Malamud, California, December 4-25, 2017
I returned from India at the end of October and faced a deluge of unfinished tasks I had left behind and new tasks I had accumulated while traveling. Most pressing of course were my court cases, all of which needed attention. But first, I indulged myself.
Waiting for me outside my office were nine large boxes weighing a total of 463 pounds. Inside were 312 books. These were the books that Lord Richard Attenborough had used in preparing to make the movie Gandhi. After his death, one of his producers purchased the books at auction in 2015, and had recently contacted the Consul-General, Ambassador Ashok, and asked if he knew of a useful place to donate the books. The Ambassador sent the producer my way and the shipment had finally arrived.
The collection is really quite incredible. In one of the boxes were original shooting scripts for the movie, set budgets, call sheets, and the auction house receipt and catalog. The books included some materials I already had, such as Pyarelal Nayyar’s 8-volume biography and volumes of the Collected Works. But also included in the shipment were dozens of Navavijan Trust books by and about Gandhi I had not seen.
I selected 47 of the books that were pretty clearly postable, including some gems like the industrialist G.D. Birla’s 4-volume collection of his correspondence with Gandhi. Gandhi-ji was staying at Birla’s house in Mumbai when he was assassinated, and they had corresponded frequently for 44 years.
Also outside my office were the nine most recent volumes of the Selected Works of Nehru which I had ordered, as well as a set of incredibly large books, a multi-volume set of source documents from the fight for liberation. The source documents were edited by Sabyasachi Bhattacharya, one of my favorite historians. I gathered all of these together and drove down to the Internet Archive to have them scanned.
While I was gathering these materials, Ambassador Ashok introduced me to another gentleman who had a huge collection of books about India he wanted to donate. I agreed to pay shipping charges and soon received 25 boxes with 212
113
