Father India Book

Father India is both fascinating and frustrating. Fascinating, because it deals with some extremely interesting people - Annie Besant, E. M. Forster, and Mohandas K. Gandhi among them - and the ways in which their lives and their thought changed in response to 19th- and 20th-century accommodations between India and the West.[return][return]Frustrating because covering eight individuals in some depth and many others in less depth in a book of just over 300 pages leads to a great deal of once-over-lightly. I was left wanting to know more, much more, about some of the figures, in particular Annie Besant, who went from militant atheist to apostle of Theososphy, and was even elected President of the Indian National Congress.[return][return]On the other hand, Jeffery Paine writes well and his material is fascinating. A book that leaves the reader wanting to know more is no bad thing, so I do recommend Father India for those wanting an introduction to complex interactions between colonial and post-colonial India and the West.