B-W was encouraged to lay her camera to spin. He and his followers encourage everyone to spin. In typed notes that accompanied Bourke-White’s film when it was sent from India to LIFE’s New York offices in the spring of 1946, the significance of the simple spinning wheel is explained: Filling a half-page atop the article, “India Loses Her ‘Great Soul,'” the picture serves as a stirring visual eulogy to the man and his ideals. Gandhi has no license to practice, of course, but to ask the Mahatma for such a document would be like requiring President Truman to produce his airplane ticket when he boards the Sacred Cow.”Īfter Gandhi’s assassination In January 30, 1948, the photograph was given pride of place in LIFE’s multiple-page tribute to Gandhi. It is characteristic of the Mahatma that, at this moment when his lifelong crusade for a free India seems to have reached its final crisis, he is taking time out from a busy political life to preach a nature cure. “At the age of 76,” LIFE wrote, “Mohandas Gandhi has embarked on a new career as a doctor. ![]() ![]() In fact, that picture would not appear in LIFE until months later and even then, it ran as a small image atop an article in June 1946 that focused on Gandhi’s fascination with what the magazine called “nature cures” for the sick. Only two were of Gandhi, and neither of them was the well-known spinning-wheel picture. More than a dozen of her pictures ran in the “Leaders” article in the May ’46 issue. (This gallery includes the article, in page spreads, as it appeared in the magazine.) She made hundreds of photographs, including many of Gandhi himself: with his family at his spinning wheel at prayer. In 1946, during the run-up to the historic 1947 partition and independence from Great Britain for both India and Pakistan Bourke-White spent time in India working on a feature, ultimately titled “India’s Leaders,” that would run in the May 27, 1946, issue of LIFE. After scanning, all photographs were cleaned digitally and coloured by skilled Indian hands." "While doing this, our intention was not to manipulate or adulterate pictures but to bring them closer to colourful images," Mitra said, adding the biography can be bought online or from Amazon, an e-marketplace.Few public figures of the 20th century were and remain as instantly recognizable to literally billions of people around the globe as Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, born on October 2, 1869, and no single picture has become more closely associated with his life, and his way of life, than Margaret Bourke-White’s 1946 portrait of the civil-disobedience pioneer beside his cherished spinning wheel. Terming the book a result of extensive research and technical advancement, GandhiServe India Director Jayan Mitra told, "Gandhi scholars, historians, photo experts and graphic designers joined hands to turn black and white photos into colourful images. Somaiya said, "Gandhi followers, not only from India but other countries like the USA and the UK, have shown great interest in the photo-biography which covers topics like truth and God, non-violence, religion and ethics, brahmcharya, non- cooperation, fasting, civic disobedience, prison life, swaraj, Ramrajya, independence, Harijans, untouchability and pacifism, among others." Gandhi Book Centre, the main distributor of the book, and the trust had been engaged in organising programmes to spread message of Gandhiji by holding seminars, workshops, meetings and youth camps. Missing colours were added according to historical settings, making it a valuable document," said Tulsidas Somaiya, Managing Trustee of the Gandhi Book Centre, run by Bombay Sarvoday Mandal. "It is an interdisciplinary project in which black and white photographs were turned into the colour images. The photo-biography was released by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on the ocassion of Gandhi Jayanti this year. The biography, priced at Rs 7,500, is available at selected distributors, including some in Mumbai. ![]() Mumbai: The first-ever colour photo-biography on Mahatma Gandhi, chronicling his life and time and containing rare photos, has come out in the market, generating a great deal of interest among scholars and historians writing about the Father of the Nation.Ĭompiled and published by GandhiServe India, the local chapter of Germany-based GandhiServe Foundation, this king- size biography, "Mahatma Gandhi's Life in Colour", contains 1,281 photographs across 692 pages and weighs around 6.5kg.
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