Piecing together ancestral history, with a blend of mystery
Mohanlal's story is marbled with the wider story of Indian migration to South Africa: merchants, accountants and free men like Mohanlal as well as indentured labourers, smugglers and slaves. It is a story of empire and trans-oceanic movement, of racism and enterprise.As her ancestor patched together a life in South Africa, the more famous Mohan—Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi—was working there as a lawyer. When discrimination against Indians started to harden, a new kind of leader and liberation struggle began to be forged. Mohanlal had a cameo in Gandhi's South African satyagraha, but as Shah uncovers, this is only a small part in a complex tapestry of motivations and personal politics.The pace of The Other Mohan occasionally flags, and the final twist gets slightly bogged down in the extensive quoting of official correspondence. However, Shah's book emerges as an absorbing blend of history and mystery.Subscribe to India Today Magazine- Ends
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