![]() Plurality and empathy are the lifeblood of democracy. To hear Gopal Gandhi speak is to be reminded that a civilised society thrives on truth and not untruth, on the diversity of views and the multiplicity of interpretations, on the ability not just to harangue and hector, but also to listen and to commiserate. It is rarely that one comes across a figure like Gopal Gandhi with such an acute ear for nuance, such a complex grasp of meaning, such command over different registers and genres of discourse (apart from a knowledge of many languages). But the way in which its most prominent contemporary exponents will use political messaging is to create a rasping din of demagoguery, spin, hate speech and, increasingly, outright lying. ![]() ![]() Nowadays it is fashionable to admire and praise politicians for the kind of oratory and rhetoric that can canvass votes, win elections, make big promises, and instill in ordinary people that most elusive emotion, faith, (Stay up to date on new book releases, reviews, and more with The Hindu On Books newsletter. (A more eminent political lineage is hard to imagine, though his wife, brothers, children, nieces and nephew also do the family proud in different ways). He has edited, translated and made available to a wider readership the writings of his paternal grandfather Mahatma Gandhi and his maternal grandfather C. He has translated Tiruvalluvar into English and Vikram Seth into Hindi. He speaks, reads and writes in Hindi and Tamil, Bengali and Gujarati, English and Urdu. Gopalkrishna Gandhi has spent his life as a diplomat, writer, administrator and scholar cultivating the extraordinary capacity to be at home in every part of India: north, south, east and west. ![]() It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a country in which many languages are spoken needs at least some of its most prominent citizens and public servants to be multilingual.
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