Between Friends Letters Exchanging Ideas

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The author's wide-ranging interests are expressed in a new form in this book through an exchange of letters between two friends. The reader encounters, inter alia, themes from literature, matters of urgent contemporary concem such as the fault lines in democracies, the extent of injustice, the onus of responsibility, the role of intellectuals, the experience of migrants, the position of women, the continuing challenge of Gandhi's life and thought. The gravity of the contemporary situation both in India and elsewhere is not underestimated nor are the horrific crimes perpetrated in the twentieth century forgotten. The presenting of alter- native standpoints in friends' letters stimulates positive transformations of attitude and hopes for a more peaceful world.

As a student Margaret Chatterjee read Modern Greats (Philosophy, Politics and Economics) at Oxford where she was awarded an exhibition at Somerville College. The background of her studies was always history. Subsequently she did intensive research on Gandhi's life and thought on which she has published eight books. Opportunities for teaching at university level in several countries brought her in contact with people from many cultures. She became increasingly interested in the life stories of those she met and her recent work recognises the stress on particular events and directions of change which historians perforce deal with in their own discipline, but maintains that it is most important to bear in mind the human interactions which take place between people regarded as ordinary but whom she believes are actually extraordinary.

Although the art of letter-writing seems to be on the wane, if indeed not a rarity, there is scarcely a biographer or historian who has not found in letters a mine of invaluable details which assist his/her research. Letters communicate, even though a lot of the time we have only half the story, either letters or replies to letters, but not both. Even so, in going through decades of letters received, it is sometimes possible to recall our own part in the communication. For the pedal note is most surely communication, something which resonates through so much of contemporary life and its offshoot, discourse.

In recent days I have been engaged in a very necessary task. the cleaning of papers, letters, offprints and the inevitable accumulation of materials which clutter a life centring on academics. The strong-minded no doubt fill wastepaper baskets without suffering too many pangs of regret, but some of us resort to classification rather than throwing away, which of course leaves you with the same stuff as before but grouped and labelled neatly, hopefully, with the vain thought that an important task has been completed.

But, to return to the theme of communication per se, it is unfortunately the case that the phenomenon is in fact an umbrella which can house beneath it much that is disturbing, untrue or even hurtful. One has only to think of what is purveyed by a host of examples including the pabulum provided by the media, edicts, decrees, legal judgements and so forth, to realise that there is scarcely a limit to what can be communicated.