I&B bar on revised works of Mahatma

Terming the revision of complete works of Mahatma Gandhi, ordered by the NDA government, a misconceived venture, I&B Minister Jaipal Reddy has ordered that the sale of the revised works be stopped. He also pledged to bestow the earlier edition with “official status.”

The CD-ROMs that were brought in as accompaniments to the books will be revised and will contain the facsimile of the original edition and guide those who have already purchased the revised edition.

The revised edition running into 100 volumes, completed in 1999 and brought out by the Publications Division of the I&B Ministry, had some glaring omissions. Some prominent ones were the 20 or more indices on Hindu Mahasabha leader Vinayak Damodar Swarkar which find mention in the original works, H.S. Suhrawardy, who went on to form the first Muslim League Government in Bengal and later formed the East Pakistan Awami Muslim League, renamed the Awami League. More than 500 letters written by Gandhi too were missing.