HarperCollins Announces New Book on Gandhi’s Assassination

Leading publishing house HarperCollins India announced on Monday a new book on the assassination of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi. The book, titled ‘The Murderer, the Monarch, and the Fakir’ is penned by investigative journalist Appu Suresh and Cambridge scholar Priyanka Kotamraju. According to the official announcement, the book will hit the shelves on October 01, 2021.

In the announcement tweet, Harper mentioned that the book is based on unseen intelligence reports and police records that expose a deeper conspiracy behind the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi. The book deals with the circumstances that led to what became the most influential assassination of recent history and the investigation that followed right after the incident. It also examines the role of princely states and extremist right-wing hypermasculinity in the dreadful murder of the Father of the Indian Nation and the connection between the two.

Executive Editor at HarperCollins India, Swati Chopra said that Gandhi’s assassination was a cataclysmic event for a newly independent India and it continues to resonate to date. She further added,

“In The Murderer, the Monarch and the Fakir, Appu Esthose Suresh and Priyanka Kotamraju mine fresh sources to uncover startling, and hitherto unknown, facts about the heinous conspiracy to kill the Mahatma. At a time when India is celebrating her seventy-fifth year of independence, it is imperative that we try and uncover more of the truth behind the murder of one of the country’s foremost founding fathers. It may hold crucial insights we need to navigate our present, and our future.”

About the Author

Appu Esthose Suresh is a renowned investigative journalist, best known for his investigations of the British Virgin Islands and the HSBC Swiss accounts as part of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists. He is a former Hindustan Times editor and has worked with elite news media houses like The Indian Express and Mint. Priyanka Kotamraju, on the other hand, is a PhD scholar at the University of Cambridge. She, too, has worked with The Indian Express and the Hindu Business Line. Appu and Priyanka, both are Senior Atlantic Fellows at the International Inequalities Institute at the London School of Economics.

Commenting on the book, the authors said in a joint statement,

“This book presents new evidence that goes against popular narratives and unearths a conspiracy which ran much deeper, with an extraordinary cast of people representing varied interests directly or indirectly involved in it. This holds relevance today as in recent years, we have become preoccupied with either vigorously opposing or enthusiastically supporting the rehabilitation of central figures of the conspiracy, whereas our real aim should be the rehabilitation, critically and empathetically, of Gandhian thought. This book is an attempt to understand the political assassination in the context of new evidence to unpack its significance for our present and future.”