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Gandhi in Madras

Sir, — A.R. Venkatachalapathy begins his article `When Gandhi visited Madras' (Jan. 26) with a regret that "a series of letters" exchanged between Gandhiji and V.O.C. during 1915-16 do not find a place in the 100-volume `Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi'. It is very likely that the Collected Works would have missed a few stray letters here and there insofar as they were not available in the records maintained by his secretaries or in other authentic sources.

But the facsimile of two letters reported to have been written by Gandhiji to V.O.C. as published in the article are of highly doubtful authenticity. For one, Gandhiji used to write the Gregorian date in numerical symbols only invariably (e.g., 15-1-16 and not 15th January'16 as appearing in the facsimile). The oversized subscription and signature in bold hand have obviously been superimposed. Again, Gandhiji would never write a two-line letter on a slip of paper; he always used a post-card for short letters. The second letter dated 25th August 1915 in Tamil is not at all in Gandhiji's hand. He used to sign his formal letters as either `Bapu' or `M.K. Gandhi'. The very few letters he wrote in Tamil bore his signature `Mu. Ka. Gandhi' and not `Mohandas Gandhi' (in Tamil).

La. Su. Rengarajan,
Chennai

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