cover image Gandhi and the Unspeakable: His Final Experiment with Truth

Gandhi and the Unspeakable: His Final Experiment with Truth

James W. Douglass. Orbis, $24 (144p) ISBN 978-1-57075-963-5

Fifteen years ago, Douglass began investigating the assassinations of John and Robert Kennedy, Martin Luther King Jr., and Malcolm X. His award-winning JFK and the Unspeakable (2008) is now recommended reading for those seriously investigating political assassinations. While researching Kennedy, Douglass learned from Arun Gandhi, grandson of the Indian liberation leader, that his grandfather had been killed by a conspiracy involving powerful nationalist forces within the Indian government—not a lone gunman. This led to Douglass’s rigorously investigating thousands of documents on Gandhi’s 1948 murder. He now provides readers with a slim, elegant volume containing explosive insight into who conspired to assassinate the father of modern nonviolence and why. “Gandhi’s murder, followed by the repression of its truth,” writes Douglass, “forms a paradigm of killing and deceitful cover-up that U.S. citizens would soon have to confront in our own government.” No other contemporary writer is exposing the mechanics of assassination as methodically and bravely as Douglass. But because he is a Catholic independent scholar and activist most well-known for his writings on nonviolence and suffering, this book is more than a fresh look at historical circumstances: it’s spiritual spelunking into the depravity of unchecked political power. (Feb.)