FEROZE THE FORGOTTEN GANDHI: A PERSONAL NARRATIVE By Bertil Falk, Roli, Rs 695

Bertil Falk, a Swedish journalist, has delivered what is undoubtedly the best book available on the life of Feroze Gandhi, not simply because there is no other comprehensive account of the subject - perhaps one of India's most prodigious parliamentarians, ever - but because the required sources are either documents that are no longer in circulation or people who are now dead. Falk's narrative is a series of strong cameos about Feroze Gandhi transposed upon a setting of historical events. Besides personal recollections, the best available sources for a researcher assiduously digging for references to Feroze Gandhi's political life are the parliamentary record and the speeches he gave in the Lok Sabha - or, in the case of his opposition to president's rule and other political manoeuvres made by the Congress in Kerala, in the Central Hall of Parliament. Falk marshals these speeches, among other sources, superbly.

The author's understanding of the nuances of Indian politics is evidently strong, albeit laboriously expressed at times, which is no criticism given that English is perhaps his third language and his relationship with India a distant one. It is a testimony to Falk's outstanding merits as a researcher - his mischievous slant on the matter of Feroze Gandhi's family origins notwithstanding - that he features a wide range of citations from diverse sources that include well-known personalities such as the late Prime Minister Chandrashekhar as well as lesser-know individuals like Onkar Nath Bhargava, one of Feroze Gandhi's earliest biographers and a resident of his Lok Sabha constituency of Rae Bareli.

What even the author has perhaps not realized is how timely a life of Feroze Gandhi is in India's current political climate. In the 1950s, the Congress dominated India's political scene to the extent that the existence of other political formations was blurred. Pandit Nehru's liberal political philosophy and his position as the unchallenged leader of India's millions was often beyond criticism. From time to time in that happy decade, Feroze Gandhi tore this idyllic state open. He did this most memorably in 1957, demonstrating that all was not well in the affairs of the land of the Mahatma and its self-congratulatory Gandhian morality. Feroze Gandhi was responsible for the unearthing of the 'Mundhra scam', India's first financial scandal, and for unmasking the nefarious consequences of mercenary partnerships between private enterprise and political patronage, a condition that persists.

At a time when the Union Government is intolerant of any form of opposition, Feroze Gandhi's political career, particularly as a parliamentarian, illustrates the importance of individual opposition to all varieties of political hegemony in a democracy.