In the nearly 60 years since his death, many books have been written on Mahatma Gandhi. But surprisingly, there isn't a single one in Braille. A Braille version of Gandhi’s autobiography My Experiments With Truth had appeared on his birth centenary in 1969. But that book sold out soon and was never reprinted. No one knows whether any copy of that book still survives.Fortunately, this gap has now been finally filled. The National Gandhi Museum on Sunday brought out the Braille copy of an abridged Hindi version of Gandhi's autobiography. This abridged Hindi version, called Sankshipta Atmakatha, was edited by Gandhi’s secretary Mahadev Desai and Haribhai Upadhyaya in the early 1940s.“I was quite surprised to know that no book on Gandhi exists in Braille. Just to be sure, I inquired with Gandhi scholars and organisations like the Navjivan Trust which holds a copyright on all published material on Gandhi. No one was aware of any such book,” says Varsha Das, director of the National Gandhi Museum and the force behind this move.“I also checked with the government Braille press in Dehradun which had come out with the 1969 book. They said that book had disappeared, and no record of it was available,” adds Das.It was then that she decided to contact the All India Confederation of the Blind to print this 192-page book which has gone on to 360 pages in the Braille version. As of now, 100 copies of this book have been printed, all but a couple of which will be distributed to blind schools in the country. “Depending on the demand, we will print more copies in the future and also translate it into other Indian languages,” says Das.Along with the book in Braille, the National Gandhi Museum is filling another void by releasing a 25-minute biographical film on the Mahatma. Like books, there are many films and documentaries on Gandhi but few record his entire life in such a short duration. “There were many inquiries from schoolchildren on whether there were any short films on the life of Gandhi. What was needed was a short and crisp biography of Gandhi told in an interesting manner for the present generation,” says Das. So the museum decided to produce its own film and engaged CML Multimedia for this work. The film has already started attracting attention, with the National Geographic network expressing its desire to screen it on its History channel.
