Author | Lal Krishna Advani |
---|---|
Country | India |
Language | English |
Subject | Autobiography |
Publisher | Rupa & Co. |
Publication date
|
March 19, 2008 (hardback) |
Pages | 1040 |
ISBN | |
OCLC | 221287960 |
LC Class | DS481.A28 A66 2008 |
My Country My Life is an autobiographical book by L. K. Advani, an Indian politician who served as the Deputy Prime Minister of India from 2002 to 2004, and was the Leader of the Opposition in the 15th Lok Sabha. The book was released on 19 March 2008 by Abdul Kalam, the eleventh President of India. The book has 1,040 pages and narrates autobiographical accounts and events in the life of Advani. It became the best seller book in the non-fiction category and Advani joined Archer as a bestseller author. The book website claims the book sold an excess of 1,000,000 copies. The book alongside mentions the event in Indian politics and India's history from 1900 till date.
My Country My Life is a selfportrait of India’s leading political personality — L.K. Advani. This book covers, chronologically, most of all the major and minor events in the life of Advani. My Country My Life presents L.K. Advani's memoirs in five phases.
It describes Advani’s early life in Sindh, narrating the heart-rending story of India’s blood-soaked partition into two separate countries — India and Pakistan — when Britain’s colonial rule came to an end. He was one of the millions of people who migrated from Pakistan to India — and also from India to Pakistan. After giving a fascinating socio-spiritual history of Sindh, Advani describes his life at home and school in Karachi (which he calls his ‘favourite city’). He also writes about two transformative influences on his life: the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), a nationalist organization which he joined as a swayamsevak (volunteer) at the age of 14, and Swami Ranganathananda, head of the Ramakrishna Math in Karachi and an erudite exponent of the philosophy of Swami Vivekananda, whom Advani first met in Karachi.
It deals with Advani’s life as an RSS pracharak (organiser) in Rajasthan and as an activist of the Bharatiya Jana Sangh. An important section in this phase deals with the mutually respectful relationship between Mahatma Gandhi and the RSS. Advani convincingly counters the vile propaganda by the Indian Left that the RSS was behind the assassination of the Mahatma in January 1948.