Minoo Masani

This book is the story of a principled politician-an oxymoron in current political dialogue. Today the word politician draws sneer and derision. That it was not always so we seek to establish in this biography of Minoo Masani whose life and work spanned the greater part of the twentieth century.

Masani was a man of many parts. He began as a lawyer who gave up his practice to participate in the freedom struggle; an author whose Our India written for the young brought him popularity and fame; a parliamentarian of repute with great respect for the institutions of parliamentary democracy; a crusader for individual liberty who evolved into a Liberal in the best traditions of Dadabhai Naoroji and Gopal Krishna Gokhale; an intellectual who traversed the political spectrum from Marx to Mahatma Gandhi-from socialism to Swatantra.

In the political game in India success is measured in terms of offices held. If this be the yardstick then Masani, like his friend Jayaprakash Narayan, has been a failure. But how does one measure a man's achievement if he deliberately chooses to reject opportunities if acceptance means compromising with his beliefs.

**Contents and Sample Pages**