Gandhi’s Printing Press

Isabel Hofmeyr

“Deepens our understanding of Gandhi in South Africa by giving us a history of his International Printing Press… His sparse, unadorned, direct prose had much to do with his early training in writing for Indian Opinion… The book also reflects on various printed forms—the newspaper, the periodical, the pamphlet—and their significance in not just creating a print culture but also in forging a people and sustaining amovement. The most significant part of the work is a theory of reading that Hofmeyr discerns through her examination of Indian Opinion and the Hind Swaraj (1909). Can one actually create modes of writing (and printing) that, while located within the modern realm, can militate against modernity? She shows that Gandhi consciously tried to cultivate a style of writing that required slow, meditative reading; his purpose was to adjust the act of reading to unhurried bodily rhythms not subject to the fast pace that he considered the chief signifier of the industrial age. He even tried to slow down the process of printing by dispensing with the oil machine that ran the press and instead employed manual labour to run it. In this way, Hofmeyr’s elucidation of the manner in which a satyagrahi reads illuminates our understanding of Gandhi’s modes of writing and discoursing.”—Tridip Suhrud, The Caravan

“This slim volume sparks more ideas than are typically generated by a book three times its size.”—John Wilson, Books & Culture

“Gandhi’s espousal of free reproduction of material and repudiation of copyright—consider this throwaway line: ‘Gandhi would have been a Wikipedian’—and his theories of slow reading, in which readers ponder and memorize the text and ‘labor’ for the paper, will provide food for thought in an age of Internet reading.”—Ravi Shenoy, Library Journal

“While he was a young attorney in South Africa at the outset of the 20th century, Gandhi was also ‘a sometime proprietor’ of the press that printed the influential Indian Opinion newspaper, whose production formed, for the burgeoning activist, a crash course in the synthesizing of public opinion, news, and progressive thought. Located on an ashram outside the port city of Durban, the press allowed Gandhi and his cohorts to explore ‘new kinds of ethical selves,’ bringing together as it did ‘different castes, religions, languages, races, and genders.’ In Hofmeyr’s portrait, Gandhi emerges as a surprisingly keen publicist and media strategist, willing to buck the system (e.g., copyright laws) in the service of social change. She also offers a fascinating take on Gandhi’s mode of ‘contemplative reading,’ one characterized by the merging of the text with a receptive mind via ‘pausing and perseverance,’ all with an aim of cumulative progress. Indeed, Gandhi read as he led. This thoughtful account is a compelling preview of the colonial subcontinent’s development, as well as Gandhi’s eventual role as peaceful emancipator of his own country.”—Publishers Weekly

“Gandhi was one of history’s most avid experimenters. His most audacious forms of utopianism were often nothing more than simple and ingenious experiments. Hofmeyr tells the remarkable story, with elegance and great learning, of how Gandhi imagined a radically different world simply by attending to the potentialities of the printing press. Very few books on Gandhi capture the minutiae and horizons of his world with such riveting intelligence.”—Uday Mehta, City University of New York

“Reconstructing a little-known episode in Gandhi’s life, Hofmeyr places surprising new findings about a particular historical figure in the service of a radically new theory of reading. This ambitious and deeply researched book holds lessons for historians, literary theorists, and anyone interested in reading practices.”—Leah Price, Harvard University

“The connection between Gandhi and the lively Indian Ocean world of small printing presses is something that has almost entirely escaped the attention of historians of South Asia and scholars of print culture so far. Hofmeyr explores this crucial space with rare vigor and sophistication.”—Ajay Skaria, University of Minnesota

Related Links

• Watch Isabel Hofmeyr’s presentation on Gandhi’s Printing Press at the Radcliffe Institute’s “Why Books?” conference
• At The Caravan, read a roundup of recent research on Gandhi
• Browse a selection of HUP works on the foundations of modern India