‘The Light of Asia’: Jairam Ramesh’s new book is a biography of an epic bio-poem on the Buddha

This biography is of an epic poem written in blank verse and first published in London in July 1879.

On its release, it immediately took England by storm, and soon thereafter America and Europe too were stirred by it. The epidemic of exuberance for it would spread to other parts of the world and last a few decades.

The book captivated an Indian monk who remains an iconic personality – Swami Vivekananda. At about the same time, it deeply moved a young man in Colombo who has become famous in history as Anagarika Dharmapala. It caught the attention of an aspiring Indian lawyer in London in 1889. This man later became immortal as Mahatma Gandhi.

A few years hence it impacted a teenager in Allahabad who would, in 1947, become the first Prime Minister of India – Jawaharlal Nehru. Two copies of the book adorned the bookshelves of BR Ambedkar, the prime architect of the Indian constitution. It informed the work of men who were active in the movement for social justice, especially in south India in the early part of the twentieth century.

The book had a marked influence on at least eleven literary personalities from across the world. Five of them were Nobel…

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