Mahatma Gandhi had a deep and abiding connection with the city of Mumbai, both before and after his sojourn in South Africa. The city is where he took the first tentative steps of his legal career in the 1890s, and it's also from where he launched his first nationwide agitation in 1919, as well as important movements in the freedom struggle in the 1920s and 1930s. His final call for freedom too was made in Mumbai. He famously called the city 'Bombay the beautiful' for the generous spirit of its citizens in donating to the national cause. At our Online Talk #BombayTheBeautiful, part of our month-long #MumbaiSwaraj exhibition on Mumbai’s role in the freedom struggle on the occasion of 75 years of independence, researcher Sandhya Mehta will narrate, through snippets and visuals, the the remarkable story of Gandhiji’s relationship with Bombay.

About the speaker

A graduate in History from University of Delhi, Sandhya Mehta is an independent researcher and social media coordinator of Mani Bhavan Gandhi Sangrahalaya. She has  co-authored the book ‘Gandhi in Bombay’ with Usha Thakkar and has also compiled a book Gandhi's views on religious conversion. Hailing from a family of freedom fighters (her grandfather Narasinhbhai Patel was a revolutionary but later changed his views to non-violence and joined Gandhiji in Salt Satyagraha), she has a keen interest in the social history of Gujarat.