Rajmohan Gandhi (born 7 August 1935) is an Indian biographer, historian, and research professor at the Center for South Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, US. His paternal grandfather is Mahatma Gandhi, and his maternal grandfather is Chakravarthi Rajagopalachari. He is also a scholar in residence at the Indian Institute of Technology Gandhinagar. Early life Rajmohan Gandhi was born 7 August 1935 in New Delhi, to Devdas and Lakshmi Gandhi. His father was the managing editor of the Hindustan Times. Rajmohan Gandhi attended St. Stephen's College. His maternal grandfather was C. Rajagopalachari, second Governor General of India, after Lord Louis Mountbatten, who was one of the foremost associates of Mahatma Gandhi. Career Academic career and activism Associated from 1956 with Initiatives of Change (formerly known as Moral Re-Armament), Rajmohan Gandhi has been engaged for half a century in efforts for trust-building, reconciliation and democracy and in battles against corruption and inequalities. In the 1960s and early 1970s, Gandhi played a leading role in establishing Asia Plateau, the conference centre of Initiatives of Change in Panchgani, in the mountains of western India. Asia Plateau has been recognized in the Indian subcontinent for its ecological contribution. During the 1975–1977 Emergency in India, he was active for democratic rights personally and through his weekly journal, Himmat, published in Bombay from 1964 to 1981. His book, A Tale of Two Revolts: India 1857 & the American Civil War (New Delhi: Penguin India, December 2009), studies two 19th-century wars occurring in opposite parts of the world at almost the same time. His previous book, a biography of his grandfather Mahatma Gandhi, Mohandas: A True Story of a Man, His People and an Empire, received the Biennial Award from the Indian History Congress in 2007. It has since been published in several countries. In 2002, Gandhi received the Sahitya Akademi Award for Rajaji: A Life, a Biography of Chakravarti Rajagopalachari (1878–1972), about his maternal grandfather and a leading figure in India's independence movement, who became the first Indian Governor General, 1948–1950. His other works include Ghaffar Khan: Nonviolent Badshah of the Pakhtuns (Penguin 2004); Revenge & Reconciliation: Understanding South Asian History (Penguin, 1999); Patel: A Life, a Biography of Vallabhbhai Patel (1875–1950), Deputy Prime Minister of India, 1947-50 (Navajivan, Ahmedabad, 1990); and Eight Lives: A Study of the Hindu-Muslim Encounter (SUNY, 1987). One of his earlier books, The Good Boatman: A Portrait