Inder Kumar Gujral was born on December 4, 1919, in Jhleum, Punjab province, then part of British-controlled India. His family was politically active in anti-British demonstrations and he once organized a children's march at the age of 11. Gujral subsequently joined the Communist Party while attending the Forman Christian College, Hailey College of Commerce, and Punjab University, from which he obtained two doctorates. When Britain granted India independence in 1947, a violent upheaval developed between Muslims and Hindus in the north, resulting in creation of a new country, Pakistan. Because Gujral's family was of Hindu extraction, they fled and eventually settled in New Delhi. There Gujral quit the Communist Party and joined the more socialist-oriented Congress Party. An urbane, respected intellectual, he came to the attention of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, who appointed him to various government ministries commencing in 1967. However, he protested Gandhi's 1975 state of emergency, along with the mass arrests...