An American in Gandhi's India: The Biography of Satyanand Stokes

Samuel Evans Stokes, Jr., a son of a prominent Philadelphia family, was a 21-year-old Quaker missionary when he arrived in India in 1904 to work in a home for lepers. He soon became disillusioned with the foreign missionary community and began a new spiritual quest, adopting Indian dress, forgoing the privileges of a Westerner in colonial India, and founding a mendicant religious brotherhood. Later in life he married a Rajput Christian girl, converted to Hinduism, and adopted a new name. Stokes became a leader in Gandhi's independence movement in the 1920s, and was the only American jailed by the British for this cause. He is most often remembered in India, however, as the man who introduced American Delicious apples to the Himalayas. An American in Gandhi's India draws on oral history and interviews as well as Stokes's books, journals, and letters. Sharma's fascinating account offers a rare glimpse into a century of interaction between India and the United States.