As historian, Lakshmi Subramanian has always been curious about the peculiar—researching odd-ball stories, where previously unrelated facts come together to create a whole. Her new book, Singing Gandhi's India: Music and Sonic Nationalism (Roli Books), is an exercise in that direction. Yet, when she was first approached to write a book on Mahatma Gandhi and music, Subramanian recalls her response as being a "resounding no". "My initial reluctance was partly informed by a sense that Gandhi would have had very little and substantive to say about music per se; and about the complex public history that music threw up in the 20th century. Equally, I was convinced that Gandhi would have unproblematically endorsed the bhajan as it had emerged as a form of marking an exclusive Hindu identity," she shares, in an email interview.

London-based journalist Sanjay Suri's tryst with the Mahatma in his new book, A Gandhian Affair: India's Curious Portrayal of Love in Cinema (HarperCollins India), was more organic. "I did not set out to research Gandhi," he admits. The book, he says, grew out of watching hundreds of Hindi films over many years. "Gandhi just kept popping out of them."