BONDURANT: The Spy Who Cracked Gandhi’s Code

This is the biography of a remarkable scholar and secret agent, Joan Bondurant, a dutiful daughter and schoolgirl from Kansas, who became a U.S. spy during World War II and infiltrated elite circles in India’s government. Joan met Mahatma Gandhi, became a devoted follower, and emerged as the leading American scholar of Gandhi’s methods of nonviolent conflict resolution. No Indians suspected that the friendly young American civilian was a spy. Joan mixed freely in high government circles and met the founding mothers and fathers of India and Pakistan, including Gandhi, Nehru, and some of the feminist luminaries of Pakistan. She lived a life of adventure, witnessing the terror of the partition of South Asia, while reporting secret information about India’s future leaders to U.S. intelligence agencies. Along the way she battled with secrets of her own: the awareness of her own sexual orientation.