Gopalkrishna Gandhi studied English Literature and History at St. Stephen’s College, Delhi University. He has served in administrative roles in Tamil Nadu and Delhi as a member of the Indian Administrative Service.
As a member of the Tamil Nadu cadre of the IAS, Gopalkrishna Gandhi was trained in the Cauvery delta’s Thanjavur district. He held administrative positions and worked in the dry tracts of South Arcot and North Arcot, later preparing the first district gazetteer for Pudukkottai. He also worked among the Indian-origin tea plantation labourers in Sri Lanka as First Secretary at the High Commission of India’s Kandy office from 1978 to 1982.
Gopalkrishna Gandhi was Secretary to the Vice President of India (1985-1987), Joint Secretary to the President of India ( 1987-1992), Secretary to the President of India (1997-2000), was the first Director of the Nehru Centre at the High Commission of India, London, High Commissioner for India in South Africa, Lesotho, High Commissioner for India in Sri Lanka, as well as Ambassador of India to Norway and Iceland. He was the Governor of West Bengal from 2004 to 2009, and acted as Governor of Bihar (2005).
The University of Natal, South Africa, awarded him a Doctorate of Laws honoris causa in 1999, and the University of Peradeniya, Sri Lanka, conferred upon him a Doctorate of Letters honoris causa in 2001. The University of Calcutta granted him a Doctorate of Literature honoris causa in 2019, and the University of Bath Spa, United Kingdom, a Doctorate honoris causa in Education in 2023.
He received the Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan Award from the University of Mysore in 2016, the Lal Bahadur Shastri Award also in 2016, and the Rajiv Gandhi Sadbhavana Award in 2018.
In the Spring of 2020, he was a Fellow at the Centre for Contemporary South Asia at the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs, Brown University, USA.
He has authored one novel (Saranam – Refuge in English) and a play Dara Shukoh in English verse. His other books include – Gandhi and South Africa (ed. with Enuga S.Reddy), Koi Acchha Sa Ladka (a Hindustani translation of Vikram Seth’s novel ‘A Suitable Boy’), Gandhi and Sri Lanka, Nehru and Sri Lanka, Of a Certain Age: Twenty Life Sketches, Gandhi is Gone: Who Will Guide Us Now? (edited), and A Frank Friendship, being a chronological account of Mahatma Gandhi’s connections with Bengal. In 2015, he rendered G.U. Pope’s celebrated English translation of the Tamil classic Tirukkural into contemporary English. In 2025, Gopalkrishna Gandhi published The Undying Light, a personal history of independent India.
He served as the Chairman of the Kalakshetra Foundation in Chennai from 2011 to 2014, and of the Indian Institute of Advanced Study in Shimla from 2012 to 2014.
Gopalkrishna Gandhi (b. 1945) is the younger brother of Professor Rajmohan Gandhi (b. 1935) and Professor Ramchandra Gandhi (1937-2007). His wife Tara, an ornithologist and nature conservationist, and Gopalkrishna Gandhi reside in Chennai and Bengaluru, spending as much time as possible in the Nilgiri Hills, Tamil Nadu. They have two daughters and three granddaughters.
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