Hi Balasankaran, and Gautam (in continuation of your discussion from 2011!),
Yann forward me the Wikisource page for Gandhi's book "Experiments with
Truth" (published 1927) which is pretty much a perfect example of the
problem in question (ie. a text that is PD in India and copyrighted in
the US).
http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/An_Autobiography_or_The_Story_of_my_Experimen…
So, while the source document is hosted on Wikilivres, Wikisource has a
nice page with some basic information, the copyright story, and an
external link - thereby allowing people from within the Wikimedia
community who reach it to access the full text outside. In the interim,
this seems like a great way to get around US copyright law, and the
Wikisource community seems to like it fine. Presumably, something like
this can be done on Commons too.
Thank you Yann.
Cheers,
-Achal