Gandhi India S Great Soul

A highly original, stirring book on Mahatma Gandhi that deepens our sense of his achievements and disappointments—his success in seizing India’s imagination and shaping its independence struggle as a mass movement, his recognition late in life that few of his followers paid more than lip service to his ambitious goals of social justice for the country’s minorities, outcasts, and rural poor. “A revelation. . . . Lelyveld has restored human depth to the Mahatma.”—Hari Kunzru, The New York Times Pulitzer Prize–winner Joseph Lelyveld shows in vivid, unmatched detail how Gandhi’s sense of mission, social values, and philosophy of nonviolent resistance were shaped on another subcontinent—during two decades in South Africa—and then tested by an India that quickly learned to revere him as a Mahatma, or “Great Soul,” while following him only a small part of the way to the social transformation he envisioned. The man himself emerges as one of history’s most remarkable self-creations, a prosperous lawyer who became an ascetic in a loincloth wholly dedicated to political and social action. Lelyveld leads us step-by-step through the heroic—and tragic—last months of this selfless leader’s long campaign when his nonviolent efforts culminated in the partition of India, the creation of Pakistan, and a bloodbath of ethnic cleansing that ended only with his own assassination. India and its politicians were ready to place Gandhi on a pedestal as “Father of the Nation” but were less inclined to embrace his teachings. Muslim support, crucial in his rise to leadership, soon waned, and the oppressed untouchables—for whom Gandhi spoke to Hindus as a whole—produced their own leaders. Here is a vital, brilliant reconsideration of Gandhi’s extraordinary struggles on two continents, of his fierce but, finally, unfulfilled hopes, and of his ever-evolving legacy, which more than six decades after his death still ensures his place as India’s social conscience—and not just India’s.

Follows the life of the statesman who was a key figure in India's fight for independence from Great Britain.

A biography of Mahatma Gandhi which emphasizes the spiritual beliefs that guided his actions in the nonviolent battle to secure India's independence from Great Britain. Includes activities and a note for parents and teachers.

Mohandas K. Gandhi, called Mahatma (“great soul”), was the father of modern India, but his influence has spread well beyond the subcontinent and is as important today as it was in the first part of the twentieth century and during this nation’s own civil rights movement. Taken from Gandhi’s writings throughout his life, The Essential Gandhi introduces us to his thoughts on politics, spirituality, poverty, suffering, love, non-violence, civil disobedience, and his own life. The pieces collected here, with explanatory head notes by Gandhi biographer Louis Fischer, offer the clearest, most thorough portrait of one of the greatest spiritual leaders the world has known. “Gandhi was inevitable. If humanity is to progress, Gandhi is inescapable. . . . We may ignore him at our own risk.” –Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. With a new Preface drawn from the writings of Eknath Easwaran In the annals of spirituality certain books stand out both for their historical importance and for their continued relevance. The Vintage Spiritual Classics series offers the greatest of these works in authoritative new editions, with specially commissioned essays by noted contemporary commentators. Filled with eloquence and fresh insight, encouragement and solace, Vintage Spiritual Classics are incomparable resources for all readers who seek a more substantive understanding of mankind's relation to the divine.

This book is not just another biography of Gandhi. It is valuable because it offers us a French view--- and Jewish too perhaps---- of a man and times so familiar to us and yet which acquires another dimension as it is represented through another culture. There are eloquent accounts in this book of philosophers like Ramakrishna and Vivekananda who influenced Gandhi’s thought and life. Rather than political events, Michaël de Saint-Chéron holds up the force and courage of a man who became a prophet in a blood-thirsty century. Interestingly, the author points out that it is only India and the Middle East which has given the world the two mother religions of Hinduism and Judaism. Neither China nor Europe, two major cultures, have produced a world religion. The book is further enriched by a discussion on Hindu mysticism and the concept of ‘love’ in Judaism. The author also looks at how Gandhi has played a major role on shaping French intellectuals such as Andre Malraux. At the end however, a central dilemma, and a painful one to the work, concerns Gandhi’s silence on the Holocaust. This book will be of interest to scholars working on Gandhian studies, Indian philosophy and Judaism, and to readers of politics, ethics and history.

More than half a century after his death, Mahatma Gandhi continues to inspire millions throughout the world. Yet modern India, most strikingly in its decision to join the nuclear arms race, seems to have abandoned much of his nonviolent vision. Inspired by recent events in India, Stanley Wolpert offers this subtle and profound biography of India's "Great Soul." Wolpert compellingly chronicles the life of Mahatma Gandhi from his early days as a child of privilege to his humble rise to power and his assassination at the hands of a man of his own faith. This trajectory, like that of Christ, was the result of Gandhi's passion: his conscious courting of suffering as the means to reach divine truth. From his early campaigns to stop discrimination in South Africa to his leadership of a people's revolution to end the British imperial domination of India, Gandhi emerges as a man of inner conflicts obscured by his political genius and moral vision. Influenced early on by nonviolent teachings in Hinduism, Jainism, Christianity, and Buddhism, he came to insist on the primacy of love for one's adversary in any conflict as the invincible power for change. His unyielding opposition to intolerance and oppression would inspire India like no leader since the Buddha--creating a legacy that would encourage Martin Luther King, Jr., Nelson Mandela, and other global leaders to demand a better world through peaceful civil disobedience. By boldly considering Gandhi the man, rather than the living god depicted by his disciples, Wolpert provides an unprecedented representation of Gandhi's personality and the profound complexities that compelled his actions and brought freedom to India.

Spiritual Biographies for Young People

This book historicizes Gandhi s earnest and provocative writings, showing his ideas maturing over time into a unique model of public action.