This book engages a multidisciplinary approach to understand Gandhi in addressing specific contemporary societal issues. The issues highlighted in the book through thirteen distinct, yet interrelated, themes offer solutions to the societal challenges through the prism of Gandhian thought process. This edited book explores how ideas Gandhi expressed over a century ago can be applied today to issues from the UN's Sustainable Development Goals to peaceful resolution of conflicts. In particular, it looks at the contemporary societies' critical issues and offers solutions through the prism of Gandhian ideas. Written in an accessible style, this book reintroduces Gandhi to today's audiences in relevant terms.

Makiguchi and Gandhi explores ideas about Japanese educator Tsunesaburo Makiguchi (1871-1944) and Indian political leader Mahatma Gandhi (1869-1948) as examples of inspiration for large mass movements in the 20th century. Based on research done in Japan, India, Hawai'i, and the United Kingdom, this book breaks new ground by examining and theorizing the fate of dissident thinkers and raises the question often asked by both Gandihan and Soka scholars alike- were they truly radical thinkers?

9/11 marked the beginning of a century that is defined by widespread violence. Every other day seems to be a furthering of the already catastrophic present towards a more disastrous tomorrow. With climate change looming over us, frequent economic instability, religious wars, and relentless political mayhem, life for what we have made of it seems more and more unsustainable. Douglas Allen insists that we look to Gandhi, if only selectively and creatively, in order to move towards a nonviolent and sustainable future. Is a Gandhi-informed swaraj technology, valuable but humanly limited, possible? What would a Gandhian world—a more egalitarian, interconnected, decentralized—of globalization look like? Focusing on key themes in Gandhi’s thinking such as violence and nonviolence, absolute truth and relative truth, ethical and spiritual living, and his critique of modernity, the book compels us to rethink our positions today.

Writing about Gandhi without being obvious is always difficult. Numerous books and articles are published every year, especially across the anniversaries of his birth and death. The judicious scholar believes that writing something new on this iconic figure is almost impossible. However, in the difficult times when this book was conceived, at the peak of what presumably can be considered as the worst humanitarian disaster of the 21st century, the Gandhian legacy has become more topical than ever. Gandhi’s thought and experience regarding laws and economy, and his views on secularism or on the tremendous effects of the colonial rule in India and beyond provide the opportunity to reflect on persistently manipulated constitutions and violated human rights, on the crisis of secularism and the demand of a sustainable, environment friendly economy. This book aims not only to offer new insights into Gandhi’s experience and legacy but also to prove how Gandhian values are relevant to the present and can provide explanations and solutions for present challenges. Gandhi After Gandhi will appeal to researchers and students alike interested in Indian culture and political thinking and Indian history since independence.

When Mahatma Gandhi died in 1948 by an assassin's bullet, the most potent legacy he left to the world was the technique of satyagraha (literally, holding on to the Truth). His "experiments with Truth" were far from complete at the time of his death, but he had developed a new technique for effecting social and political change through the constructive conduct of conflict: Gandhian satyagraha had become eminently more than "passive resistance" or "civil disobedience." By relating what Gandhi said to what he did and by examining instances of satyagraha led by others, this book abstracts from the Indian experiments those essential elements that constitute the Gandhian technique. It explores, in terms familiar to the Western reader, its distinguishing characteristics and its far-reaching implications for social and political philosophy.

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.