“A fascinating, thought-provoking, helpful and heartening book.”—Los Angeles Times “Juergensmeyer’s book is something of a Gandhian tour de force — a careful analysis and series of applications of Gandhi’s concepts of satyagraha … to everyday situations with which most Western readers are familiar.”—Religious Studies Review “This is a manual of instruction in the best sense: a popular reassessment of the activist use of satyagraha in conflict resolution that has depth and a true appreciation for the ethical subtleties of dialectical struggles, and for the multiple dimensions of ‘passive resistance.’”—Library Journal

Short, easy-to-read essays revealing Gandhi’s most important teachings on love, meditation, service, and prayer—with profound wisdom and inspiration for readers of every faith. Mahatma Gandhi became famous as the leader of the Indian independence movement, but he called himself “a man of God disguised as a politician.” The Way to God demonstrates his enduring significance as a spiritual leader whose ideas offer insight and solace to seekers of every practice and persuasion. Collecting many of his most significant writings, the book explores the deep religious roots of Gandhi’s worldly accomplishments and reveals—in his own words—his intellectual, moral, and spiritual approaches to the divine. First published in India in 1971, the book is based on Gandhi’s lifetime experiments with truth and reveals the heart of his teachings. Gandhi’s aphoristic power, his ability to sum up complex ideas in a few authoritative strokes, shines through these pages. Individual chapters cover such topics as moral discipline, spiritual practice, spiritual experience, and much more. Gandhi’s guiding principles of selflessness, humility, service, active yet nonviolent resistance, and vegetarianism make his writings as timely today as when these writings first appeared. A foreword by Gandhi’s grandson Arun and an introduction by Michael Nagler add useful context.

A biography detailing Gandhi’s twenty-year stay in South Africa and his attitudes and behavior in the nation’s political context. In the pantheon of freedom fighters, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi has pride of place. His fame and influence extend far beyond India and are nowhere more significant than in South Africa. “India gave us a Mohandas, we gave them a Mahatma,” goes a popular South African refrain. Contemporary South African leaders, including Mandela, have consistently lauded him as being part of the epic battle to defeat the racist white regime. The South African Gandhi focuses on Gandhi’s first leadership experiences and the complicated man they reveal—a man who actually supported the British Empire. Ashwin Desai and Goolam Vahed unveil a man who, throughout his stay on African soil, stayed true to Empire while showing a disdain for Africans. For Gandhi, whites and Indians were bonded by an Aryan bloodline that had no place for the African. Gandhi’s racism was matched by his class prejudice towards the Indian indentured. He persistently claimed that they were ignorant and needed his leadership, and he wrote their resistances and compromises in surviving a brutal labor regime out of history. The South African Gandhi writes the indentured and working class back into history. The authors show that Gandhi never missed an opportunity to show his loyalty to Empire, with a particular penchant for war as a means to do so. He served as an Empire stretcher-bearer in the Boer War while the British occupied South Africa, he demanded guns in the aftermath of the Bhambatha Rebellion, and he toured the villages of India during the First World War as recruiter for the Imperial army. This meticulously researched book punctures the dominant narrative of Gandhi and uncovers an ambiguous figure whose time on African soil was marked by a desire to seek the integration of Indians, minus many basic rights, into the white body politic while simultaneously excluding Africans from his moral compass and political ideals. Praise for The South African Gandhi “In this impressively researched study, two South African scholars of Indian background bravely challenge political myth-making on both sides of the Indian Ocean that has sought to canonize Gandhi as a founding father of the struggle for equality there. They show that the Mahatma-to-be carefully refrained from calling on his followers to throw in their lot with the black majority. The mass struggle he finally led remained an Indian struggle.” —Joseph Lelyveld, author of Great Soul: Mahatma Gandhi and His Struggle with India “This is a wonderful demonstration of meticulously researched, evocative, clear-eyed and fearless history writing. It uncovers a story, some might even call it a scandal, that has remained hidden in plain sight for far too long. The South African Gandhi is a big book. It is a serious challenge to the way we have been taught to think about Gandhi.” —Arundhati Roy, author of The God of Small Things

Documents the lifelong journey of faith—full of challenges along the way—that made Gandhi the enlightened spiritual leader we revere.

"Born in 1934 in South Africa, where he was subject to the daily injustices of apartheid, and raised in a family dedicated to nonviolent social reform, Dr. Gandhi writes with rare authority and insight. His narrative draws primarily upon the experiences as a youth in India, where he lived with his grandfather during the last eighteen months of the Mahatma's life.

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.

In this book, the author of Personal History, Vincent Sheean, demonstrates that Gandhi’s life, work and teaching were for the whole world as well as for India. it is suggested that the terrifying weapon of non-violence, having freed India, might be about to free the world. Though this book is in one sense an attempt to reveal the meaning of Mahatma Gandhi’s power and life and teaching, it is, in a more important sense, the author’s eloquent testament of belief in Gandhi’s mission. Vincent Sheean went to India to ask Gandhi many questions. It was a quest brought on by the failure of every other human institution to supply hope for the future. What he learned there, from Gandhi and others, is of immense, immediate importance to all men everywhere and to the future of humanity. Thoughtful men have begun to see that the only weapon even more awesome than the atom bomb, the only weapon able to contend with it on anything like equal terms, is the irresistible weapon of non-violence conceived by Mahatma Gandhi. Here is the record of its first great success, the story of how it was created, and a clear, sympathetic explanation of the philosophy that brought it into being, indeed made it inevitable. Here, also, are chapters on the background of Hindu philosophy, on Gandhi’s own beliefs and how he applied them, on Gandhi’s progress from an obscure lawyer in South Africa to his position as India’s leader and deliverer and the greatest force for peace at the present time, on the author’s own meetings with Gandhi, the assassination and funeral, both of which he witnessed, and a final chapter of the author’s conclusions on Gandhi’s meaning to the future of world peace in this atomic age. The title of the book comes from Gandhi’s favourite hymn, which was always sung on solemn occasions, including the funeral march to the Ganges.