The Oxford India Gandhi looks beyond the plaster-cast image of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, the Mahatma. Gandhi's autobiography ends in the late 1920s, several historic years before his assassination in 1948. This book seeks to fill that void left by Gandhi himself. Edited by GopalkrishnaGandhi, the book tells Gandhi's story in his own words - the story of his life as he himself might have narrated it to a grandchild.Through speeches and articles, and also the more informal diary entries, letters, and conversations, the writings unfold chronologically unexplored facets of Gandhi's evolving world view, his responses to persons and events, relationships with family, friends, and colleagues. The result is acollection that manages to look beyond the oft-repeated details - into the little things that almost always went unnoticed. As for example his playful retort "Ask Mrs Gandhi" when asked whether he ever suffered from nerves, or his condemning of spitting in public places as "a national vice", or histelling response "You will be as free as any scavenger" to the zamindar who had asked him what will become of them (meaning the zamindars) when India became independent.Gopalkrishna Gandhi's general and part introductions locate the writings in their proper context, while the detailed notes provide a wealth of additional information for interested readers and explain the relevance of selected entries. The photographs that preface each part vivify a life that rouseda million hearts and spearheaded one of the greatest marches to freedom ever witnessed in human history.The Oxford India Gandhi offers a look into the personal life of one of the subcontinent's most public figures of all time. Part of Oxford University Press's prestigious "Oxford India Collection", the book is as much for those who know Gandhi as for young readers encountering the Mahatma for thefirst time.This special edition commemorates Mahatma Gandhi's sesquicentennial year and includes a new Introduction by Gopalkrishna Gandhi.

This new selection of Gandhi's writings taken from his books, articles, letters and interviews sets out his views on religion, politics, society, non-violence and civil disobedience. Judith M. Brown's excellent introduction and notes examines his philosophy and the political context in which he wrote.

This selection of Gandhi's writings, taken from his letters, articles and books, represents the complete cross-section of his thought, from his early years as a young barrister in London, to his final days as sage and counsel to newly independent India. The selection not only reveals the growth of his ideas but also their essential internal integrity and consistency. Similarly, it illustrates the full facets of his personality, showing Gandhi to be both an ascetic mystic contemplative, as well as a man of action, and revealing aspects of his thought and character that may have previously been obscured.

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.

Here is the first volume of a magisterial biography of Mohandas Gandhi that gives us the most illuminating portrait we have had of the life, the work and the historical context of one of the most abidingly influential—and controversial—men in modern history. Ramachandra Guha—hailed by Time as “Indian democracy’s preeminent chronicler”—takes us from Gandhi’s birth in 1869 through his upbringing in Gujarat, his two years as a student in London and his two decades as a lawyer and community organizer in South Africa. Guha has uncovered myriad previously untapped documents, including private papers of Gandhi’s contemporaries and co-workers; contemporary newspapers and court documents; the writings of Gandhi’s children; and secret files kept by British Empire functionaries. Using this wealth of material in an exuberant, brilliantly nuanced and detailed narrative, Guha describes the social, political and personal worlds inside of which Gandhi began the journey that would earn him the honorific Mahatma: “Great Soul.” And, more clearly than ever before, he elucidates how Gandhi’s work in South Africa—far from being a mere prelude to his accomplishments in India—was profoundly influential in his evolution as a family man, political thinker, social reformer and, ultimately, beloved leader. In 1893, when Gandhi set sail for South Africa, he was a twenty-three-year-old lawyer who had failed to establish himself in India. In this remarkable biography, the author makes clear the fundamental ways in which Gandhi’s ideas were shaped before his return to India in 1915. It was during his years in England and South Africa, Guha shows us, that Gandhi came to understand the nature of imperialism and racism; and in South Africa that he forged the philosophy and techniques that would undermine and eventually overthrow the British Raj. Gandhi Before India gives us equally vivid portraits of the man and the world he lived in: a world of sharp contrasts among the coastal culture of his birthplace, High Victorian London, and colonial South Africa. It explores in abundant detail Gandhi’s experiments with dissident cults such as the Tolstoyans; his friendships with radical Jews, heterodox Christians and devout Muslims; his enmities and rivalries; and his often overlooked failures as a husband and father. It tells the dramatic, profoundly moving story of how Gandhi inspired the devotion of thousands of followers in South Africa as he mobilized a cross-class and inter-religious coalition, pledged to non-violence in their battle against a brutally racist regime. Researched with unequaled depth and breadth, and written with extraordinary grace and clarity, Gandhi Before India is, on every level, fully commensurate with its subject. It will radically alter our understanding and appreciation of twentieth-century India’s greatest man.

A biography of the revered Indian leader explores his early career in South Africa, the forging of his political activism, his influence, triumphs, and failures in India, and the development of his philosophy of nonviolence