Tagore And Gandhi Argue

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The Tagore-Gandhi Debate on Matters of Truth and Untruth

Author : Bindu Puri
Publisher : Springer
ISBN 13 : 8132221168
Total Pages : 208 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (322 download)

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Book Synopsis The Tagore-Gandhi Debate on Matters of Truth and Untruth by : Bindu Puri

Download or read book The Tagore-Gandhi Debate on Matters of Truth and Untruth written by Bindu Puri and published by Springer. This book was released on 2014-11-25 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Between 1915 and 1941, Tagore (1861-1941) and Gandhi (1869-1948) differed and argued about many things of personal, national, and international significance---satyagraha, non-cooperation, the boycott and burning of foreign cloth, the efficacy of fasting as a means of resistance and Gandhi’s mantra connecting “swaraj” and “charkha”. The author tracks the development of this dialogue and argues that the debate was about more fundamental issues, such as the nature of truth and swaraj/freedom and the possibilities of untruth that Tagore saw in Gandhi’s movements for truth and freedom. Puri shows that the differences between the two men’s perspectives came from differently negotiated relationships to (and understandings of) tradition and modernity. Tagore was part of the Bengal renaissance and powerfully influenced by the idea that the Enlightenment consisted in the freedom of the individual to reason for herself. Gandhi, on the other hand, remained close to the Indian philosophical tradition which linked individual freedom to moral progress. Puri points out that Tagore cannot, however, be unreflectively assimilated to the Enlightenment project of Western modernity, for he came fairly close to Gandhi in rejecting the anthropocentricism of modernity and shared Gandhi’s belief in an enchanted cosmos. The only single-authored volume on the Tagore-Gandhi debate, this book is a welcome addition to the existing literature.

Gandhi and Tagore

Author : Gangeya Mukherji
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1317368746
Total Pages : 259 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (173 download)

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Book Synopsis Gandhi and Tagore by : Gangeya Mukherji

Download or read book Gandhi and Tagore written by Gangeya Mukherji and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2015-11-06 with total page 259 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book brings together the political thought of Gandhi and Tagore to examine the relationship between politics, truth and conscience. It explores truth and conscience as viable public virtues with regard to two exemplars of ethical politics, addressing in turn the concerns of an evolving modern Indian political community. The comprehensive and textually argued discussion frames the subject of the validity of ethical politics in inhospitable contexts such as the fanatically despotic state and energised nationalism. The book studies in nuanced detail Tagore’s opposition to political violence in colonial Bengal, the scope of non-violence and satyagraha as recommended by Gandhi to Jews in Nazi Germany, his response to the complexity of protest against the Jallianwala Bagh massacre, and the differently constituted nationalism of Gandhi and Tagore. It presents their famous debate in a new light, embedded within the dynamics of cultural identification, political praxis and the capacity of a community to imbibe the principles of ethical politics. Comprehensive and perceptive in analysis, this book will be a valuable addition for scholars and researchers of political science with specialisation in Indian political thought, philosophy and history. Gangeya Mukherji is Reader in English at Mahamati Prannath Mahavidyalaya, Mau-Chitrakoot, Uttar Pradesh, India.

Tagore and Gandhi Argue

Author : Rabindranath Tagore
Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 196 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (91 download)

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Book Synopsis Tagore and Gandhi Argue by : Rabindranath Tagore

Download or read book Tagore and Gandhi Argue written by Rabindranath Tagore and published by . This book was released on 1945 with total page 196 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Interchange of political and social views between Rabindranath Tagore, 1861-1941, Bengali and English author and Mahatma Gandhi, 1869-1948, statesman.

The Mahatma and the Poet

Author : Mahatma Gandhi
Publisher : National Book Trust India
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 248 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (91 download)

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Book Synopsis The Mahatma and the Poet by : Mahatma Gandhi

Download or read book The Mahatma and the Poet written by Mahatma Gandhi and published by National Book Trust India. This book was released on 1997 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is a collection of letters and debates exchanged between Mahatma Gandhi and Rabindranath Tagore between 1915 and 1941. The introduction by the compilor examines the historical context of the correspondence and provides an overview of the major issues discussed.

Rabindranath Tagore

Author : Patrick Colm Hogan
Publisher : Fairleigh Dickinson Univ Press
ISBN 13 : 9780838639801
Total Pages : 308 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (398 download)

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Book Synopsis Rabindranath Tagore by : Patrick Colm Hogan

Download or read book Rabindranath Tagore written by Patrick Colm Hogan and published by Fairleigh Dickinson Univ Press. This book was released on 2003 with total page 308 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection provides a lucid introduction for those unfamiliar with Tagore's work, while simultaneously presenting importnat new scholarship and novel interpretation. Rabindranath Tagore is considered the greatest modern writer of India. He is also one of the great social and political figures in modern Indian history. After he received the Nobel Prize for literature in 1913, Tagore's reputation in the West has been based primarily on his mystical poetry. But beyond poetry, Tagore wrote novels of social realism, treating nationalism, religious intolerance, and violence. He wrote analytic works on social reform, education, and science- even engaging in a brief dialogue with Albert Einstein. Without ignoring religion and mysticism, the essays in this collection concentrate on this other Tagore. They explicate Tagore's writings in relation to its historical and literary context and, at the same time, draw out those aspects of Tagore's work that continue to bear on contemporary society.

Tagore & Gandhi

Author : Rudrangshu Mukherjee
Publisher : Rupa
ISBN 13 : 9789390652945
Total Pages : 0 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (529 download)

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Book Synopsis Tagore & Gandhi by : Rudrangshu Mukherjee

Download or read book Tagore & Gandhi written by Rudrangshu Mukherjee and published by Rupa. This book was released on 2021 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first in-depth study of the deep bond between Mahatma Gandhi and Gurudev Tagore by one of our greatest historians. Tagore and Gandhi were both born in the 1860s and, through their very different spheres of activity, became figures of global renown and shapers of modern India. They also shared a deep personal friendship which was robust enough to bear the strain of differences on many public issues through the 1920s and '30s. Gandhi always addressed Tagore as Gurudev which, for Gandhi, was not an empty epithet. Gandhi sought Tagore's blessings at every critical juncture of his Indian public career. Tagore openly acknowledged Gandhi as the greatest Indian of his time. In Tagore and Gandhi: Walking Alone, Walking Together, Rudrangshu Mukherjee explores their relationship through their differences expressed in their writings and letters to each other and also tries to understand the beliefs that acted as the bond between the two of them. They differed with each other without a hint of acrimony, and they looked towards building an India that was inclusive and free from hatred and bigotry.

Righteous Republic

Author : Ananya Vajpeyi
Publisher : Harvard University Press
ISBN 13 : 0674071832
Total Pages : 356 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (74 download)

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Book Synopsis Righteous Republic by : Ananya Vajpeyi

Download or read book Righteous Republic written by Ananya Vajpeyi and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2012-10-31 with total page 356 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What India’s founders derived from Western political traditions as they struggled to free their country from colonial rule is widely understood. Less well-known is how India’s own rich knowledge traditions of two and a half thousand years influenced these men as they set about constructing a nation in the wake of the Raj. In Righteous Republic, Ananya Vajpeyi furnishes this missing account, a ground-breaking assessment of modern Indian political thought. Taking five of the most important founding figures—Mohandas Gandhi, Rabindranath Tagore, Abanindranath Tagore, Jawaharlal Nehru, and B. R. Ambedkar—Vajpeyi looks at how each of them turned to classical texts in order to fashion an original sense of Indian selfhood. The diverse sources in which these leaders and thinkers immersed themselves included Buddhist literature, the Bhagavad Gita, Sanskrit poetry, the edicts of Emperor Ashoka, and the artistic and architectural achievements of the Mughal Empire. India’s founders went to these sources not to recuperate old philosophical frameworks but to invent new ones. In Righteous Republic, a portrait emerges of a group of innovative, synthetic, and cosmopolitan thinkers who succeeded in braiding together two Indian knowledge traditions, the one political and concerned with social questions, the other religious and oriented toward transcendence. Within their vast intellectual, aesthetic, and moral inheritance, the founders searched for different aspects of the self that would allow India to come into its own as a modern nation-state. The new republic they envisaged would embody both India’s struggle for sovereignty and its quest for the self.

The Argumentative Indian

Author : Amartya Sen
Publisher : Farrar, Straus and Giroux
ISBN 13 : 1466854294
Total Pages : 436 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (668 download)

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Book Synopsis The Argumentative Indian by : Amartya Sen

Download or read book The Argumentative Indian written by Amartya Sen and published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. This book was released on 2013-10-15 with total page 436 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Nobel Laureate offers a dazzling new book about his native country India is a country with many distinct traditions, widely divergent customs, vastly different convictions, and a veritable feast of viewpoints. In The Argumentative Indian, Amartya Sen draws on a lifetime study of his country's history and culture to suggest the ways we must understand India today in the light of its rich, long argumentative tradition. The millenia-old texts and interpretations of Hindu, Buddhist, Jain, Muslim, agnostic, and atheistic Indian thought demonstrate, Sen reminds us, ancient and well-respected rules for conducting debates and disputations, and for appreciating not only the richness of India's diversity but its need for toleration. Though Westerners have often perceived India as a place of endless spirituality and unreasoning mysticism, he underlines its long tradition of skepticism and reasoning, not to mention its secular contributions to mathematics, astronomy, linguistics, medicine, and political economy. Sen discusses many aspects of India's rich intellectual and political heritage, including philosophies of governance from Kautilya's and Ashoka's in the fourth and third centuries BCE to Akbar's in the 1590s; the history and continuing relevance of India's relations with China more than a millennium ago; its old and well-organized calendars; the films of Satyajit Ray and the debates between Gandhi and the visionary poet Tagore about India's past, present, and future. The success of India's democracy and defense of its secular politics depend, Sen argues, on understanding and using this rich argumentative tradition. It is also essential to removing the inequalities (whether of caste, gender, class, or community) that mar Indian life, to stabilizing the now precarious conditions of a nuclear-armed subcontinent, and to correcting what Sen calls the politics of deprivation. His invaluable book concludes with his meditations on pluralism, on dialogue and dialectics in the pursuit of social justice, and on the nature of the Indian identity.

Mahatma Gandhi

Author : Dennis Dalton
Publisher : Columbia University Press
ISBN 13 : 0231530390
Total Pages : 353 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (315 download)

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Book Synopsis Mahatma Gandhi by : Dennis Dalton

Download or read book Mahatma Gandhi written by Dennis Dalton and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2012-02-21 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Dennis Dalton's classic account of Gandhi's political and intellectual development focuses on the leader's two signal triumphs: the civil disobedience movement (or salt satyagraha) of 1930 and the Calcutta fast of 1947. Dalton clearly demonstrates how Gandhi's lifelong career in national politics gave him the opportunity to develop and refine his ideals. He then concludes with a comparison of Gandhi's methods and the strategies of Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X, drawing a fascinating juxtaposition that enriches the biography of all three figures and asserts Gandhi's relevance to the study of race and political leadership in America. Dalton situates Gandhi within the "clash of civilizations" debate, identifying the implications of his work on continuing nonviolent protests. He also extensively reviews Gandhian studies and adds a detailed chronology of events in Gandhi's life.

Revisiting Gandhi: Legacies For World Peace And National Integration

Author : Swaran Singh
Publisher : World Scientific
ISBN 13 : 9811240108
Total Pages : 309 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (112 download)

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Book Synopsis Revisiting Gandhi: Legacies For World Peace And National Integration by : Swaran Singh

Download or read book Revisiting Gandhi: Legacies For World Peace And National Integration written by Swaran Singh and published by World Scientific. This book was released on 2021-11-16 with total page 309 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book interrogates several strands of Gandhian design, articulations, methods and ideals, through five sections. These include Theoretical Perspectives, Peace and World Order, Revolutionary Experiments, National Integration and Gandhi in Chinese Discourses. The authors seek to provide answers to questions as: Were Gandhian ideas utopian? What is the contemporary relevance of Gandhi? Do his ideas share convergence with theory in world politics and international relations? What was his role in forging national integration? How did his ideologies and experiments with truth resonate with countries as China?The writings also underline that being averse to individualism, for Gandhi it was the realm of societal interests which were significant, encompassing the good of humanity, dignity of labor and village-centric development. Development paradigms and health related challenges are articulated in the book to underline the significance of Gandhi's vision of 'Leave no one behind' to create an egalitarian society with respect and tolerance. The book presents the essential humility and simplicity of Gandhi.This book is a must read for those who seek to understand Gandhi in a way that is candid and inclusive. It's a book that conceals nothing and does not shy away from presenting debates on Gandhi. Moreover, it is a factual account, with contributors having relied extensively on archival materials, essays and an extensive review of literature. Hence, the book is replete with pertinent documentation and scholarship and makes a significant value-addition in the literature on Gandhi.

Tagore on Gandhi

Author : Rabindranath Tagore
Publisher :
ISBN 13 : 9788129112941
Total Pages : 58 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (129 download)

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Book Synopsis Tagore on Gandhi by : Rabindranath Tagore

Download or read book Tagore on Gandhi written by Rabindranath Tagore and published by . This book was released on 2008 with total page 58 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As a supreme symbol of India's culture and spirit, Tagore was a contemporary of the other colossus of nineteenth-century India, Mahatma Gandhi. These two towering figures came to represent the essence of Indian thought and life in the modern age. Contemporaries and icons of our freedom struggle movement, they differed in their intrinsic philosophies and yet shared the same vision. This book is a collection of Tagore s essays and addresses on Gandhi, whom he reverentially called The Mahatma . These were written on the occasion of Gandhiji s birth anniversaries and his Epic Fast in 1932, and provide a useful insight on the Mahatma. While Gandhi the Man talks of the Mahatma s immense humanity, A Liberated Soul reveals the secret of Gandhi s success as his dynamic spiritual strength and incessant self-sacrifice. In On Mahatmaji s Birthday Tagore acknowledges Gandhi as the central bond of brotherhood in the motherland, while in Moral Warfare he espouses a spiritual war against the violence of evils.

Pax Gandhiana

Author : Anthony J Parel
Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0190491469
Total Pages : 238 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (94 download)

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Book Synopsis Pax Gandhiana by : Anthony J Parel

Download or read book Pax Gandhiana written by Anthony J Parel and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2016-07-01 with total page 238 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Notwithstanding his contributions to religion, nonviolence, civil rights, and civil disobedience, among other areas, Gandhi's most significant contribution is that as a political philosopher. While he is not often treated as such, Gandhi was, as Anthony J. Parel argues, a political philosopher sui generis, both in his philosophical method of constant self-criticism and his framework of philosophical analysis. Gandhi wrote daily on politics, but he did so as an activist; political philosophy was to him not just a way of understanding truths of political phenomena but was directly related to understanding those truths in action. If realized in action these truths would give rise to new political institutions, which in turn would create a corresponding peaceful political and social order. Parel dubs this order Pax Gandhiana. The main contention of Pax Gandhiana is that peace cannot be achieved by politics alone. Peace requires the confluence of the canonical ends of life: politics and economics (artha), ethics (dharma), forms of pleasure (kama), and the pursuit of spiritual transcendence (moksha). Modern political philosophy isolates politics from the other three ends, but Gandhi's originality, according to Parel, lies in the way that he brings all four together. In fact Gandhi's political philosophy is relevant not only to India but also to the rest of the world: it is a new type of sovereignty that harmonizes the interest of individual states with the community of states. Arguing against scholars who dispute a theoretical unity in Gandhi's writings, Parel suggests that Gandhi is the preeminent non-western political philosopher, and in this book he seeks to identify the conceptual framework of Gandhi's political philosophy, the Pax Gandhiana.

Great Soul

Author : Joseph Lelyveld
Publisher : Vintage
ISBN 13 : 0307389952
Total Pages : 450 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (73 download)

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Book Synopsis Great Soul by : Joseph Lelyveld

Download or read book Great Soul written by Joseph Lelyveld and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2012-04-03 with total page 450 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.

Negotiating the Modern

Author : Amit Ray
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1135866058
Total Pages : 207 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (358 download)

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Book Synopsis Negotiating the Modern by : Amit Ray

Download or read book Negotiating the Modern written by Amit Ray and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2007-01-22 with total page 207 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explicates long-standing literary celebrations of 'India' and 'Indian-ness' by charting a cultural history of Indianness in the Anglophone world, locating moments (in intellectual, religious and cultural history) where India and Indianness are offered up as solutions to modern moral, ethical and political questions in the 'West.' Beginning in the early 1800s, South Asians actively seek to occupy and modify spaces created by the scholarly discourses of Orientalism: the study of the East (‘Orient’) via Western (‘European’) epistemological frameworks. Tracing the varying fortunes of Orientalist scholars from the inception of British rule, this study charts the work of key Indologists in the colonial era. The rhetorical constructions of East and West deployed by both colonizer and colonized, as well as attempts to synthesize or transcend such constructions, became crucial to conceptions of the ‘modern.’ Eventually, Indian desire for political sovereignty together with the deeply racialized formations of imperialism produced a shift in the dialogic relationship between South Asia and Europe that had been initiated and sustained by orientalists. This impetus pushed scholarly discourse about India in Europe, North America and elsewhere, out of what had been a direct role in politics and theology and into high ‘Literary’ culture.

Rabindranath Tagore's Ideational Universe

Author : Bidyut Chakrabarty
Publisher : Taylor & Francis
ISBN 13 : 1003810926
Total Pages : 192 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (38 download)

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Book Synopsis Rabindranath Tagore's Ideational Universe by : Bidyut Chakrabarty

Download or read book Rabindranath Tagore's Ideational Universe written by Bidyut Chakrabarty and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2023-12-01 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores Tagore’s socio-political ideas through his novels, short stories, and essays. It looks at Tagore beyond his literary achievements and examines his notions of friendship, religion, nationalism, civilization, and knowledge. It highlights his uniquely textured and innovatively argued views on critical aspects of humanity in the tumultuous phase of Indian nationalist campaign that also witnessed a kaleidoscope of myriad ideological voices, besides the hegemonic mainstream nationalist campaign, led by Gandhi. It captures the bard’s creative ideational priorities and his attempts to radically transform the prevalent socio-economic and politico-cultural environment. The volume will be of great interest to scholars and researchers of history, politics, literature, and South Asian studies.

Re-thinking Religious Pluralism

Author : Bindu Puri
Publisher : Springer Nature
ISBN 13 : 9811595402
Total Pages : 186 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (115 download)

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Book Synopsis Re-thinking Religious Pluralism by : Bindu Puri

Download or read book Re-thinking Religious Pluralism written by Bindu Puri and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2020-12-16 with total page 186 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book combines the mainstream liberal arguments for religious tolerance with arguments from religious traditions in India to offer insights into appropriate attitudes toward religious ‘others’ from the perspective of the devout. The respective chapters address the relationship between religions from a comparative perspective, helping readers understand the meaning of religion and the opportunities for interreligious dialogue in the works of contemporary Indian philosophers such as Gandhi and Ramakrishna Paramhansa. It also examines various religious traditions from a philosophical viewpoint in order to reassess religious discussions on how to respond to differing and different religious others. Given its comprehensive coverage, the book is of interest to scholars working in the areas of anthropology, philosophy, cultural and religious diversity, and history of religion.

Gandhi Before India

Author : Ramachandra Guha
Publisher : Vintage
ISBN 13 : 038553230X
Total Pages : 544 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (855 download)

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Book Synopsis Gandhi Before India by : Ramachandra Guha

Download or read book Gandhi Before India written by Ramachandra Guha and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2014-04-15 with total page 544 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.