Gandhi: Anti-Biography of a Great Soul

176 Pages·2018·5.3 MB·English

by  Michaël de Saint-Cheron

Gandhi
Anti-Biography of a Great Soul
Taylor & Francis
Taylor & Francis Group
http://taylorandfrancis.com
Gandhi
Anti-Biography of a Great Soul
By
Michaël de Saint-Cheron
Translated by
Asha Narang Spaak
OR Routledge
GDELTU Taylor & Francis Group
E
LONDON AND NEW YORK
Firstpublished2018
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TypesetinSabonLTStd10/13.1
byManmohanKumar,Delhi11003
SOCIAL
SCIENCE
PRESS
OR Routledge
GDELTU Taylor & Francis Group
E
LONDON AND NEW YORK
To Dr Georg Lechner who loves India where he has
lived for 25 years
‘So long as men abide by the superstition that they must respect
unjust laws, they will be oppressed and enslaved’.
Gandhi, Non-Violent Resistance, (Buchet-Castel, 1986)
Contents
Prologue: Gandhi and India 1
1. The Anti-Biography of a Great Soul 5
2. How Does One Make a Mohandas Gandhi? 13
3. Gandhi Discovers the Bhagavad Gita 37
4. An Indian Lawyer Confronts Apartheid 45
5. The Non-Violent Revolution 55
6. The Path to Renunciation 61
7. Satyagraha in Deed and in Reality 77
8. The Gandhi-Tolstoy Correspondence 89
9. Gandhi returns to India 101
10. Between Non-Violence and Anti-Zionism 117
11. India and Gandhi viewed by Romain Rolland 129
and André Malraux
12. Gandhi’s Heritage Today 145
13. Beyond Gandhi: Hinduism-Judaism— 151
A Root-to-Root Conversation
During the early days of legal practice, Johannesburg, 1900
Courtesy: www.mkgandhi.org
Prologue
Gandhi and India
In the 20th century, in the midst of its revolutions, its totalitarian
societies of the Left and of the Right, India brought to the
world the first ever revolution based on non-violence. Ahimsa
was, in principle, created by a single man who, with his charisma,
his heroism, perhaps also his saintliness opposed all forms of
oppression be it racial, colonial, religious or ideological; and
this despite his errors, often his blindness with regard to Hitler,
the latter’s national-socialism and the ‘final solution’ he decreed
against the Jews. Gandhi used the power of non-violence to
confront the forces of violence and contributed thus to the freedom
of India from British rule twelve years before France gave Algeria
its independence. India became independent less than a year before
the State of Israel was created, an event that was not recognized
by Gandhi’s India. In the course of a century replete with murder
and mayhem, India is the only country whose people won their
freedom through the strength of non-violence.
However, despite these noble, spiritual and very Gandhian
credentials, one can love the people of India without idealizing
them, knowing as we do the terrible things that continue to
happen in the country even at the beginning of the 20th century.
I shall not dwell at length on the caste system, the condition of
the Untouchables, and most importantly, the marriages of three
and four-year-old girls, or those at the age of puberty who will
then become pregnant by the time they are thirteen or fourteen,
risking death because of their weakened state, often from anaemia