Mahatma Gandhi (Critical Lives)

193 Pages·2011·0.666 MB·English

by  Douglas Allen

Mahatma
Gandhi
Douglas Allen

Mahatma Gandhi
Titles in the series Critical Lives present the work of leading cultural
figures of the modern period. Each book explores the life of the
artist, writer, philosopher or architect in question and relates it
to their major works.
In the same series
Georges Bataille Claude Debussy Edweard Muybridge
Stuart Kendall David J. Code Marta Braun
Charles Baudelaire Marcel Duchamp Vladimir Nabokov
Rosemary Lloyd Caroline Cros Barbara Wyllie
Pablo Neruda
Simone de Beauvoir Sergei Eisenstein
Dominic Moran
Ursula Tidd Mike O’Mahony
Octavio Paz
Samuel Beckett Michel Foucault
Nick Caistor
Andrew Gibson David Macey
Pablo Picasso
Walter Benjamin Jean Genet Mary Ann Caws
Esther Leslie Stephen Barber
Edgar Allan Poe
Jorge Luis Borges Derek Jarman Kevin J. Hayes
Jason Wilson Michael Charlesworth
Ezra Pound
Constantin Brancusi Alfred Jarry Alec Marsh
Sanda Miller Jill Fell Jean-Paul Sartre
Andrew Leak
William S. Burroughs James Joyce
Phil Baker Andrew Gibson Erik Satie
Mary E. Davis
Noam Chomsky Franz Kafka
Gertrude Stein
Wolfgang B. Sperlich Sander L. Gilman
Lucy Daniel
Jean Cocteau Lenin
Simone Weil
James S. Williams Lars T. Lih
Palle Yourgrau
Salvador Dalí Stéphane Mallarmé
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Mary Ann Caws Roger Pearson Edward Kanterian
Guy Debord Gabriel García Márquez Frank Lloyd Wright
Andy Merrifield Stephen M. Hart Robert McCarter
Mahatma Gandhi
Douglas Allen
reaktion books
Published by Reaktion Books Ltd
33Great Sutton Street
London ec1v 0dx, uk
www.reaktionbooks.co.uk
First published 2011
Copyright © Douglas Allen2011
All rights reserved
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system,
or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical,
photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission
of the publishers.
Printed and bound in Great Britain
by Bell & Bain, Glasgow
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Allen, Douglas, 1941–
Mahatma Gandhi. – (Critical lives)
1.Gandhi, Mahatma, 1869–1948.
2. Gandhi, Mahatma, 1869–1948–Philosophy.
3. Gandhi, Mahatma, 1869–1948–Influence.
4. Statesman –India –Biography.
I. TitleII. Series
947'.0841'092-dc22
isbn 978 1 86189 865 4
Contents
Introduction 7
1 Youth in India and England 18
2 South Africa 36
3 From the Return to India to the Salt March 53
4 From the Round Table to ‘Constructive Work’ 70
5 From ‘Quit India’ to Gandhi’s Assassination 88
6 Gandhi’s Philosophy: Truth and Nonviolence 105
7 Modern Civilization, Religion and a New Paradigm 131
8 Gandhi Today 155
References 177
Select Bibliography 187
Acknowledgements 190
Photo Acknowledgements 191
No digital rights
Gandhi’s faith in Sayta(truth).
Introduction
Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi was and continues to be
arguably the most admired human being of the twentieth century
in India andthroughout the world. Polls invariably rank Gandhi
at or near the top of the most admired, along with Albert Einstein
and a few others. M. K. Gandhi is better known as Mahatma
(‘Great Soul’) Gandhi, the honorific title usually believed to
have been conferred upon him and certainly popularized by
Nobel Laureate Rabindranath Tagore.1In India he was frequently
given the honorific title Bapu(‘Father’), and he is honoured in
India as the Father of the Nation. His birthday, 2October, is
celebrated in India as Gandhi Jayanti, a national holiday. After
the United Nations General Assembly vote of 15June 2007,
his birthday is celebrated worldwide as the ‘International Day
of Non-Violence’.
Remarkably, Mahatma Gandhi was and continues to be
admired by a range and diversity of people. Such admiration
was expressed by millions of illiterate peasants, who identified
with and often worshipped and even deified him. Of the Indian
leaders in the Freedom Movement, he alone was able to capture
the imagination, love and trust of the impoverished peasants and
to inspire them to transform their values and commitments. As
Tagore observed: ‘Mahatma Gandhi came and stood at the door
of India’s destitute millions, clad as one of themselves, speaking
to them in their own language . . . who else has so unreservedly
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accepted the vast masses of the Indian people as his flesh and
blood . . . Truth Awakened Truth.’
Such admiration was also expressed by many of the best-known
cultural, political and scientific figures of Gandhi’s lifetime. In
what is probably the most frequently cited tribute to Gandhi, made
on the occasion of Gandhi’s seventieth birthday, Albert Einstein
declared: ‘Generations to come, it may be, will scarcely believe
that such a one as this ever in flesh and blood walked upon this
earth.’ On another occasion Einstein wrote: ‘I believe that Gandhi’s
views were the most enlightened of all the political men in our time.
We should strive to do things in his spirit: not to use violence in
fighting for our cause, but by non-participation in anything you
believe is evil.’
On 30January 1948Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru,India’s first prime
minister, broadcast to the nation that ‘the light has gone out of
our lives and there is darkness everywhere . . . Our beloved leader,
Bapu as we called him, the Father of the Nation, is no more.’2
Nehru continues that he was wrong in stating that the light has
gone out. Even a thousand years later, he said, the light that had
illuminated India ‘will still be seen in this country and the world
will see it and it will give solace to innumerable hearts. For that
light represented something more than the immediate present;
it represented the living, the eternal truths, reminding us of the
right path, drawing us from error, taking this ancient country
to freedom.’
Civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr often spoke of his
admiration for and indebtedness to Gandhi in his theory and
practice of nonviolence and nonviolent activism. In the section
‘Pilgrimage to Nonviolence’ in his book Stride Toward Freedom, King
writes: ‘Gandhi was probably the first person in history to lift the
love ethic of Jesus above mere interaction between individuals to a
powerful and effective social force on a large scale.’ King says that
the intellectual and moral satisfaction that he failed to gain from
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