A highly original, stirring book on Mahatma Gandhi that deepens our sense of his achievements and disappointmentsâhis success in seizing Indiaâs 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 countryâs minorities, outcasts, and rural poor.
Pulitzer Prizeâwinner Joseph Lelyveld shows in vivid, unmatched detail how Gandhiâs sense of mission, social values, and philosophy of nonviolent resistance were shaped on another subcontinentâduring two decades in South Africaâand then tested by an India that quickly learned to revere him as a Mahatma, or âGreat Soul,â while following him only a small part of the way to the social transformation he envisioned. The man himself emerges as one of historyâs 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 heroicâand tragicâlast months of this selfless leaderâs 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 âFather of the Nationâ but were less inclined to embrace his teachings. Muslim support, crucial in his rise to leadership, soon waned, and the oppressed untouchablesâfor whom Gandhi spoke to Hindus as a wholeâproduced their own leaders.
Here is a vital, brilliant reconsideration of Gandhiâs 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 Indiaâs social conscienceâand not just Indiaâs.