Great Soul: Mahatma Gandhi and His Struggle with India

Great Soul: Mahatma Gandhi and His Struggle with India

A highly original, stirring book on Mahatma Gandhi that deepens our sense of his achievements and disappointmentsâ€”his success in seizing Indiaâ€™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 countryâ€™s minorities, outcasts, and rural poor.

Pulitzer Prizeâ€“winner Joseph Lelyveld shows in vivid, unmatched detail how Gandhiâ€™s sense of mission, social values, and philosophy of nonviolent resistance were shaped on another subcontinentâ€”during two decades in South Africaâ€”and then tested by an India that quickly learned to revere him as a Mahatma, or â€œGreat 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 historyâ€™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 heroicâ€”and tragicâ€”last months of this selfless leaderâ€™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 â€œFather of the Nationâ€ but were less inclined to embrace his teachings. Muslim support, crucial in his rise to leadership, soon waned, and the oppressed untouchablesâ€”for whom Gandhi spoke to Hindus as a wholeâ€”produced their own leaders.

Here is a vital, brilliant reconsideration of Gandhiâ€™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 Indiaâ€™s social conscienceâ€”and not just Indiaâ€™s.

Country	USA
Brand	Vintage
Manufacturer	Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Binding	Paperback
PartNumber	0307389952_used
Color	White
IsAdultProduct
Height	8
Length	5.19
Weight	0.86200744442
Width	1.01
ReleaseDate	2012-04-03
NumberOfItems	1

Great Soul: Mahatma Gandhi and His Struggle with India

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