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.

Ved Mehta's brilliant Mahatma Gandhi and his Apostles provides an unparalleled portrait of the man who lead India out of its colonial past and into its modern form. Travelling all over India and the rest of the world, Mehta gives a nuanced and complex, yet vividly alive, portrait of Gandhi and of those men and women who were inspired by his actions.

Mahatma Gandhi’s grandson tells the story of how his grandfather taught him to turn darkness into light in this uniquely personal and vibrantly illustrated tale that carries a message of peace. How could he—a Gandhi—be so easy to anger? One thick, hot day, Arun Gandhi travels with his family to Grandfather Gandhi’s village. Silence fills the air—but peace feels far away for young Arun. When an older boy pushes him on the soccer field, his anger fills him in a way that surely a true Gandhi could never imagine. Can Arun ever live up to the Mahatma? Will he ever make his grandfather proud? In this remarkable personal story, Arun Gandhi, with Bethany Hegedus, weaves a stunning portrait of the extraordinary man who taught him to live his life as light. Evan Turk brings the text to breathtaking life with his unique three-dimensional collage paintings.

Presents Essential Writings Of Mahatma Gandhi Under 8 Different Sections-Autobiographical Writings-The Search For God-Pursuit Of Truths Stead Fast Resistance And Epilogue.

The author, the grandson of Mohandas Gandhi, describes the life of the Indian leader as well as the history of India during Gandhi's time.

With his wire-rimmed glasses, homespun cloths, and walking stick, Mohandas Gandhi is an international symbol of nonviolence, freedom, simplicity, and peace. Tracing Gandhi's evolution from a shy boy in India to a courageous, world-traveling spiritual and political leader who worked tirelessly to help India achieve independence from England, Gandhi for Kids will inspire young readers to make connections between his ideas and contemporary issues such as bullying and conflict resolution, healthful eating from local sources, civil rights and diversity, the "reduce, reuse, recycle" movement, and more. Kids learn about Gandhi's important impact on the lives and work of Martin Luther King Jr., Aung San Suu Kyi, Malala Yousafzai, and other modern heroes, yet come to understand that he was also a complex man who struggled with personal conflicts, disappointments, and idiosyncracies. Packed with historic images, informative sidebars, a time line, glossary, resource section, and 21 creative activities that illuminate Gandhi's life, ideas, and environment, Gandhi for Kids is an indispensable resource for a new generation of change makers. Kids can: make a traditional Indian lamp called a diya; practice anti-consumerism or vegetarianism for a day; create a henna hand design; learn some basic yoga poses; and much more.

“Louis Fischer, famous international reporter, was permitted a week in the guest house near Gandhi’s headquarters, and daily interviews with the great Indian leader. He kept virtually a stenographic report of his conversations, livened with personal comments, swift pen pictures of Gandhi and his followers, as he encountered them that week last June. One follows the workings of Gandhi’s mind, which -- as Fischer says -- is the reason for misapprehension only too often, for Gandhi thinks and speaks simultaneously, and sometimes subsequent statements seem to contradict previous ones, while actually he has simply shared his process of reasoning to a point with his hearers. The most striking evidence of this during Fischer’s stay was his expansion of his basic position to indicate that he had, reluctantly, reached a point of accepting the inevitability of India continuing to be a military base for United Nations. He supplemented other much quoted statements, too; for instance, that dealing with him negotiations with Japan, once India was free -- which he said he would like to think possible but realised would not be possible. He and Nehru agree in feeling that religious differences will be merged, once freedom is granted, that Pakistan is only a bargaining card with England, and so on. Exciting reading, as yet another facet of this tragic, complex problem. Fits into pattern with Mitchell and Raman.”-Kirkus Reviews

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.