The South African Gandhi

The South African Gandhi PDF Author: Ashwin Desai
Publisher: Stanford University Press
ISBN: 0804797226
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 442

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Book Description
A biography detailing Gandhi’s twenty-year stay in South Africa and his attitudes and behavior in the nation’s political context. In the pantheon of freedom fighters, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi has pride of place. His fame and influence extend far beyond India and are nowhere more significant than in South Africa. “India gave us a Mohandas, we gave them a Mahatma,” goes a popular South African refrain. Contemporary South African leaders, including Mandela, have consistently lauded him as being part of the epic battle to defeat the racist white regime. The South African Gandhi focuses on Gandhi’s first leadership experiences and the complicated man they reveal—a man who actually supported the British Empire. Ashwin Desai and Goolam Vahed unveil a man who, throughout his stay on African soil, stayed true to Empire while showing a disdain for Africans. For Gandhi, whites and Indians were bonded by an Aryan bloodline that had no place for the African. Gandhi’s racism was matched by his class prejudice towards the Indian indentured. He persistently claimed that they were ignorant and needed his leadership, and he wrote their resistances and compromises in surviving a brutal labor regime out of history. The South African Gandhi writes the indentured and working class back into history. The authors show that Gandhi never missed an opportunity to show his loyalty to Empire, with a particular penchant for war as a means to do so. He served as an Empire stretcher-bearer in the Boer War while the British occupied South Africa, he demanded guns in the aftermath of the Bhambatha Rebellion, and he toured the villages of India during the First World War as recruiter for the Imperial army. This meticulously researched book punctures the dominant narrative of Gandhi and uncovers an ambiguous figure whose time on African soil was marked by a desire to seek the integration of Indians, minus many basic rights, into the white body politic while simultaneously excluding Africans from his moral compass and political ideals. Praise for The South African Gandhi “In this impressively researched study, two South African scholars of Indian background bravely challenge political myth-making on both sides of the Indian Ocean that has sought to canonize Gandhi as a founding father of the struggle for equality there. They show that the Mahatma-to-be carefully refrained from calling on his followers to throw in their lot with the black majority. The mass struggle he finally led remained an Indian struggle.” —Joseph Lelyveld, author of Great Soul: Mahatma Gandhi and His Struggle with India “This is a wonderful demonstration of meticulously researched, evocative, clear-eyed and fearless history writing. It uncovers a story, some might even call it a scandal, that has remained hidden in plain sight for far too long. The South African Gandhi is a big book. It is a serious challenge to the way we have been taught to think about Gandhi.” —Arundhati Roy, author of The God of Small Things

The South African Gandhi

The South African Gandhi PDF Author: Ashwin Desai
Publisher: Stanford University Press
ISBN: 0804797226
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 442

Get Book Here

Book Description
A biography detailing Gandhi’s twenty-year stay in South Africa and his attitudes and behavior in the nation’s political context. In the pantheon of freedom fighters, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi has pride of place. His fame and influence extend far beyond India and are nowhere more significant than in South Africa. “India gave us a Mohandas, we gave them a Mahatma,” goes a popular South African refrain. Contemporary South African leaders, including Mandela, have consistently lauded him as being part of the epic battle to defeat the racist white regime. The South African Gandhi focuses on Gandhi’s first leadership experiences and the complicated man they reveal—a man who actually supported the British Empire. Ashwin Desai and Goolam Vahed unveil a man who, throughout his stay on African soil, stayed true to Empire while showing a disdain for Africans. For Gandhi, whites and Indians were bonded by an Aryan bloodline that had no place for the African. Gandhi’s racism was matched by his class prejudice towards the Indian indentured. He persistently claimed that they were ignorant and needed his leadership, and he wrote their resistances and compromises in surviving a brutal labor regime out of history. The South African Gandhi writes the indentured and working class back into history. The authors show that Gandhi never missed an opportunity to show his loyalty to Empire, with a particular penchant for war as a means to do so. He served as an Empire stretcher-bearer in the Boer War while the British occupied South Africa, he demanded guns in the aftermath of the Bhambatha Rebellion, and he toured the villages of India during the First World War as recruiter for the Imperial army. This meticulously researched book punctures the dominant narrative of Gandhi and uncovers an ambiguous figure whose time on African soil was marked by a desire to seek the integration of Indians, minus many basic rights, into the white body politic while simultaneously excluding Africans from his moral compass and political ideals. Praise for The South African Gandhi “In this impressively researched study, two South African scholars of Indian background bravely challenge political myth-making on both sides of the Indian Ocean that has sought to canonize Gandhi as a founding father of the struggle for equality there. They show that the Mahatma-to-be carefully refrained from calling on his followers to throw in their lot with the black majority. The mass struggle he finally led remained an Indian struggle.” —Joseph Lelyveld, author of Great Soul: Mahatma Gandhi and His Struggle with India “This is a wonderful demonstration of meticulously researched, evocative, clear-eyed and fearless history writing. It uncovers a story, some might even call it a scandal, that has remained hidden in plain sight for far too long. The South African Gandhi is a big book. It is a serious challenge to the way we have been taught to think about Gandhi.” —Arundhati Roy, author of The God of Small Things

Gandhi's Johannesburg

Gandhi's Johannesburg PDF Author: Eric Itzkin
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 140

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Book Description
From the young mining town of Johannesburg came ideas of peaceful struggle which spread across the world. Formulated by Mohandas Gandhi in the early 1900s, the philosophy of Satyagraha (soul force or passive resistance) became an inspiration to millions all over the world. For a decade, during the formative years of his philosophy, Gandhi lived in and around Johannesburg where he established a prosperous law practice, though his legal work was soon overtaken by his political activism in support of Indian rights. During that decade, he made the streets and suburbs of the city his own, changing homes frequently and walking tirelessly. This evocative book captures Johannesburg's rich Gandhian legacy in words and pictures.

Gandhi’s Printing Press

Gandhi’s Printing Press PDF Author: Isabel Hofmeyr
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674074742
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 237

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Book Description
When Gandhi as a young lawyer in South Africa began fashioning the tenets of his political philosophy, he was absorbed by a seemingly unrelated enterprise: creating a newspaper, Indian Opinion. In Gandhi’s Printing Press Isabel Hofmeyr provides an account of how this footnote to a career shaped the man who would become the world-changing Mahatma.

Gandhi's Passion

Gandhi's Passion PDF Author: Stanley Wolpert
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199728720
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 337

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Book Description
More than half a century after his death, Mahatma Gandhi continues to inspire millions throughout the world. Yet modern India, most strikingly in its decision to join the nuclear arms race, seems to have abandoned much of his nonviolent vision. Inspired by recent events in India, Stanley Wolpert offers this subtle and profound biography of India's "Great Soul." Wolpert compellingly chronicles the life of Mahatma Gandhi from his early days as a child of privilege to his humble rise to power and his assassination at the hands of a man of his own faith. This trajectory, like that of Christ, was the result of Gandhi's passion: his conscious courting of suffering as the means to reach divine truth. From his early campaigns to stop discrimination in South Africa to his leadership of a people's revolution to end the British imperial domination of India, Gandhi emerges as a man of inner conflicts obscured by his political genius and moral vision. Influenced early on by nonviolent teachings in Hinduism, Jainism, Christianity, and Buddhism, he came to insist on the primacy of love for one's adversary in any conflict as the invincible power for change. His unyielding opposition to intolerance and oppression would inspire India like no leader since the Buddha--creating a legacy that would encourage Martin Luther King, Jr., Nelson Mandela, and other global leaders to demand a better world through peaceful civil disobedience. By boldly considering Gandhi the man, rather than the living god depicted by his disciples, Wolpert provides an unprecedented representation of Gandhi's personality and the profound complexities that compelled his actions and brought freedom to India.

Gandhi Before India

Gandhi Before India PDF Author: Ramachandra Guha
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 038553230X
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 544

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Book Description
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.

Great Soul

Great Soul PDF Author: Joseph Lelyveld
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0307389952
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 450

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Book Description
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.

An American Looks at Gandhi

An American Looks at Gandhi PDF Author: James D. Hunt
Publisher: Bibliophile South Asia
ISBN: 9788185002354
Category : Civil rights
Languages : en
Pages : 312

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Book Description
In This Far Reaching Series Of Essays, The Author Examines The Complex Set Of Influences Which Helped Shape Mohandas K. Gandhi Leading To The Transgormation Of An Anglophile Indian Lawyer Into A Mahatma Of Historical Myth.

Gandhi’s African Legacy: Phoenix Settlement 1904 to 2024. A History Through Letters

Gandhi’s African Legacy: Phoenix Settlement 1904 to 2024. A History Through Letters PDF Author: Uma Dhupelia-Mesthrie
Publisher: UWC Press
ISBN: 1990995101
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 685

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Book Description
“This is an epic work which gives us another deep insight not just into the South African Gandhi but also into his colleagues at the settlement and an ongoing biography of the settlement itself. This is the first book telling the history of Phoenix Settlement from its founding to now. It provides us with a view into the lives of the residents and supporters, rather than merely a history of the buildings. This is a goldmine for researchers. It very skilfully presents the role of the settlement in the campaigns against apartheid in the early 1950s and the international recognition of its actions and the stimulus they provided for international campaigns. The story of the settlement as a haven for multi-racial gatherings in the time of apartheid, and, regardless of this, the disaster that followed is wonderfully told.” - Thomas Weber, Emeritus Professor, La Trobe University, Melbourne “Another magisterial book from Dhupelia-Mesthrie, this time on Phoenix, told through deeply researched contextual chapters and the letters of those who lived there. Informed by a lifetime’s work on Gandhi and drawing on archives and personal papers from across the world, this monumental work will be treasured by grateful scholars and readers for decades to come.” - Isabel Hofmeyr, Emeritus Professor, University of the Witwatersrand “The book provides a major, new, in-depth understanding of a major initiative in Gandhi’s life, an initiative which laid the ground for his work in South Africa and in India, and whose resonances are still being felt in the world.” - Ramachandra Guha, Eminent biographer of Gandhi

Gandhi Ordained in South Africa

Gandhi Ordained in South Africa PDF Author: J N Uppal
Publisher: Publications Division Ministry of Information & Broadcasting
ISBN: 8123022123
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 483

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Book Description
Traces in candid detail the gradual evolution of Gandhi's personality. It is a fascinating portrayal of young Indian's growth from an ordinary lawyer in search of a good means of livelihood to an uncommon man of action

M.K. Gandhi, Attorney at Law

M.K. Gandhi, Attorney at Law PDF Author: Charles R. DiSalvo
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520956621
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 387

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Book Description
“...a must read for persons from all walks of life...interested in understanding the philosophical evolution of an ordinary man into the extraordinary.” -- Indian Law Journal In 1888, at the age of eighteen, Mohandas Gandhi sets out from his modest home in India. Shy, timid, and soft-spoken, he embarks on what he believes will be a new life abroad. Twenty-seven years later, at the age of forty-five, he returns—this time fearless, impassioned, and ready to lead his country to freedom. What transformed him? The law. M. K. Gandhi, Attorney at Law is the first biography of the Mahatma’s early years as a lawyer. It follows Gandhi as he embarks on a personal journey of self-discovery: from his education in Britain, through the failure of his first law practice in India, to his eventual migration to South Africa. Though he found initial success representing wealthy Indian merchants, events on the ground would come to change him. Relentless attacks by the white colonial establishment on Indian civil rights prompted Gandhi to give up his lucrative business in favor of representing the oppressed in court. Gandhi had originally hoped that the South African legal system could be relied upon for justice. But when the courts failed to respond, he had no choice but to shift tactics, developing what would ultimately become his lasting legacy—the philosophy and practice of nonviolent civil disobedience. As he took on the most powerful governmental, economic, and political forces of his day, Gandhi transformed himself from a modest civil rights lawyer into a tireless freedom fighter. Relying on never-before-seen archival materials, this book provides the reader with a front-row seat to the dramatic events that would alter Gandhi—and history—forever.