Great Soul

Bol

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.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.

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Pagina's: 448, Editie: Illustrated, Paperback, Vintage