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 It
long seemed that Mahatma Gandhi could not be comprehended by the
Western mind. Having arisen in a culture that had so little in
common with our own, and being an anomaly even within that culture,
he was a shining but enigmatic figure. Millions of words were
written about Gandhi, millions of his own words were recorded
by his disciples, some four hundred biographies of him were published,
and he wrote an autobiography—yet he eluded us. He loomed
large, and we knew that he was regarded variously as a great political
leader, a great spiritual leader, a sage, a visionary, a prophet,
a saint, Christ, a god—yet he remained an abstraction. The
man himself, though he lived in our time, was lost to us. Ved
Mehta, born in India, educated in England and America, an author
equally at home with Eastern and Western thought, whose intellectual
and moral interests span the two cultures and who has written
brilliantly about both, was almost inevitably drawn to the task
of recovering for us Gandhi as a human being, of making the unintelligible
intelligible.
With a devotion and a literary seriousness worthy of this transcendent
subject, Mr. Mehta has set down a clear, enthralling account of
Gandhi’s life, separating fact from myth and casting light
on Gandhi’s principles and his purposes, his ideas and, most
important, his actions: as Mr. Mehta says, the way to holiness,
for Gandhi, “lay not in withdrawal from the world but in
immersion in the world”—in action. He did not merely
formulate principles; he embodied them. In Gandhi’s mind,
political and religious aims became identical, and means and ends
virtually identical. He dedicated himself to truth, to nonviolence,
to celibacy, to control of the palate, to poverty, to scripture
reading, to humility, to honesty, to fearlessness: truth and nonviolence
became the forces governing his civil disobedience campaigns against
injustice, against oppression, against conflict between Hindu
and Muslim.
 In
order, while it was still possible, to talk with relatives and
disciples of Gandhi—because, as Mr. Mehta says, “it
is in the memories of his closest followers that the pictures
live, the myths take shape, and his message is propagated”—Mr.
Mehta spent several years travelling through India, Afghanistan,
Bangladesh, England, and Austria, among other places, to collect
the oral testimony of living Gandhians. From these precious conversations
and an enormous body of research, Mr. Mehta has fashioned a biographical
portrait unlike any other. It shows the man who was, in Nehru’s
words, a “pilgrim on his quest for Truth, quiet, peaceful,
determined, and fearless"; it shows the leader who, in Einstein’s
words, “demonstrated that a powerful human following can
be assembled not only through the cunning game of the usual political
maneuvers and trickeries but through the cogent example of a morally
superior conduct of life"; and it shows this life, which,
in Mr. Mehta’s own words, fused “ancient Hindu religion
and culture and modern revolutionary ideas about politics and
society.” Ved Mehta describes the symbolic gestures that
moved hundreds of millions of Indians—the fasts, the protest
walks, the acts of passive resistance which led to imprisonment—and
also describes, in the most precise particulars, the daily life
in Gandhi’s ashrams, the everyday behavior he expected of
his followers and demanded of himself. Mr. Mehta makes his way
confidently through the paradoxes and contradictions, the complexities,
the tragic and sublimely comic aspects of Gandhi’s unique
existence. He describes Gandhi’s efforts to do away with
the institution of untouchability by making himself, in effect,
an untouchable; and his fight—again, by example—to change
his country’s appalling sanitary conditions.
Gandhi set his country upon a spiritual course from which it
has been deflected but to which all India’s well-wishers
hope it will return, if not in this century, then in centuries
to come. Reading what Mr. Mehta has written gives us some reason
to hope that Gandhi and his teachings will one day prevail; one
can certainly believe that as long as men and women inhabit the
earth Gandhi will continue to be a presence among them.
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Excerpted Reviews
“A remarkable examination of the life and work of a human
being who has been extolled around the world as one of the greatest
souls of all time.” –Paul Johnson, New
York Times
“Mehta’s portrait of Gandhi and his disciples is a
unique document. I have learned immeasurably from it.” –Ruth
Prawer Jhabvala
“Meticulously researched, passionately felt, elegantly written.”
–Max Lerner
“The life and times of Mahatma Gandhi come through vividly
in the pages of this book.” –Amartya Sen
“Mehta’s work… touches much more than the personality
of Gandhi, for it deals with the more general issue of the evolution
and maintenance of a cultural symbol…. Mehta has given us
a sensitive view of India and a personalized experience of the
meaning of Mahatma Gandhi.” –Edward S. Kayes, American
Historical Review
“An outstanding book… aglow with illuminating detail.”
–John Grigg, The
Listener
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