1 Tagore was probably not the first to confer this title on Gandhi. It is possible that the first to bestow the title ‘Mahatma’ on Gandhi was Nagar Sheth Nautamial B. Mehta on 21 January 1915 at Kamri Bai School, Jetpur, in Gujarat.
2 There is a common misconception regarding leading Indian politicians with the name ‘Gandhi’. Jawaharlal Nehru (1889–1964), son of Congress Party leader Motilal Nehru (1861–1931), served as the first prime minister of independent India (1947–64). His daughter Indira (1917–1984) married Feroze Gandhi, who was not related to M. K. Gandhi. Indira Gandhi served as prime minister (1966–77, 1980–84). Her son Rajiv Gandhi (1944–1991) served as prime minister (1984–91). Rajiv’s wife Sonia Gandhi is President of the Congress Party and is often described as the most powerful political figure in India. Their son Rahul Gandhi is one of India’s rising political stars. These Gandhis represent a Nehru dynasty with no family relationship with Kasturba and Mohandas Gandhi.
3 The best resource for Gandhi’s writing is the 100 volumes of M. K. Gandhi, The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi (CWMG; New Delhi, 1958–94). The CWMG was also released in a revised edition with interactive multimedia CD: M. K. Gandhi, Mahatma Gandhi (New Delhi, 1999). This led to a major controversy in which protestors charged that the revised edition with the CD-ROM was the result of incompetent editorial work, deletions and distortions of the original CWMG. The Government of India finally took the decision to withdraw the revised edition and CD-ROM.
4 In addition to the Collected Works and many publications with M. K. Gandhi as author, there are numerous excellent anthologies of Gandhi’s writings. These include The Moral and Political Writings of Mahatma Gandhi, ed. Raghavan Iyer, 3 vols (Oxford, 1986–7); The Mind of Mahatma Gandhi, ed. R. K. Prabhu and U. R. Rao (Ahmedabad, 1967); and The Oxford India Gandhi: Essential Writings, ed. Gopalkrishna Gandhi (New Delhi, 2008).
5 There is a huge, diverse literature of writings on Gandhi’s life and his thought. Major works that provide invaluable resources for biographical information include Gandhi’s personal secretary Pyarelal (Pyarelal Nayar), Mahatma Gandhi, 5 vols plus 2 vols by his sister Sushila Nayar (Ahmedabad, 1956–94); biographer D. G. Tendulkar, Mahatma: Life of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, 8 vols (New Delhi, 1960); B. R. Nanda, Mahatma Gandhi: A Biography (New York, 1996); and Gandhi’s grandson Rajmohan Gandhi, Gandhi: The Man, His People, and the Empire (Berkeley, CA, 2008). Briefer treatments of Gandhi’s life and philosophy can be found in Bhikhu Parekh, Gandhi: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford, 2001) and Gandhi’s Experiments with Truth: Essential Writings by and about Mahatma Gandhi, ed. Richard L. Johnson (Lanham, MD, 2006).
1 M. K. Gandhi, An Autobiography: The Story of My Experiments with Truth (Boston, 1993). Gandhi’s Autobiography was first published in two volumes (Ahmedabad, 1927 and 1929).
2 In addition to Gandhi’s Autobiography, Rajmohan Gandhi’s Gandhi: The Man, His People, and the Empire (Berkeley, CA, 2008) provides a good description and analysis of Gandhi’s youthful experiences.
3 Erik H Erikson, Gandhi’s Truth (New York, 1969). There is a huge literature focusing on Gandhi’s controversial attitudes toward sex and bodily desires. In chapter Five we consider the controversies around Gandhi’s ‘test’, late in life, sleeping with his grandniece Manu and other naked young women.
1 See M. K. Gandhi, Satyagraha in South Africa, trans. V. G. Desai (Ahmedabad, 1928) and M. K. Gandhi, An Autobiography: The Story of My Experiments with Truth (Boston, 1993).
2 Leo Tolstoy, The Kingdom of God is Within You, trans. A. Maude (Oxford, 1935) and ‘Letter to a Hindoo’, in Mahatma Gandhi and Leo Tolstoy: Letters, ed. B. S. Murthy (Long Beach, CA, 1987).
3 John Ruskin, Unto This Last, ed. P. M. Yarker (London, 1978).
4 ‘Gandhiji’s Questions to Rajchandra and His Replies’, in M. K. Gandhi, The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi (CWMG; New Delhi, 1969), XXXII, pp. 592–602.
5 M. K. Gandhi, Hind Swaraj and Other Writings, ed. Anthony J. Parel (Cambridge, 1997).
1 Gandhi describes the major events in this chapter, from Champaran Satyagraha through Salt Satyagraha, in different volumes of M. K. Gandhi, The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi (CWMG). Many of these events appear in M. K. Gandhi, An Autobiography: The Story of My Experiments with Truth (Boston, 1993). There is also a huge literature by Gandhi’s contemporaries and later scholars on all of these events. For example, for a description of the Champaran Satyagraha, see Judith M. Brown, Gandhi: Prisoner of Hope (Delhi, 1992), pp. 109–13.
2 Gandhi’s later formulation of all of the following key parts of his Constructive Programme can be found in M. K. Gandhi, ‘Constructive Programme: Its Meaning and Place’, CWMG (New Delhi, 1979), LXXV, pp. 146–66.
3 Fred Dallmayr presents an overview of Gandhi’s approach to Islam and Muslim leaders in ‘Gandhi and Islam: A Heart-and-Mind Unity?’ in his Peace Talks – Who Will Listen? (Notre Dame, IN, 2004). See Sheila McDonough, Gandhi’s Response to Islam (New Delhi, 1994).
4 Gandhi describes the Salt Tax, Dandi March and Salt Satyagraha in many entries in CWMG (New Delhi, 1971), XLIII. The march and salt civil disobedience, with the subsequent raid on the government salt depot in Dharasana, are dramatically portrayed in Attenborough’s 1982 movie Gandhi.
1 Romain Rolland, Mahatma Gandhi (London, 1924). The first biography of Gandhi had been written by South African minister Joseph J. Doke, M. K. Gandhi (Madras, 1909).
2 There is an extensive, diverse literature of writings by Gandhi, Ambedkar and others on the issues regarding untouchability and Ambedkar–Gandhi relations. See Thomas Pantham, ‘Against Untouchability: The Discourses of Gandhi and Ambedkar’, in Humiliation, ed. Gopal Guru (New Delhi, 2009), pp. 179–208, and Sudarshan Kapur, ‘Gandhi, Ambedkar, and the Eradication of Untouchability’, Gandhi Marg, XXXII/1 (2010), pp. 57–86.
3 M. K. Gandhi, ‘Constructive Programme: Its Meaning and Place’, The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi (CWMG; New Delhi, 1979), LXXV, pp. 146–66 (dated 13 December 1941).
4 Gandhi’s critique of ‘modern’ economics and his alternative approach to economics are developed in chapters Seven and Eight. Gandhi’s views on modern economics, capitalism and socialism are sometimes uncritical and confused and at other times insightful and extremely relevant today. I review Gandhi’s writings on economics and interpret his strengths and weaknesses in Douglas Allen, ‘Gandhi and Socialism’, International Journal of Gandhi Studies, I (2011), pp. 107–35.
5 There is an extensive literature by and about Gandhi focusing on his approach to education. See M. P. Mattai, Mahatma Gandhi’s World-view (New Delhi, 2000), especially ‘Educational Order’ (pp. 214–25), and ‘On Education’ in Selections from Gandhi, ed. Nirmal Kumar Bose (Ahmedabad, 1996), pp. 281–98. I provide extensive documentation from Gandhi’s writings, as well as analysis of his controversial and insightful philosophy of education, in Douglas Allen, ‘Mahatma Gandhi’s Philosophy of Violence, Nonviolence, and Education’, in The Philosophy of Mahatma Gandhi for the Twenty-First Century, ed. Douglas Allen (Lanham, MD, 2008 and New Delhi, 2009).
6 Chandalal Bhagubhai Dalal, Harilal Gandhi: A Life (Delhi, 2007) and the movie Gandhi, My Father (2007), based on Dalal’s book, present a very different M. K. Gandhi as seen largely through the point of view and tragic life of his son.
7 See M. K. Gandhi, CWMG, XXVIII (New Delhi, 1968), p. 365 (first published in Young India, 22 October 1925). The Seven Social Sins are formulated as Politics without principles, Wealth without work, Pleasure without conscience, Knowledge without character, Commerce without morality, Science without humanity and Worship without sacrifice. Although these seven social sins are embraced by Gandhi in his philosophy and practices, as expressed through his constructive work, he indicates in this writing that the specific formulation was sent to him by an unnamed ‘fair friend’.
1 See Margaret Chatterjee, Gandhi and His Jewish Friends (Basingstoke, 1992).
2 For Gandhi’s advice to Jews in Germany in November 1938 and his response to critics, see M. K. Gandhi, The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi (CWMG; New Delhi, 1977), LXVIII, pp. 137–41, 189–91, 191–3, 202–3, 276–8 and 382. For Buber’s response to Gandhi, see Martin Buber and Judah Magnes, Two Letters to Gandhi (Jerusalem, 1939). See also Dennis Dalton, Mahatma Gandhi: Nonviolent Power in Action (New York, 1993), pp. 134–8 and 228.
3 M. K. Gandhi, CWMG (New Delhi, 1977), LXX, pp. 20–21. Gandhi indicates that friends urged him to send his brief, very polite plea to Hitler. The Raj Government did not permit the letter to be delivered.
4 In chapter Six, using the controversial illustrations of Hitler and Nazi power and the 26/11 Mumbai and other terrorism that are often used to dismiss Gandhi’s approach, I shall present interpretations and extended analysis submitting that Gandhi’s philosophy and approach, reformulated in new creative ways, are very insightful and relevant when responding to these most difficult anti-Gandhi illustrations.
5 The controversial topic of Gandhi sleeping with naked young women late in his life has received a lot of attention in popular and scholarly writings in recent years. Gandhi is very open in discussions and writings about his controversial brahmacharya experiments. See, for example, M. K. Gandhi, CWMG (New Delhi, 1983), LXXXVII, p. 108. The best-known case of a young woman sleeping naked with Gandhi is that of his grandniece, Manu Gandhi, who later wrote the book Bapu, My Mother (Ahmedabad, 1949). Rajmohan Gandhi gives an account of Gandhi’s brahmacharya tests with Manu in Gandhi: The Man, His People, and the Empire (Berkeley, CA, 2008), pp. 492–3 and 548–55. Nicholas Gier analyses many of these controversial issues in ‘Was Gandhi a Tantric?’ Gandhi Marg, XXIX/1 (2007), pp. 21–36.
6 Nirmal Kumar Bose, My Days with Gandhi (New Delhi, 1974). Another account by one of Gandhi’s closest associates can be found in Pyarelal, Mahatma Gandhi: The Last Phase, I (Ahmedabad, 1956). As compiled in M. K. Gandhi, CWMG, there are many responses by Gandhi to his critics.
7 The Statesman (Calcutta, 6 September 1947), as cited by Rajmohan Gandhi, Gandhi, p. 615.
8 Cited by Dalton, Mahatma Gandhi, pp. 158–9.
9 This payment to Pakistan is Gandhi’s final ‘crime’ against India and Hinduism, according to Gandhi’s assassin Nathuran Godse and many militant Hindu nationalists even today. Gandhi’s approval of the Indian Army’s use of violent force in Kashmir to stop Pakistani-supported aggression also continues to be the source of some debate and controversy.
1 Most of the analysis of Gandhi’s philosophy of truth and nonviolence in this chapter is based on my previous writings, including the following: ‘Gandhi, Contemporary Political Thinking, and Self-Other Relations’, in Gandhi’s Experiments with Truth, ed. Richard L. Johnson (Lanham, MD, 2005), pp. 303–29; ‘Mahatma Gandhi’s Philosophy of Violence, Nonviolence, and Education’, in The Philosophy of Mahatma Gandhi for the Twenty-First Century, ed. Douglas Allen (Lanham, MD, 2008; New Delhi, 2009), pp. 33–62; ‘Hind Swaraj: Hermeneutical Questions of Interpretation, Mythic Construction, and Contemporary Relevance’, Journal of Contemporary Thought, 30 (2009), pp. 5–32.
2 See Gandhi’s one-page essay in Contemporary Indian Philosophy, ed. S. Radhakrishnan and J. H. Muirhead (London, 1936), p. 21, and M. K. Gandhi, The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi (CWMG; New Delhi, 1974), LX, pp. 106–7.
3 M. K. Gandhi, Truth Is God (Ahmedabad, 1990), p. 28 (first appeared in Harijan, 8 July 1933).
4 For example, while asserting that we have only relative truths and there is not one absolute standard of right, Gandhi claims that ‘terrorism must be held to be wrong in every case’ and ‘I do not regard killing or assassination or terrorism as good in any circumstances whatsoever.’ See Gandhi, ‘Patriotism Run Mad’, CWMG (New Delhi, 1967), XXV, p. 441–3, and ‘My Friend, the Revolutionary’, CWMG (New Delhi, 1967), XXVI, pp. 486–92.
5 Gandhi, CWMG (New Delhi, 1971), XXXVIII, pp. 404–5.
6 Gandhi, CWMG (New Delhi, 1970), XXXVII, pp. 348–49 (Young India, 11 November 1928).
7 Allen, ‘Gandhi, Contemporary Political Thinking’, pp. 317–25.
8 Bhikhu Parekh, Gandhi: A Very Short Introduction (New York, 2001), pp. 56–9, 62, 94.
9 Gandhi, CWMG (New Delhi, 1968), XXX, p. 133 (Young India, 18 March 1926). See Ronald J. Terchek, Gandhi: Struggling for Autonomy (Lanham, MD, 1998), pp. 111–12. Anthony J. Parel, in Gandhi’s Philosophy and the Quest for Harmony (Cambridge, 2006), uses the framework of the Hindu ‘four aims of life’ to demonstrate how Gandhi does not devalue, but emphasizes, fulfilling the first aim of artha, our material, economic and political well-being in this world.
10 Gandhi, CWMG (New Delhi, 1981), LXXXIV, p. 229 (Harijan, 23 June 1946), and M. K. Gandhi, From Yeravda Mandir: Ashram Observances, trans. V. G. Desai (Ahmedabad, 1933; 1957 edition), pp. 12–13.
11 See, for example, Gandhi, CWMG (New Delhi, 1969), XXXII, pp. 401–2 (Young India, 9 December 1926).
12 See chapter Five, notes 2 and 3.
13 M. K. Gandhi, An Autobiography: The Story of My Experiments with Truth (Boston, 1993), pp. xi–xii; Gandhi, CWMG (New Delhi, 1978), LXXI, p. 294 (Harijan, 2 March 1940); Gandhi, CWMG (New Delhi, 1981), LXXXIV, p. 199 (Harijan, 2 June 1946).
14 Gandhi offers numerous formulations on the relations of cowardice, violence and nonviolence. See, for example, CWMG (New Delhi, 1965), XVIII, pp. 131–4 (Young India, 11 Aug. 1920); CWMG (New Delhi, 1967), XXIV, pp. 140–42 (Young India, 29 May 1926); CWMG (New Delhi, 1969), XXXI, p. 292 (Young India, 1 August 1926); CWMG (New Delhi, 1970), XLII, p. 73 (Young India, 10 Oct. 1929).
15 Gandhi, CWMG (New Delhi, 1969), XXXI, pp. 487–8 (Young India, 21 Oct. 1926).
16 Gandhi, CWMG (New Delhi, 1970), XXXVII, pp. 310–13 (Young India, 4 Oct. 1928); CWMG (New Delhi, 1981), LXXXIV, p. 62 (Harijan, 5 May 1946).
1 M. K. Gandhi, ‘1. Communal Unity’, in ‘Constructive Programme: Its Meaning and Place’, The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi (CWMG; New Delhi, 1979), LXXV, pp. 147–9 (dated 13 December 1941).
2 M. K. Gandhi, Hind Swaraj and Other Writings, ed. Anthony J. Parel (Cambridge, 1997).
3 Gandhi, Hind Swaraj, pp. 6, 67, 106.
4 Ibid., pp. 68–70, 94–5.
5 Ibid., pp. 107–11.
6 Ibid., pp. 38, 43, 72, 103.
7 Ibid., p. 38.
8 Ibid., pp. 62–5.
9 One can find contrasting formulations in Gandhi’s writings. In Hind Swaraj, p. 73, Gandhi follows his seemingly romantic, idyllic and utopian formulation of Indian villages by maintaining that such a Swaraj is not a dream but can be realized. In Gandhi’s letter to Nehru of 5 October 1945, which appears in William L. Shirer, Gandhi: A Memoir (New York, 1979), pp. 36–8, he reasserts that he ‘stands by his system of Government envisaged in Hind Swaraj’ (written almost 36 years earlier). However, in this letter, reproduced in Parel’s edition of Hind Swaraj, pp. 149–51, Gandhi presents a more flexible picture. He notes that he is not ‘envisaging our village life as it is today’ and that this is the ‘village of my dreams still in my mind’, but it is essential for him to have a picture of this ideal village if he is to engage in the contemporary transformative process.
10 Gandhi’s commentaries on the Bhagavad-Gita can be found in various pamphlets and in his Collected Works, especially CWMG (New Delhi, 1969), XXXII (‘Discourses on the Gita’), pp. 94–376 and CWMG (New Delhi, 1970), XLI (‘Anasaktiyoga’, published in English under the title The Gita According to Gandhi), pp. 90–133.
11 Gandhi, CWMG (New Delhi, 1969), XXXV, p. 492 (Young India, 19 January 1928): ‘Hinduism with its message of ahimsa is to me the most glorious religion in the world – as my wife is to me the most beautiful woman in the world – but others may feel the same about their religion.’ Gandhi, CWMG (New Delhi, 1970), XL, p. 58 (Young India, 21 March 1929): ‘The most distinctive and the largest contribution of Hinduism to India’s culture is the doctrine of ahimsa. It has given a definite bias to the history of the country for the last three thousand years and over and it has not ceased to be a living force in the lives of India’s millions of even today. It is a growing doctrine, its message is still be delivered.’
12 See, for example, Lloyd I. Rudolph, ‘Postmodern Gandhi’, in Postmodern Gandhi and Other Essays, ed. Lloyd I. Rudolph and Susanne Hoeber Rudolph (Chicago, 2006), pp. 3–59. In The Philosophy of Mahatma Gandhi for the Twenty-First Century, ed. Douglas Allen (Lanham, MD, 2008; New Delhi, 2009), Nicholas F. Gier, ‘Non-violence as Civic Virtue: Gandhi and Reformed Liberalism’, pp. 121–42, and Naresh Dadhich, ‘The Postmodern Discourse on Gandhi: Modernity and Truth’, pp. 179–99, provide ways for interpreting Gandhi as ‘postmodern’. In the same volume Makarand Paranjape, ‘The “Sanatani” Mahatma: Rereading Gandhi Post-Hindutva’, pp. 201–14, rejects the premodern–modern–postmodern classifications and submits that Gandhi should be interpreted as ‘non-modern’.
13 Akeel Bilgrami, in ‘Gandhi’s Integrity: The Philosophy behind the Politics’, in Debating Gandhi, ed. A. Raghuramaraju (New Delhi, 2006), pp. 248–66, and in other writings presents a very creative interpretation of Gandhi’s radical critique of, and alternative to, dominant modern thinking.
14 Of the huge literature on Gandhi’s approach to religion, special note may be made of Margaret Chatterjee, Gandhi’s Religious Thought (London, 1983).
15 Gandhi, Young India (1 June 1921), p. 170. In the same passage Gandhi, while affirming his inclusive approach and openness to other cultural and religious influences, also emphasizes that ‘I refuse to be blown off my feet by any. I refuse to live in other people’s houses as an interloper, a beggar or a slave.’
16 For Gandhi’s approach to religious scriptures, faith, and reason, see CWMG, XXI, p. 246; XXXI, pp. 24, 46; XXXIII, pp. 231–2; XLI, pp. 435–6, 468–9; LXIV, pp. 75, 397–402; LXXI, p. 294; LXXXIV, p. 199.
17 Bhikhu Parekh has excellent formulations on the Gandhi approach to religion, scriptures, reason, and his religious justification for tolerance, respect and interreligious dialogue. See, for example, chapter Three of Bhikhu Parekh, Gandhi’s Political Philosophy (London, 1989) and Parekh, ‘Gandhi and Interreligious Dialogue’, in The Philosophy of Mahatma Gandhi for the Twenty-First Century, ed. Douglas Allen (Lanham, MD, 2008; New Delhi, 2009), pp. 1–17.
1 This is the major question raised by Eknath Easwaran in his Gandhi the Man: The Story of His Transformation (Tomales, CA, 1997).
2 See Gandhi, The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi (CWMG; New Delhi, 1969), XXXIII, p. 452 (written June 1927); Gandhi, An Autobiography: The Story of My Experiments with Truth (Boston, 1993), p. 420.
3 M. K. Gandhi, ‘A Talisman’, in D. G. Tendulkar, Mahatma: Life of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, VIII (New Delhi, 1960), p. 89.
4 Among Wayne Dyer’s best-selling books, CDS, and DVDS are The Power of Intention (Carlsbad, CA, 2004) and Excuses Begone! (Carlsbad, CA, 2009).
5 Daniel H. Pink. Drive: The Surprising Truth about What Motivates Us (New York, 2009). See Daniel Pink’s RSA (Royal Society for the Encouragement of the Arts, Manufactures and Commerce) Animate on YouTube with the same title.