132,957
edits
Changes
Gandhi: Naked Ambition by Jad Adams (view source)
Revision as of 18:47, 20 March 2010
, 18:47, 20 March 2010no edit summary
Until I read this book, Mohandas Karamchand (or Mahatma for short) Gandhi had always been a very shadowy figure. I was familiar with the picture of the loincloth-clad man who fell victim to an assassin's bullet shortly after Indian independence, but knew little more.
This book tells the full story admirably. Born in Gujarat in 1869 during the high noon of the British Raj, he trained as a barrister in London during the late Victorian era. After being so used to the commonly-seen pictures of him in later life, it is almost startling to see one of him as a dapper young man in his 20s in frock coat and wing collar. He undertook civil rights work in South Africa during the second Boer war, then returned to India and assumed leadership of the Indian National Congress. This was the stage at which he became a force to be reckoned with, and his campaign to obtain self-government and control of Indian government institutions made him world-famous. As a pioneer of ''satyagraha'', or resistance to tyranny through mass civil disobedience, a philosophy founded on ''ahimsa<'' or total non-violence, he inspired movements for civil rights and freedom across the world.
When he returned to Britain in 1931, shortly after being chosen as 'Man of the Year' by US 'Time' magazine, it was not as a lawyer, but as sole representative of the Indian National Congress at a Round Table Conference in London. As we see in another photo of him, this time bare-legged in his usual clothing alongside smartly-attired British and European men with hats and umbrellas in the English rain shows, he looked somewhat out of place. Irreverent East End children would shout after him, ''Gandhi, where's your trousers?'', while when he was asked after meeting King George V whether he thought himself underdressed, he said that <''the King had enough on for both of us.''