Gandhi: The True Man Behind Modern India

by Jad Adams

Overview

Jad Adams traces the course of Gandhi's multi-faceted life and the development of his religious, political, and social thinking over seven tumultuous decades: from his comfortable upbringing in a princely state in Gujarat; his early civil rights campaigns; his leadership through civil disobedience in the 1920s and 1930s that made him a world icon; and finally to his assassination by a Hindu extremist in 1948, only months after the birth of an independent India. An elegant and masterly account of one of the seminal figures of twentieth-century history, Adams presents for the first time the true story behind the man whose life may truly be said to have changed the world.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781605983417
Publisher:	Pegasus Books
Publication date:	05/01/2012
Pages:	288
Product dimensions:	5.70(w) x 8.70(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Jad Adams is a historian and television producer. He is a fellow of the Royal Historical Society and is currently a visiting research fellow of the School of Advanced Study at the University of London.

Table of Contents

Maps

The Partition of India, 1947 x

South Africa, 1893 xi

Introduction: Naked Ambition 1

1 Childhood and Marriage 7

2 London Lessons 26

3 Adventures in Natal 39

4 Challenge and Chastity 74

5 The Army of the Poor 94

6 Village Activist 125

7 Arousing India 156

8 The Salt March 176

9 World Icon 196

10 Quit India 220

11 Partition and Death 240

12 Legacy 272

Notes 285

Bibliography 305

Glossary 311

Index 313

Editorial Reviews

For anyone trying to find a way through the myriad political byways of modern India and Pakistan, Adams’s biography is the perfect starting point.

The Glasgow Herald

Adams focuses not on the idealized apostle of peace, but Gandhi the man.

The Times of India (Mumbai)

Adams focuses not on the idealized apostle of peace, but
Gandhi the man.

Times of India (Mumbai)

There have been enough hagiographies of this great figure,
and after his death there was a concerted effort to erase some embarrassing truths from the Gandhi legend. This is a vividly human book.

The Daily Mail [London]

A concise, critical look at the Indian leader, emphasizing his striving for spiritual perfection.

Unlike Joseph Lelyveld's recent exhaustive study of Gandhi and the evolution of his ideas,Great Soul (2011), this work by British historian Adams (Hideous Absinthe, 2003, etc.) goes right to the essential thought of the Mahatma, despite his confounding, albeit engaging inconsistencies. The author sticks to primary sources, such as accounts by Gandhi'ssecretaries, while remaining somewhat leery of Gandhi's own autobiography, because of his elusive relationship to truth ("I have grown from truth to truth"). In discrete, tidy chapters, Adams embarks on the main tenets of Gandhi's life: his pampered upbringing by a very devout Hindu mother; his marriage at age 13 to Kasturbai, also his age, which would arouse his later disgust for Hindu marriage rituals; his lifelong striving for chastity and the shaping of his brahmacharya vow; his obsession with his diet, a system of trial-and-error that would often leave him weak and ill; his early law education in England, a great sacrifice for his family, though later he would essentially sever ties to his relatives, refuse to educate his sons and support his family financially; his use of fasting as a political tool; and his gradual political engagement, from his time as a young barrister in South Africa to his return to India as a national leader for the rights of the indentured servants, miners, poor and untouchables. He sought emancipation by doing—living in self-sufficient simplicity within his ashrams, where he imposed the strictest discipline on himself and others, immersing himself in sacred texts of all religions. The concluding chapter on Gandhi's "Legacy" considers his assassin's criticism of Gandhi's sense of his own infallibility, as well as the terrible repercussions from the partition of Pakistan and Gandhi's invaluable catalyst to global movements of human rights.

A tight synthesis and good introduction to Gandhi's life and work.

Kirkus Reviews