Adams focuses not on the idealized apostle of peace, but Gandhi the man.
The Times of India (Mumbai)
Adding fresh insight to a life so well documented is no mean feat, but Adams's biography of Gandhi eschews hagiography and offers critical insights about the revered political and spiritual leader. Scholars of Indian politics are no strangers to the notion that "Gandhi was a great leader but a poor politician," and Adams (Hideous Absinthe) attends to this naïveté. But the author pulls the veil back much more dramatically on Gandhi's personal life, notably his obsession with chastity and his practice of testing it by sleeping next to teenage girls—in some cases, his young relatives—and receiving daily nude massages from his female devotees. And while Gandhi was an astute campaigner, he was also willful, fixated on his own personal dietary and sexual beliefs, and a bit of a brute to his family. Adams observes that he behaved "not always well toward his friends and supporters, but wonderfully towards people he did not know, and with an outflowing of spontaneous benevolence towards those toiling masses that he would never know in person." The author veers on occasion into overly psychoanalytic dissection of Gandhi's motives, attributing his poor treatment of his offspring to "the carnality of their creation, as if he saw in his own sons nothing but the embodiment of the copulatory urge that had to be tamed." But Adams provides a balanced view of the complex figure whose personal, spiritual and historical legacy are no less great for being flawed. (July)
Adams focuses not on the idealized apostle of peace, but Gandhi the man.
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.
Historian Adams (visiting research fellow, Sch. of Advanced Study, Univ. of London; Hideous Absinthe: A History of the Devil in a Bottle) bases this biography (published in the UK with the subtitle "Naked Ambition") on primary sources, including Gandhi's own writings and those of his associates, as is evident in the book's extensive notes and bibliography. In addition to the solid research, Adams casts a penetrating and critical eye on Gandhi's complex personality, although at times Adams evidently fails to understand the mores of the period. Additionally, he ascribes motives to Gandhi that may or may not be true. At other times, the author's assertions are undeniably on the mark. If Joseph Lelyveld's recent Great Soul: Mahatma Gandhi and His Struggle with India focuses on Gandhi the reformer and his struggle to unite Hindus and Muslims, this book is an astringent and hard-hitting look at Gandhi's life, especially his personal eccentricities and inconsistencies. In this regard, Adams's book is closer to George Orwell's 1949 essay, "Reflections on Gandhi." VERDICT Libraries that already have Great Soul may well wish to purchase this title to round out their collection.—Ravi Shenoy, Naperville P.L., IL
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.