Gandhi: The Man Who Changed The World

From Africa to America to Europe to Asia, Gandhi is one of the rare icons that nearly everyone recognizes.

The world does not like saints. How can we?

They show us our weaknesses and insult our trials. We all fancy the idea that we are good people until we meet a saint and we are confronted with our pretense.

What then do we do with saints? We kill them!

That’s exactly what happened to Gandhi. Mohandas Gandhi was a sore to the British. When the Bengal famine was raging, (it eventually killed more than a million people), conscience-stricken Brits sent numerous messages to Winston Churchhill to do something, Churchhill's response was fascinating, it was “Why hasn’t Gandhi died yet?”.

During his lifetime, Gandhi caused trouble everywhere he went. He shook up systems. He fought against injustice. He stood up for the oppressed. He was one of the rare Indians who received a Western education, he had become a lawyer and was ready to enjoy his place in the world. However, all that was not to be. For the rest of his life, he rejected wealth. Threw away the privileges that someone of his status was supposed to enjoy. What did he do? He fought for justice. And he did it in his way.

Although the idea of nonviolence had been around before Gandhi, it was Gandhi who turned it into a powerful political tool for the whole world. Before Gandhi, nonviolence was an idea preached by Jesus, a few stoics tried it, Henry David Thoreau wrote about it and went to prison for it, and Leo Tolstoy wrote about but after Gandhi, nonviolence became a real tool, an asset for campaigners. In Gandhi, nonviolence became a living thing. He used it against oppressors from South Africa to India. It is worthy of note that Gandhi used nonviolence against the most powerful empire in history, which had the record for some of the greatest violence in history. Yet, he won!

Compare the scene. India, a poverty-stricken place, and the people conquered for 150 years led by a man in his 70s who wore nothing but a white shawl with sandals and then on the other hand the British Empire with all its power and the big Winston Churchill. If you could choose based on capacity, you would choose the British Empire. Today, the empire has closed shop in disgrace. And Gandhi has come down to us as one of the greatest souls that ever lived. In his lifetime, the British authorities he dealt with in India swore that he was a pest who would die and be forgotten. He didn’t deserve to live. Today, while Gandhi is known all over the world, no one remembers them except in discussing Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru, and the Indian fight for independence. Posterity has passed its verdict.

Even though Gandhi was fighting for his people, it was the case that even some of his people preferred to be oppressors. On 30th January 1948, an angry Hindu shot Gandhi because he could not tolerate how Gandhi was pushing for Hindu-Muslim unity. In the end, Gandhi became a martyr for what he believed. Perhaps it was the punishment of history, that even as another Indian-Hindu killed Gandhi, Gandhi became a global icon. He was too big for India. He did not belong to India alone. He belonged to all of us.

From Africa to America to Europe to Asia, Gandhi is one of the rare icons that nearly everyone recognizes.

This book is an excellent read. It tells you the story of Mohandas Gandhi, the man before he became a saint. He belongs to the ages, but once in a while, we can open the curtain to see the man.

Does he have lessons for us? What can he teach us? What can we learn from the Mahatma, The Great Soul? It turns out, a lot!

Shout to Ramachandra Guha for this impressive biography! I thoroughly enjoyed this. It is a magisterial work of over 1,200 pages!