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Gandhi : a Life Gandhi: A Life By: Krishna Kripalani First published: 1968 Printed & Published by: Director, National Book Trust, India Nehru Bhavanm 5 Institutional Area, Phase II Vasant Kunj, New Delhi 110 070 Gandhi: A Life SOME OPINIONS ON THE FIRST EDITION “Arrangements should be made to render the book in all the Indian languages and distributed among the schools." - C. Rajagopalachari Politicians will be eloquent on his (Gandhi's) message and pundits will write their commentaries on it. But what may not be quite so easy to do is to understand the man as he was and wanted to be. Towards that understanding the present work is by far the most outstanding contribution." — The Illustrated Weekly of India Bombay “An admirable short biography—unpretentious and yet competent, lucid, objective and authentic. From the very first page of its Introduction to the very last of its final chapter, this short life is arresting." — National Herald New Delhi “Mr. Krishna Kripalani has now done for Gandhi what he had earlier done for Tagore) in the latter's centenary year in 1961. He has produced a thoroughly business-like biography packed with facts, frequently with quotations from Gandhi's own writings, and are not crammed with cloying praise or carping criticism." - Sunday Statesman Calcutta "Amid the torrent and slush of Gandhiana released and about to be released, here is an exception Kripalani's main distinction lies in his tone or accent, civilized rather than committed. It is throughout delightful reading; his account of the last disillusioned days of a leader virtually disowned is exceedingly to the point." Amrita Bazar Patrika Calcutta www.mkgandhi.org Page 2 Gandhi: A Life "Kripalani's brief account of the life of Mahatma Gandhi is undoubtedly an exception to the cloying sentimentalities which are inflicted on us. He brings to his task some outstanding biographical skills... Kripalani's writing is dignified and noble and there are passages in this book which reveal the author's evocative power." Sunday Standard New Delhi "When we read Sri Kripalani's biography, we see before our eyes Gandhiji changing and growing. This is the reason why his creation belongs to a very high order of biographical literature." Andhra Jyoti Vijayawada " ----- a most satisfying biography of an unusual man ...." Hindustan Standard Calcutta www.mkgandhi.org Page 3 Gandhi: A Life To NANDITA who in life encouraged this writing and in death sustained it www.mkgandhi.org Page 4 Gandhi: A Life Acknowledgements Navajivan Trust for the quotations from Gandhiji's writings; Gandhi Smarak Sangrahalaya for the photograph www.mkgandhi.org Page 5 Gandhi: A Life INTRODUCTORY No PREVIOUS century in the long and eventful history of the Indian sub- continent has witnessed such dynamic change in the political, social and economic life of the people as the century that opened with Gandhi's birth and has now drawn to its close. When he was born the British rule had been firmly established in India. The uprising of 1857, variously called the Sepoy Mutiny, the Great Rebellion, or the First War of Independence, had merely served to consolidate a commercial adventure into an empire. The subjection was not merely political. It was so effectively reinforced by intellectual and cultural domination that the new generation of educated Indians were eager to subject themselves to its 'civilizing mission'. No subjection is so absolute as that which is willingly offered. No chains bind so hard as those which are hugged. So complete was the tutelage and so servile the surrender that it seemed that the British Empire in India was divinely ordained and had come to stay. When Gandhi died, it was as a free nation that India mourned the loss. The dispossessed had recovered the lost heritage and the dumb had found a voice. Those who had shrunk in fear could now hold their heads high. The disarmed had forged a weapon against which the British bayonet was powerless. It was a weapon unique in the world's armoury. It could win without killing. The story of this miracle is also the story of Gandhi's life, for he more than any other individual was the architect as well as engineer of this historic phenomenon. It is not for nothing that his grateful countrymen have called him the Father of the Nation. And yet it would be an exaggeration to claim that Gandhi alone wrought this transformation. No individual, however gifted, may claim exclusive credit as sole architect of a historical process. A succession of remarkable predecessors and elder contemporaries had laboured with spade and sword to clear the jungle overgrown with deadly weeds of fear, superstition and lethargy. They had helped to prepare the ground which the genius of Gandhi turned into a mighty battle-field through which he led his countrymen in a grand march to www.mkgandhi.org Page 6 Gandhi: A Life freedom. Had he been born a hundred years earlier he could hardly have been what he became. Nor could India have achieved, but for Gandhi's leadership, her destiny in the way she did—a way so splendid that it brought freedom as well as glory. It was a way so unique that already men are wondering if such an experiment could ever be repeated. Gandhi lived, suffered and died for his people. And yet it is not in relation to his country alone that his life has significance. Nor is it only as a patriot or revolutionary reformer that he will be remembered by future generations. Whatever else Gandhi was, he was essentially a moral force whose appeal to the conscience of man is both universal and lasting. If he worked primarily for his countrymen, it was because he was born among them and because their suffering and humiliation supplied the necessary incentives to his moral sensibility and his political crusade. The lesson of his life is thus for all to read. Did Gandhi's greatness rest solely on his ardent love of his country and his dynamic leadership in a successful political struggle, it might be adequate reason for his people's gratitude to the Father of the Nation, but it would hardly explain why the rest of the world should particularly honour his memory or find stimulus in his words. There is no dearth of Fathers of Nations in the world today; indeed, some of them the world could well have done without. But this frail, dark man in loin-cloth was much more than the Father of his Nation. His achievements were many. Each one of them, judged by the manner of its execution or by its fruit, would have made his name honoured anywhere in the world. He brought liberation from foreign rule to a fifth of the human race. And India's freedom was, in a way, the harbinger of freedom to many countries of South-East Asia and Africa. Of no less significance was what he did for those who were once despised as 'untouchables'. He broke their centuries-old shackles of caste tyranny and social indignity. By his insistence that freedom was to be measured by the all-round social, moral and economic well-being of the millions who live in the villages, as well as by the means he evolved for achieving such freedom, he showed a www.mkgandhi.org Page 7 Gandhi: A Life way of life which may one day provide an alternative to both a regimented and an acquisitive society. His very death was an achievement in itself, for the martyrdom shamed his people out of a hysteria of hatred and fratricide, and helped the Union of India to consolidate the secular and democratic character of the new-born State. But no human achievement, however great, can last for ever or remain static in a changing world. What Gandhi achieved may be wrecked or may go awry or may dissolve into no more than a memory. But Gandhi will live, for the man was greater than his achievements. In him was the universal man in eternal quest of truth and moral perfection. As he himself put it: 'I am more concerned in preventing the brutalization of human nature than in the prevention of the suffering of my own people... If we are all sons of the same God and partake of the same divine essence, we must partake of the sin of every person whether he belongs to us or to another race*. 'There are patriots in India, as indeed among all peoples,' wrote Rabindranath Tagore in 1938, 'who have sacrifice*' for their country as much as Gandhiji had done, and some who have had to suffer much worse penalties than he has had to endure; even as in the religious sphere there are ascetics in this country compared to the rigours of whose practices Gandhiji's life is one of comparative ease. But these patriots are mere patriots and nothing more; and these ascetics are mere spiritual athletes, limited as men by their very virtues; while this man seems greater than his virtues, great as they are.' Gandhi founded no church and though he lived by faith he left behind no dogma for the faithful to quarrel over. Deeply devout and loyal (in his own fashion) to the religion in which he was born, he rejected fearlessly and uncompromisingly any dogma or practice that seemed to negate the law, as he conceived it, of universal morality and charity. As early as 1909 his Baptist friend, Joseph Doke, wrote of him: 'I question whether any system of religion can absolutely hold him. His views are too closely allied to Christianity to be entirely Hindu, and too deeply saturated with Hinduism to be called Christian, while his sympathies www.mkgandhi.org Page 8 Gandhi: A Life are so wide and catholic that one would imagine "he has reached a point where the formulae of sects are meaningless".' Twenty-seven years later Gandhi warned some of his coworkers who had formed a Society named after him to propagate his ideals: 'There is no such thing as Gandhism, and I do not want to leave any sect after me.
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