THE SECRETARY-GENERAL 9 June 1998 Dear Professor Nagler, I am writing to express my sincere gratitude for your gift of the book Gandhi the Man by Sri Eknath Easwaran, which you sent to me through Shashi Tharoor. As Mr. Tharoor may have told you, Mahatma Gandhi is one of my heroes. I look forward with special interest to reading the book in light of your glowing review. Yours sincerely, Kofi A. Annan Professor Michael Nagler Department of Classics University of California Berkeley UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY Co^u& 3**- BERKELEY • DAVIS • IRVINE • LOS ANGELES • RIVERSIDE • SAN DIEGO • SAN FRANCISCO SANTA BARBARA • SANTA CRUZ DEPARTMENT OF CLASSICS BERKELEY, CALIFORNIA 94720-2520 7303 DWINELLE HALL #2520 PHONE (510) 642-4218 FAX (510) 643-2959 May 31, 1998 Mr. Shashi Tharoor Office of the Secretary-General United Nations New York, NY 10017 Dear Mr. Tharoor, "-1 \>&K% >~^v'"i?""""^^ -~^- ^^ -^C^3—\ &a~ I was very pleased to meet you in San Francisco at the UNA reception andremaifTdei grateful for your generosity in agreeing to pass on the books I handed you to Mr. Kofi Annan. Our contact at that time was so brief that I did not have time to explain the foreign cover within the packet: it was from the recent translation of Sri Eknath Easwaran's book GandbjJb&Man in (^/U_ The People's Republic of China, which seems even more significant to me in the light of recent ••-Ck.Vtit^ events. The book was published in Beijing by China Yan Shi Press and the contract was negotiated by China's Government Copyright Agency. I now enclose for you a copy of that translation and the original, which tell the story of Mahatma Gandhi's spiritual transformation, with a forthcoming review by myself. Sri Easwaran's work for more than 40 years in the United States has been, as you will see, to teach the spiritual skills that develop deeper inner resources of compassion and understanding among peoples. His books are now being published in more than 17 languages and are available around the world, the latest contracts after Chinese have been with Russia and Slovenia. Also of interest, a major book distributor in Peshawar, Pakistan, has been requesting help in transporting to Karachi some English copies of A Man To Match His Mountains: Badshah Khan, the Nonviolent Soldier of Islam (a kind of companion volume, if you will, to Gandhi the Man). In India, JAICO Publishing House has published many of his books and this past fall brought out Gandhi the Man and his three-volume commentary, The Bhagavad Gitafor Daily Living. Both sold out in just a few months and are in reprinting. The Bhagavad Gitafor Daily Living, released during the Cold War in the United States, includes appeals to the superpowers of the day, the U.S. and the Soviet Union, to come closer together instead of plunging the world into a nuclear holocaust. It is no wonder they are selling out in India! In the United States Sri Easwaran's books are published by Nilgiri Press and Hyperion of New York, in Great Britain by Penguin, in India by JAICO Publishing House and Penguin, and in Latin America by Editorial Atlantida of Argentina, which is starting book clubs for the Spanish translations of Eknath Easwaran's books throughout South America, Central America, and even among Spanish speakers in North America. (continues) 6v 4i it It Many people around the world are taking hope today from the high ideals represented in his life and in his books, and I am pleased to send you the enclosed in hopes that they can be of use to you. Again, thanks for your help. I hope our paths may cross again in future as you continue your important work. With best regards, Sincerely yours, Michael Nagler Professor (emer.) encl. Gandhi the Man: the Story of His Transformation by Eknath Easwaran. Nilgiri Press, Box 256 Tomales, CA 94971, 1997, 197 pages (paper) $13.95 (available from FOR) This book takes the reader inside Gandhi's personal transformation as perhaps none other, and thus gives us the key to making use of the Mahatma's precious legacy for our own spiritual development and our own potential as nonviolent actors. For did not Gandhi say (as Easwaran reminds us on the frontispiece): "I have not the shadow of a doubt that any man or woman can achieve what I have achieved if he or she would make the same effort and cultivate the same hope and faith"? + Sri Eknath Easwaran met Gandhi in the early forties and immediately fell under his spell, but he felt that his call was not exactly to direct action. Instead, the meeting awakened in him a desire to turn inwards and take the long road to Self-realization, the deepest swaraj ('self-rule') which his spiritual teacher, his grandmother, had beckoned him to decades before. Hence his unusual ability to interpret the meaning of Gandhi's personal disciplines and explain for today's reader the spiritual source of his unique power (Arun Gandhi has said of Easwaran that he "understands my grandfather better than anyone in the country.") When I wrote the foreword to the first edition of Gandhi the Man in 1972 I was doubly thrilled because the book would be available for students in my nonviolence course at Berkeley. Today, two editions and twenty-five classes of students later, the new edition with its superb photos made even better by digital enhancing techniques has been translated into several languages including most recently, mainland Chinese (!). Others may be on the way as well, and remarkably, the first Indian edition has recently sold out in a few months. Thanks to this book, hundreds of thousands of people round the world have gotten an in-depth glimpse into the soul of the Mahatma and the logic of Satyagraha. Gandhi the Man works by juxtaposing the key quotes with highly evocative photographs to accompany the spare but very explanatory text by Easwaran. The volume is rounded off with a superb essay by one of Easwaran's students, Timothy Flinders, on "How Nonviolence Works" Review, p. 2 which again draws on crucial quotes from Gandhi (it's always the first thing I have my Berkeley students read). The main text is organized roughly ^chronologically, with the first of its four sections focusing on Gandhi's awakening in South Africa and his astonishing transformation from a "briefless barrister" to a fearless resistor, and the second section, "The Way of Love," emphasizing the revolutionary character of the nonviolent approach to human struggle. Section Three, "Mother and Child," concentrates on the spiritual nature of Gandhi's discoveries, and * tells the story of what is probably the closest relationship between a human being and a book known to history: between Gandhi and his Gita, offering a fascinating glimpse (118-119) of how meditation (Easwaran's special field) and the use ofamantram or spiritual formula can harmonize the restless mind and make its owner a force for nonviolence. Easwaran's simple but penetrating explanation of this connection is what makes this book unique among so many books on Gandhi. The fourth and final section, "Gandhi the Man," explores the mystery of peace and action (and peace in action) while it follows the story of Gandhi life to its tragic conclusion on the lawn of Birla house on January 29th, 1948. The photos - - many of which were published for the ^ st time in Gandhi the Man — add up to a haunting evocation of that stirring era and the little man who caused it all; with some of those pictures now even sharper, you feel you can reach out and touch him. If I have one favorite image among them, it's Gandhi, in loin cloth and shawl, happy but utterly detached inside though he is surrounded by ecstatic Lancashire cotton workers, mostly women, to whom he has just explained why he had to put them out of work. The women, arms upraised, look as if shouting "ip 'ip 'ooray!' as the Mahatma beams serenely. Opposite a detail of the same picture on the next page his words are: "[Satyagraha] is a force that works silently and apparently slowly. In reality, there is no force in the world that is so direct or so swift in working." As one reviewer said recently, "Readers will never forget the look and sound of'Gandhi the Man.'" I sure won't. Michael N. Nagler.