Mohandas Gandhi
Список книг автора Mohandas GandhiThe Wit and Wisdom of Gandhi
Assembled with skill and sensitivity by social activist Homer A. Jack, this selection of brief and incisive quotations range from religion and theology, personal and social ethics, service, and international and political affairs, to the family, education, culture, Indian problems, and Gandhi's most original concept, satyagraha — group nonviolent direct action.
Gandhi
India's political and spiritual leader, Mahatma («Great Soul») Gandhi led his country's struggle for independence from Britain through a campaign based on nonviolence and civil disobedience. Gandhi's doctrine of nonviolent action profoundly influenced civil rights leaders around the world, including Martin Luther King, Jr., and Nelson Mandela. This anthology of the Mahatma's writings offers a revealing look at his life and philosophy.Editor Ronald Duncan provides a lengthy introduction in which he recounts his personal association with Gandhi. «In making this selection,» he notes, «I have tried to bear three things in mind: firstly, my intention to present material of permanent interest as opposed to comments on day-to-day political matters; also to show the development and to give the essence of Mahatma Gandhi's philosophy of Satyagraha [defense of and by the truth], and its basis in the religious teachings of the Gita; and thirdly, I have tried to emphasize those ideas which, though they may not seem immediately applicable to Western life, should be of considerable relevance to contemporary thought.»In addition to substantial extracts from Gandhi's writings, this collection features his speeches — including some made during his trials — and extracts from his diary. The book concludes with a selection of Gandhi's correspondence with Lord Linlithgow, then Viceroy of India, and their reflections on the country's future.
Autobiography
"My purpose," Mahatma Gandhi writes of this book, «is to describe experiments in the science of <I>Satyagraha, </I>not to say how good I am.» <I>Satyagraha,</I> Gandhi's nonviolent protest movement (<I>satya </I>= true, <I>agraha </I>= firmness), came to stand, like its creator, as a moral principle and a rallying cry; the principle was truth and the cry freedom. The life of Gandhi has given fire and fiber to freedom fighters and to the untouchables of the world: hagiographers and patriots have capitalized on <I>Mahatma </I>myths. Yet Gandhi writes: «Often the title [<I>Mahatma, </I>Great Soul] has deeply pained me. . . . But I should certainly like to narrate my experiments in the spiritual field which are known only to myself, and from which I have derived such power as I possess for working in the political field.» <BR>Clearly, Gandhi never renounced the world; he was neither pacifist nor cult guru. Who was Gandhi? In the midst of resurging interest in the man who freed India, inspired the American Civil Rights Movement, and is revered, respected, and misunderstood all over the world, the time is proper to listen to Gandhi himself — in his own words, his own «confessions,» his autobiography. <BR>Gandhi made scrupulous truth-telling a religion and his <I>Autobiography</I> inevitably reminds one of other saints who have suffered and burned for their lapses. His simply narrated account of boyhood in Gujarat, marriage at age 13, legal studies in England, and growing desire for purity and reform has the force of a man extreme in all things. He details his gradual conversion to vegetarianism and <I>ahimsa </I>(non-violence) and the state of celibacy (<I>brahmacharya, </I>self-restraint) that became one of his more arduous spiritual trials. In the political realm he outlines the beginning of <I>Satyagraha </I>in South Africa and India, with accounts of the first Indian fasts and protests, his initial errors and misgivings, his jailings, and continued cordial dealings with the British overlords. <BR>Gandhi was a fascinating, complex man, a brilliant leader and guide, a seeker of truth who died for his beliefs but had no use for martyrdom or sainthood. His story, the path to his vision of <I>Satyagraha </I>and human dignity, is a critical work of the twentieth century, and timeless in its courage and inspiration. <BR>