The Making of the Mahatma

Contents : 1. The Power of Tradition: Gandhi’s Kathiawadi Heritage. 2. Whirlwinds of Change: Kathiawad in the Nineteenth Century. 3. The Gandhis of Porbandar. 4. Portrait of A Young Indian as a Late-Victorian: A Young Man at Sea. 5. The Birth of A Fighter. 6. The Manifesto of the Gandhian Revolution: The Writing of Hind Swaraj. Bibliography. Index.

The Making of the Mahatma was an important contribution to the literature on the life and thought of M. K. Gandhi. It was the first scholarly work to identify the forces that moulded the young boy from nineteenth-century Kathiawar into a force that sealed the fate of colonialism in the next century. This seminal volume details the first 40 years of Gandhi’s life as a late Victorian youngster in a native princely state, as a tentative student in London, and as an inexperienced but determined lawyer in South Africa. Through its insights into Gandhi’s early reading, influences and social life, it provides a critical study of the formative years that led to the writing of his statement of beliefs—the Hind Swaraj.

The author argues that Gandhi was influenced not just by Indian history and culture, but also by the intellectual and spiritual environment of more than one great civilisation. We have to move beyond the beliefs and legends that have grown around the Mahatma to more objectively understand him as a great man produced by the historical forces of his time.

This engaging narrative is now reissued with a Foreword by Rajmohan Gandhi. As a well-known, influential work, this book will interest students of history, Gandhian thought and peace studies. (jacket)