SUMMARY:
A brilliantly illuminating book on Mahatma Gandhi that enriches our understanding of his means, his accomplishments, and his failures.Gandhi has long been considered a visionary and a martyr. And certainly, he was that rare leader wholly devoted to his people. But in this ambitious, stirring, original study, Pulitzer Prize–winner Joseph Lelyveld sets out to measure Gandhi’s accomplishments as a politician and an advocate for the downtrodden—against Gandhi’s own expectations and in light of his complex, conflicted feelings about his place in Indian history.Lelyveld traces the roots of Gandhi’s philosophy of reform to South Africa, exploring in unmatched depth the campaigns for social justice he undertook there, and chronicling his continued efforts when he returned to India. We see why he became known as Mahatma—Great Soul—but we also see clearly that he was unable to achieve all the goals he set for himself and his country, suffering bitter disappointment at this shortfall, most profoundly in 1947 when India was partitioned.Here is a profoundly intelligent, vital reconsideration of Gandhi’s extraordinary accomplishments, of his fierce but finally unfulfilled hopes, and of his ever-evolving legacy.