Gandhi Before India

by Ramachandra Guha

Overview

A New York Times Notable Book and a San Francisco Chronicle Best Book of the Year

A revelatory work of biography, Gandhi Before India is an illuminating portrait of the life, the work, and the historical context of one of the most abidingly influential—and controversial—men in modern history. From Gandhi’s birth in 1869, through his upbringing in Gujarat and his years as a student in London, to his two decades as a lawyer and community organizer in South Africa, acclaimed author Ramachandra Guha brings the past to light with extraordinary grace and clarity. Drawing on a wealth of newly uncovered materials, Gandhi Before India strips away the myths that have sprung up around the Mahatma to uncover the remarkable story of how Gandhi came of age abroad, and how he set the stage for his return to India.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780307474780
Publisher:	Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Publication date:	02/03/2015
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	704
Product dimensions:	5.24(w) x 8.00(h) x 1.49(d)

About the Author

Ramachandra Guha has taught at Yale and Stanford universities, the University of Oslo, the Indian Institute of Science, and the London School of Economics. His books include a pioneering environmental history, an award-winning social history of cricket, and the award-winning India After Gandhi. He writes regularly on social and political issues for the British and Indian press, including columns in The Telegraph and the Hindustan Times, and his work has also appeared in The New York Times. He lives in Bangalore.

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Prologue: Gandhi from All Angles
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Table of Contents

List of Illustrations ix

Maps xi

Prologue: Gandhi from All Angles 1

1 Middle Caste, Middle Rank 15

2 Among the Vegetarians 36

3 From Coast to Coast 55

4 A Barrister in Durban 82

5 Travelling Activist 102

6 Lawyer-Loyalist 124

7 White Against Brown 152

8 Pluralist and Puritan 178

9 Trouble in the Transvaal 199

10 A Lobbyist in London 212

11 From Conciliation to Confrontation 228

12 To Jail 251

13 A Tolstoyan in Johannesburg 268

14 Prisoner of Conscience 298

15 Big Little Chief 330

16 The Contest of Civilizations 362

17 Seeking a Settlement 385

18 A Son Departs, a Mentor Arrives 413

19 A Physician at Phoenix 444

20 Breaking Boundaries 463

21 Farewell to Africa 500

22 How the Mahatma Was Made 530

Acknowledgements 551

A Note on Sources 556

Notes 563

Index 633

Editorial Reviews

Remarkable. . . . [A] moving portrait.” —The New York Times Book Review

“Guha is a brilliant historian who combines the gift of a storyteller, the discipline of an academic and the critical ability of seeing Gandhi as a fascinating human being, by not placing him on a pedestal. . . . [He] has re-created the past by connecting scattered dots . . . to weave a rich tapestry.” —San Francisco Chronicle

“Striking. . . . Guha ably shows, for all that Gandhi influenced events in South Africa, it was he who experienced the greater change.” —The Economist

“Deeply contextualized, dexterously researched, and judiciously written, this deserves to become the landmark biography of the early Gandhi.” —Maya Jasanoff, New Republic

“Fascinating. . . . A biography with a remarkable ear for the resonances of Gandhi’s work and time—for the fan-mail and hate-mail; for overheard disagreements with family and colleagues; for his exchanges with political acquaintances, including his enemies. . . . As exhaustively researched a biography of the African Gandhi as we will have for some time.” —The Independent (London)

“[A] magisterial study. . . . Guha summarizes the traits of Gandhi’s character and the stages during the first half of his life that prepared him for the much more difficult journey he would undertake once he returned to India. . . . I was rewarded beyond all of my expectations [by Gandhi Before India].” —Charles R. Larson, Counterpunch

“Substantial enough to be comprehensive, yet concise enough to be approachable by the general reader. . . . Sharp, insightful, balanced and impeccably researched.” —Alex von Tunzelmann, The Times (London)

“A work of vivid social history as well as biography. . . . One of the surprises in Gandhi Before India is just how much fresh material it contains. Guha has a gift for tracking down obscure letters and newspaper reports and patching them together to make history come alive.” —Patrick French, The Guardian (London)

“Fascinating. . . . [Gandhi Before India] reveals how an impossibly shy young man, who donned top hat and tails as a student at Inner Temple, transformed himself into Churchill’s ‘half-naked fakir,’ dedicated to his spinning wheel while simultaneously challenging the might of the Empire.” —The Sunday Times (London)

“The portrait offered in historian Ramachandra Guha’s biography is of Gandhi as a human being, not just a hero.” —Financial Times

“Gandhi Before India should be required reading for the student of contemporary affairs. . . . Guha’s carefully rendered observations about class, religion, and ethnicity—how they divide people and how they can be bridged by common concerns and simple decency—are the heart of this book. . . . Remarkable.” —The Christian Science Monitor

“A magisterial history. . . . In Ramachandra Guha, a great man has found a great biographer, a wise, persistent and elegant historian who has done justice to perhaps his nation’s greatest story. . . . One senses, in the author’s approach, something of Gandhi’s own intensity and rigour. . . . [The] book never ceases to inform and intrigue.” —Sydney Morning Herald

“What sets [Gandhi Before India] apart from other recent biographies . . . is Guha’s resolutely non-scurrilous perspective. . . . What emerges in the end, with the slow magic of a film being developed in an old fashioned dark room, is a sharp picture of the intellectual growth of a remarkable man.” —The Hindustan Times (India)

“Many will come to this biography wanting to know more about Gandhi himself. . . . Guha relates all this wonderfully. His book is clearly a labour of love, though not of uncritical infatuation. What distinguishes it is the breadth of the context—Indian, British and South African. Guha marshals his material sensitively and empathetically in order to give shape, colour and depth to the life of this saint-like figure.” —Bernard Porter, The Literary Review

“Excellent and exhaustive. . . . Guha has done heroic work in reconstructing this period of Gandhi’s life ... Gandhi emerges here as a fascinatingly complicated and contradictory figure . . . rich and absorbing, it will doubtless serve as the fundamental portrait of Gandhi for many years to come.” —The Sunday Business Post (Ireland)

“Guha is India’s best-known historian, who marshals his wide scholarship in contemporary and modern history with a raconteur’s lucid felicity.” —DNA Mumbai

From the Publisher

…a remarkable new biography…Gandhi Before India is full of…revelations, each one a delight for the reader.

The New York Times Book Review - Jyoti Thottam

★ 01/20/2014
This first volume in a two-part biography of Gandhi from Guha (India After Gandhi) proves itself an essential work for its bold purpose, extensive research, and engaging prose. Seeking to address scholarly reliance on the Mahatma’s own writings, Guha looks to a broader range of primary sources, including both Gandhi’s allies and detractors, to explore his “less known and sometimes forgotten” early career. We experience Mohandas Gandhi as he lived and evolved into an “authentically global” prophet of peace, engaged in a process of “dialogue and reconciliation” with a conflicted world. Much of the book chronicles Gandhi’s rise to prominence in South Africa, where he arrived as a multilingual barrister capable of translating between the British and the Indian diaspora. This ability to bridge communities became a foundation for the “unique spirit of ecumenism” that Gandhi developed into a passive resistance philosophy supported by both Eastern and Western precedents. His religious journey was paramount, as he grew beyond the orthodox Hinduism and dietary restrictions of his caste by incorporating perspectives from the Christians, Muslims, Jews, and vegetarians (the Vegetarian Society was his primary social outlet) he befriended throughout his career. Through this excellent volume, Guha demonstrates his deep affinity for the Mahatma with an honest examination of his personal development. Maps & illus. (Apr.)

Publishers Weekly

2014-02-20
The first in a two-volume biography of Gandhi (1869–1948) by a seasoned Indian scholar distinguishes itself from legions of others by its clarity and many facets. Guha (India After Gandhi: The History of the World's Largest Democracy, 2007, etc.) relishes Gandhi's inconsistencies ("Sometimes he behaved like an unworldly saint, at other times like a consummate politician") and has evidently delved beyond his collected works for material—e.g., unexplored letters to colleagues, children and even his enemies. Spanning his subject's early era, the author moves from Gandhi's rather middling upbringing in the merchant caste of Kathiawar in the western Indian state of Gujarat, the youngest son of a polygamous civil-servant father and a pious, vegetarian mother. He then examines Gandhi's revelatory law apprenticeship in London, the attempts at establishing himself as a barrister in Bombay, and the discovery of his livelihood and life's calling defending Indians and Muslims against discriminatory policies in the Transvaal, South Africa. Being a vegetarian law student in London brought the young Gandhi into the eclectic circle of the London Vegetarian Society, influenced by the work of Henry Salt. Gandhi also befriended numerous people of different religions and backgrounds, cultivating the kinds of rich friendships across class, ethnic and gender lines that defined his evolving work as a social reformer. Married as a teenager, he was always aware of having to provide for his family and educate his sons, a duty that spurred him initially to ply his trade as a journeyman lawyer in Durban. Establishing the newspaper Indian Opinion in 1903, he wrote copiously, developing his ideas on diet, moral economy and passive resistance. Upon reading John Ruskin and Leo Tolstoy, Gandhi moved the newspaper out to Phoenix, outside of Durban, in the first experiment in utopian self-sufficiency. Guha offers a full, relaxed portrait of how the "Mahatma" came to be, as he gained his voice as a writer, seeker and leader.

Kirkus Reviews