Gandhi : An AutoBiography
Gandhi's nonviolent struggles in South Africa and India had alreadybrought him to such a level of notoriety, adulation, and controversythat when asked to write an autobiography midway through his career, hetook it as an opportunity to explain himself. Although accepting of hisstatus as a great innovator in the struggle against racism, violence,and, just then, colonialism, Gandhi feared that enthusiasm for hisideas tended to exceed a deeper understanding. He says that he wasafter truth rooted in devotion to God and attributed the turningpoints, successes, and challenges in his life to the will of God. Hisattempts to get closer to this divine power led him to seek puritythrough simple living, dietary practices (he called himself afruitarian), celibacy, and ahimsa, a life without violence. It is in this sense that he calls his book The Story of My Experiments with Truth,offering it also as a reference for those who would follow in hisfootsteps. A reader expecting a complete accounting of his actions,however, will be sorely disappointed. Although Gandhi presents hisepisodes chronologically, he happily leaves wide gaps, such as theentire satyagraha struggle in South Africa, for which he refers the reader to another of his books. And writing for his contemporaries, he takes it for granted that the reader is familiarwith the major events of his life and of the political milieu of early20th-century India. For the objective story, try Yogesh Chadha's Gandhi: A Life.For the inner world of a man held as a criminal by the British, a heroby Muslims, and a holy man by Hindus, look no further than theseexperiments.
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[code]http://rapidshare.com/files/52368697/Gandhi_An_Autobiography__The_Story_of_My_Experiments_With_Truth.pdf[/code]
1 comment:
Gandhi was a great innovator against racism? That's interesting. Here's his very own words on race:
http://www.gandhism.net/
Note: All quotes are from the Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi (CWMG).
"When one reflects that the conception of Brahmanism, with its poetic and mysterious mythology, took its rise in the land of the 'Coolie trader,' that in that land 24 centuries ago, the almost divine Buddha taught and practised the glorious doctrine of self-sacrifice, and that it was from the plains and mountains of that weird old country that we have derived the fundamental truths of the very language we speak, one cannot but help regretting that the children of such a race should be treated as equals of the children of black heathendom and outer darkness."
>>Reference: Vol. I, p. 225
"The Indian is being dragged down to the position of a raw Kaffir."
>>Reference: Vol. I, p. 193
"Ours is one continual struggle against a degradation sought to be inflicted upon us by the Europeans, who desire to degrade us to the level of the raw Kaffir whose occupation is hunting, and whose sole ambition is to collect a certain number of cattle to buy a wife with and, then, pass his life in indolence and nakedness."
>>Reference: Vol. I, pp. 409-410
"The £3 tax is merely a penalty for wearing the brown skin and it would appear that, whereas Kaffirs are taxed because they do not work at all or sufficiently, we are to be taxed evidently because we work too much, the only thing in common between the two being the absence of the white skin."
>>Reference: Vol. III, p. 74
"First, why should we bear such hardships, submit ourselves, for instance, to...live among the Kaffirs...? Better die than suffer this."
>>Reference: Vol. IX, p. 292
"Of course, under my suggestion, the Town Council must withdraw the Kaffirs from the Location. About this mixing of the Kaffirs with the Indians, I must confess I feel most strongly. I think it is very unfair to the Indian population and it is an undue tax on even the proverbial patience of my countrymen."
>>Reference: Vol. III, p. 429
"We humbly submit that the decision to open the school for all Coloured children is unjust to the Indian community, and is a departure from the assurance given by the then Minister of Education, as also Sir Albert Hime and Mr. Robert Russell, that the school will be reserved for Indian children only."
>>Reference: Vol. IV, p. 402
"Kaffirs are as a rule uncivilised - the convicts even more so. They are troublesome, very dirty and live almost like animals."
>>Reference: Vol. VIII, p. 199
"Are we supposed to be thieves or free-booters that even a Kaffir policeman can accost and detain us wherever we happen to be going?"
>>Reference: Vol. VI, p. 363
"The British rulers take us to be so lowly and ignorant that they assume that, like the Kaffirs who can be pleased with toys and pins, we can also be fobbed off with trinkets."
>>Reference: Vol. VIII, p. 167
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