Gandhi Album (Rare Book)

$46
Item Code: IDE412
Publisher: Publication Division, Ministry Of Information And Broadcasting
Language: English
Edition: 1994
ISBN: 8123002580
Pages: 315 (B & W Illus: 545)
Cover: Hardcover
Other Details 11.0" X 8.8"
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Book Description
Foreword

During his life of nearly four scope years, Mahatma Gandhi passed through more phases than perhaps any other man of like stature. Being born in a middle class Vaishnava family and brought up in that atmosphere till he joined school and received instruction according to the system then prevailing, he lived, dressed and dined in the way all children of that class did. Later he went to England for studies and changed his dress to suit the conditions of that country. But in food and certain other matters, he remained true to the lesson he had learnt early in life. On his return to India after being called to the Bar, he passed through difficult times as all beginners in the profession of law have to do and it was as a lawyer that he went to South Africa to help a client. He had, however, to spend many years there as the condition of Indians and the treatment they received demanded that he should authorities brought about a considerable change in his life and by the time he returned to India, he had already become a Sanyasi though he never put on the saffron robe of a Sanyasi. His dress in India on his return was different from what he used to wear when he was practicing as a Barrister and conformed to the old Kathiawadi type. His campaign in favour of the non-co-operation movement brought about another change which identified his outward appearance with that of the humblest and lowliest of the land and he stuck to the loin cloth till he departed with the name of God on his lips. The rigours of winter could bring about no change in him during his short visit to England in 1931. It is therefore a very instructive and fascinating study to see him in pictures in different stages of his life. But apart from the mere differences in dress, his characteristic poses and glimpses of his personality have attracted attention. All these can be seen in the photographs, which have been reproduced in this volume. There is a great deal that has been written and is being written about his life and his teachings. His life in pictures will make an ideal combination with what is being or has been written about him by himself and others.

I therefore welcome this publication which is an humble tribute to his memory by the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting of the Government of India.

From the Book:

MAHATMA GANDHI

Introductory

WHEN GANDHI was born British rule had been securely established in India. The uprising of 1857, known as the Mutiny, had merely served to consolidate the British adventure into an empire. India had effectively passed under British tutelage, so effectively indeed, that instead of resenting alien rule the new generation of educated Indians were eager to submit to the "civilizing mission" of their foreign masters. Political subjection had been reinforced by intellectual and moral servility. It seemed that the British empire in India was safe for centuries.

When Gandhi died it was as a free nation that India mourned the loss. The disinherited had recovered their heritage and the "dumb millions" had found their voice. The disarmed had won a great battle and had in the process evolved a moral force such as to compel the attention, and to some degree the admiration, of the world. The story of this miracle is also the story of Gandhi's life, for he more than any other was the architect of this miracle. It is not for nothing that his grateful countrymen called him and have continued to call him the Father of the Nation.

And yet it would be an exaggeration to say that Gandhi alone wrought this miracle. No single individual, however great and wonderful, can be the sole engineer of a historical process. A succession of remarkable predessors and elder contemporaries had quarried and broken the stones which helped Gandhi to pave the way to India's independence. They had set in motion various trends in the intellectual, social and moral consciousness of the people which the genius of Gandhi mobilized and directed in a grand march. Raja Rammohun Roy, Ramakrishna Paramahamsa and his great disciple Swami Vivekananda, Swami Dayanand Saraswati, Dadabhai Naoroji, Badrudding Tyabji, Syed Ahmed Khan, Ranade, Gokhale, Tilak, Aurobindo Ghosh and Rabindranath Tagore, to name only a few, each one of them had in his own field created a consciousness of India's destiny and helped to generate a spirit of sacrifice a which, in Gandhi's hands, became the instruments of a vast political-cum-moral upheavel. Had Gandhi been born a hundred years earlier he could hardly have achieved what he did. Nevertheless, it is true that but for Gandhi India's political destiny would have been vastly different and her moral stature vastly inferior.

But though Gandhi lived, suffered and died in India and for Indians, it is not in relation to India's destiny alone that his life has significance. Nor is it only as a patriot, politician and nation-builder that he will be remembered by future generations. He was essentially a moral force whose appeal is to the conscience of man and therefore universal. He was essentially a moral force whose appeal is to the conscience of man and therefore universal. He was the servant and friend of man as man and not as belonging to this or that nation, religion or race. If he worked for Indians only, it was because he was born among them and because their humiliation and suffering supplied the necessary incentives to his moral sensibility. The lesson of his life therefore is for all to read. He founded no church and though he lived by faith he left behind no dogma for the faithful to quarrel over. He gave no attributes to God save Truth and prescribed no path for attaining it save honest and relentless search through means that injure no living thing. Who dare therefore claim Gandhi for his own except by claiming him for all?

Another lesson of his life which should be of universal interest is that he was not born a genius and did not exhibit in early life and extraordinary faculty that is not shared by the common run of men. He was no inspired bard like Rabindranath Tagore, he had no mystic visions like Ramakrishna Paramahamsa, he was no child prodigy like Shankara or Vivekananda. He was just an ordinary child like most of us. If there was anything extraordinary about him as a child it was his shyness, a handicap from which he suffered for a long time. No doubt, something very extraordinary must have been latent in his spirit which later developed into an iron will and combined with a moral sensibility made him what he became, but there was little evidence of it in his childhood. We may therefore derive courage and inspiration from the knowledge that if he made himself what he was, there is no visible reason why others should not be able to do the same. His genius, if that word must be used, was, so to say, an infinite capacity for taking pains in fulfilment of a restless moral urge. His life was one continuous striving, an unremitting sadhana, a relentless search for truth, not abstract or metaphysical truth, but such truth as can be realized in human relations. He climbed step by step, each step no bigger than a man's, till when we saw him at the height he seemed more than a man, "Generations to come, it may be, will scare believe", wrote Einstein, "that such a one as this ever in flesh and blood walked upon this earth." If at the end he seemed like no other man, it is good to remember that when he began he was like any other man.

Such is the great lesson of his life. Fortunately, he has himself recorded for us the main incidents of his life till 1921 and described with scrupulous veracity the evolution of his moral and intellectual consciousness. Had he not done so, there would have been in India no dearth of devout chroniclers who would have invented divine portents at his birth and invested him with a halo from his childhood. How right Tagore was when he sang: "Your speech is simple, my Master, but not theirs who talk of you."

Foreword:

During his life of nearly four score years, Mahatma Gandhi passed through more phases than perhaps any other man of like stature. Being born in a middle class Vaishnava family and brought up in that atmosphere till he joined school and received instruction according to the system then prevailing, he lived, dressed and dined in the way all children of that class did. Later he went to England for studies and changed his dress to suit the conditions of that country. But in food and certain other matters, he remained true to the lesson he had learnt early in life. On his return to India after being called to the Bar, he passed through difficult times as all beginners in the profession of law have to do and it was as a lawyer that he went to South Africa to help a client. He had, however, to spend many years there as the condition of Indians and the treatment they received demanded that he should serve them rather than return to India. His struggle with the authorities brought about a considerable change in his life and by the time he returned to India, he had already become a Sanyasi though he never put on the saffron robe of a Sanyasi. His dress in India on his return was different from what he used to wear when he was practising as a Barrister and conformed to the old Kathiawadi type. His campaign in favour of the non-co-operation movement brought about another change which identified his outward appearance with that of the humblest and lowliest of the land and he stuck to the loin cloth till he departed with the name of God on his lips. The rigours of winter could bring about no change in him during his short visit to England in 1931. It is therefore a very instructive and fascinating study to see him in pictures in different stages of his life. But apart from the mere differences in dress, his characteristic poses and glimpses of his personality have attracted attention. All these can be seen in the photographs which have been reproduced in this volume. There is a great deal that has been written and is being written about his life and his teachings. His life in pictures will make an ideal combination with what is being or has been written about him by himself and others.

I therefore welcome this publication which is an humble tribute to his memory by the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting of the Government of India.

RAJENDRA PRASAD

Rashtrapati Bhavan,
New Delhi,
20th January, 1954

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