Mahatma Gandhi and His Apostles Kindle Edition
by Ved Mehta (Author) Format: Kindle Edition
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Ved Mehta’s book on Gandhi (1977) is one of the great portraits of the
political leader. Travelling the world to talk to Gandhi’s family, friends
and followers, drawing his daily life in exacting detail, Mehta gives us
a nuanced and complex picture of the great man and brings him vividly
alive.
Paperback
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Length: 312 pages Word Wise: Enabled Enhanced Typesetting: Enabled
Page Flip: Enabled
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Editorial Reviews
From the Back Cover
Millions of words have been written about Mahatma Gandhi, yet he remains an elusive figure, an abstraction to the Western mind. In this book, the illustrious writer Ved Mehta brings Gandhi to life in all his holiness and humanness, shedding light on his principles and his purposes, his ideas and his actions. --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.
About the Author
Ved Mehta was a staff writer on The New Yorker for thirty-three years. He has been a MacArthur Fellow, a Guggenheim Fellow, and has held the Rosencrantz chair in Writing at Yale University.
Dark Harbor is an independent book in a continuing literary autobiography, Continents of Exile. The earlier books in the series are All for Love, Remembering Mr. Shawn's New Yorker, Up at Oxford, The Stolen Light, Sound Shadows of the New World, The Ledge Between the Streams, Vedi, Mamaji, and Daddyji.
His other books include Mahatma Gandhi and His Apostles, Portrait of India, and Fly and the Fly-Bottle. --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.
Product details
ASIN : B06XYPX5X9
Publisher : Penguin (December 15, 2013)
Publication date : December 15, 2013
Print length : 312 pages
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Customer Reviews: 4.9 out of 5 stars 10 ratings
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Top reviews from the United States
Anand
5.0 out of 5 stars An unique Gandhi biography
Reviewed in the United States on November 24, 2007
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Ved Mehta's this unique book on Gandhi is a must read for all those whom Gandhi is still an object of interest or target of criticism. For novice readers of Gandhi, this book gives them a window of opportunity for either deface their popular image of Gandhi or open up an all new interest for further reading and research. For a seasoned Gandhi reader, this book instead serves as a rare source of information on opinions and reflections of people who had lived and worked with Gandhi. Ved did an excellent job in going after Gandhi's contemporaries, most of whom were in their late years, gathering their recollections of Gandhi and presenting them in a very coherent manner, creating a unique biography of Gandhi in the process. It comes as little surprise to the readers of Gandhi that none of the people Ved met were talking about politics or Gandhi's contribution in the India's freedom struggle; rather they center their conversation on Gandhi's extraordinary character and near supernatural abilities, a response consistent with Gandhi's popular image as a saint than as an astute politician.
One of the very intriguing aspects of Gandhi's life is the kind of relations that he had kept with his women disciples. Based on the popular saying that behind every successful man there is a woman, it is natural for one to develop a curiosity in women of Gandhi's life. Believe me, you won't be disappointed; but unlike other great people, Gandhi's involvement with women rest in a different plain that is, for most, a difficult proposition to comprehend. A number of western and Indian women became Gandhi's disciples at different points in time and became center of controversies. One woman who scholars most seriously studied and most famous among Gandhi's disciples was Madeline Slade (also known as Mirabehn, a name Gandhi had given to her). Two of other women of Gandhi's associates who also became scholars' subjects of interest were Manu and Abha, with whom Gandhi had a `close' relationship.
One of the reasons for my interest in Ved's book was to look for the details of Mirabehn's recollections of Gandhi to see whether Richard Grenier's viciously worded interpretation of Mira's conversation with Ved about Gandhi in his book, The Gandhi Nobody Knows has any truth in it. Yet, one gets a different picture in Ved's book about their conversation that is quite different from Richard's interpretation who, one would tend to believe, distorted them in his tirade against Gandhi for falsely portray that she repented her association with Gandhi. The following are the excerpts from Ved's discussion with Mirabehn on Gandhi.
...I try to draw her out on the subject of Gandhi, but her answers are vague. She speaks of him in the most general and abstract terms as a great hero of history, comparing him to Socrates, Christ and Beethoven..."How is it that you were so readily able to substitute Gandhi for Beethoven and Beethoven for Gandhi?" I ask. "Surely what distinguishes the hero from the rest of us in his extraordinary individuality?" Mira replied, `They were much more alike than anyone supposes. My book on Beethoven will show that. They both believed in God. They both had great spiritual power. And don't think that van Beethoven wasn't political'...
One need not be very smart to see how pious Mira's image of Gandhi was. Richard's interpretation now can only be think of as biased and a product of an illogical mind. At least that is how I felt. Mira continued, `In a matter of spirit, there is always a call. Please don't ask me anymore about Gandhi, I am with Beethoven now'. One can only think of this comment as Mira's devotion to Beethoven and that she doesn't want to be distracted with questions on Gandhi. Mira's hagiographical book on Gandhi, Spirits Pilgrimage published around the time this interview was done, clearly showing her devotion and submission to Gandhi and his principles; if it wasn't for her devotion to Gandhi, she wouldn't had to spent time and effort in compiling such a revered recollections of her times with Gandhi. Readers who are interested to know how a relation expert might look at their relation, could read, a renowned psychoanalyst, Sudhir Kakkar's semi-fictional book Mira and the Mahatma .
Ved also interviewed Abha; one of Gandhi's `walking sticks' and participant of his Brahmacharical (celibacy) experiments. Abha could not fully comprehend those experiments; neither had she felt any bad intentions on Gandhi's part. Most controversial girl in Gandhi's experiment was Manu, who died at a younger age. Manu had written a book on Gandhi, Bapu - my mother in which she compared her affection towards Gandhi with the affection she would have had with her own mother. Whatever the case, none of the women Ved interviewed had any bad opinion on Gandhi's experiments. What Ved has not attempted in his book, an analysis of Gandhi's these experiments with women, is attempted by an eminent professor Nicholas F. Gier in a recent academic work, `Was Gandhi a Tantric?' by comparing Gandhi's near tantric powers with that of other eastern ascetics. Ved seems to agree on Gandhi's yogic powers from his discussions with a few of Gandhi's associates who had many encounters and subsequent discussions with Gandhi on his experiments. Based on all these and other accounts, it is safe to assume that Gandhi had had supernatural powers and that he derived these powers at least partially through his `platonic' association with his women disciples. I would recommend Elizabeth Abbot's A History of Celibacy to get a more in-depth understanding of celibacy in different cultures and `vow of celibacy' historical figures including Gandhi had kept during their life times.
When Gandhi was alive, the people associated with him had a purpose in life and they were all single focused, but when he was gone, they found themselves devoid of Gandhi's influence and reduced to simple human beings. Mirabehn though continued in India for another ten years working on different rural and husbandry projects, could not stand a chance with the bureaucracy and red tapes of the new India and left India for Vienna to continue her search of Beethoven. Nehru, an aristocrat, became the head of India with complete disregard to Gandhian principles and even waged a war with China for a small piece of land. When asked about Gandhi's future in India, Rajajgopalachari (a close relative and political associate of Gandhi) told to Ved, "I have to give you a depressing answer, much as I don't like to. The glamour of modern technology, money, and power is so seductive that no one - I mean no one - can resist it. And it may be that because of Gandhi we got our freedom before we are ready, before we had developed our character to match the responsibility. The handful of Gandhians who still believe in his philosophy of a simple life in a simple society are mostly cranks." This sums up pretty much how badly the revolution that Gandhi had started died out in India. Unlike other great movements in history such as The Great Russian revolution, Mao's revolution in China, Communist revolution in Vietnam, Fidel Castro's Cuban revolution, Gandhi's revolution perished almost instantly with his death. S.S Gill in his book, Gandhi: A Sublime Failure , examines a number of `failures' from Gandhi's life and does a comparative study of what would have happened if Gandhi had done things differently.
Something somewhere went seriously wrong in India's freedom movement which was started with a noble method of execution under Gandhi's direction. Gandhi's vision of a free India was very special and for which he was willing to wait any longer. While Gandhi was working with British for a brighter future for India, religious and communal rifts created by the religious fanatics undermined Gandhi's vision. There it all started, the vision started to disintegrate into chaos and mayhem. Gandhi's gargantuan efforts to work with Muslims and untouchables all the while working with British for the betterment of India failed miserably. If anyone says that Gandhi did not hasten India's freedom even by a single day but at the same time delayed it by at least 20 years, my argument is, what kind of freedom are they talking about that Gandhi had delayed giving them for so long? Indians got their freedom before they being worthy of it. In my opinion Indians are never freed, British may have left India, but the millions of poor people of India are not liberated, and without their redemption, the freedom India gained is not worth a dime.
While reading reviews of many other Gandhi books, I got a feeling that how flawed is some of the readers' understanding of Gandhi. This book, I wish help them balance their opinions instead of forming a strong one-sided, uneducated opinion on Gandhi. Gandhi's life is not so easy to understand from a few books. One who seriously research Gandhi can see himself moving from one subject to other, from Hinduism to British Raj to Islam, and so on. Without getting a good grip on these topics, a proper understanding of Gandhi, a multifaceted personality, would be difficult if not impossible. It is interesting however to note that academic interest on Gandhi continue unabated with many studies, seminars, publications, debates, and research being conducted all over the world on Gandhi's life and his messages. To name a few, Kathryn Tidrick's Gandhi: A Political and Spiritual Life and Rajmohan Gandhi's Gandhi: The Man, His People, and the Empire are two relatively new publications analyzing Gandhi's life.
I only wish Gandhi is understood as a man of great individuality than as a god or saint who was trying a series of experiments in search for truth in all his life, a life that is unparalleled in the history of mankind. I would like to believe that failure of his ideology to capitalize in the Indian political and social arena does not necessarily mean a failure of Gandhi himself.
Gandhi remains as one of the most enigmatic and intriguing figures of 20th century.
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6 people found this helpful
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Puneet S. Lamba
5.0 out of 5 stars Balanced Profile
Reviewed in the United States on August 19, 2003
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Nuggets of lesser-known trivia about Gandhi presented in wonderful prose.
Mehta, a staff writer for The New Yorker for a quarter of a century, neither deifies nor lambastes the mahatma (great soul).
Instead, he chisels a most human profile of the man widely regarded as the originator of non-violent non-cooperation as a successful protest methodology even against the most formidable of opponents.
2 people found this helpful
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jpspiro@midway.uchicago.edu
4.0 out of 5 stars Well-written but not always fair.
Reviewed in the United States on November 6, 1997
This is a relatively short book about one of the largest lives in human history. However, Mehta (a former staff writer for The New Yorker) proves himself a master of collage, giving the reader a multifaceted portrait of Gandhi and his legacy. All of the major events of Gandhi's life are recounted, including the sexual-spiritual crises that didn't make it into the movie. As the title indicates, this book is also about Gandhi's followers and his legacy, and Mehta seems to go out of his way to show how strange and unstable many of Gandhi's followers were. Mehta also spends a lot of time examining Gandhi's bramarchya experiments, where he tested his ability to resist temptation by sharing his bed with young girls. This is the most cited fact about Gandhi that people use to discredit him, and Mehta is no exception. He comes out without an understanding of Gandhi's peculiar (to us) behavior, and he has the journalist's typical approach of never voicing a judgment but merely arranging the facts in such a way to make his opinion clear. If you have not read anything about Gandhi, this may be a decent introduction to him (an implicit critique from a distance is generally better than a pious view from the bottom of a pedestal), but the best place to start is still the Mahatma's own autobiography.
8 people found this helpful
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David Maayan
5.0 out of 5 stars A New Angle
Reviewed in the United States on July 13, 2004
On the cover of this book is a quote from Max Lerner, describing it as "meticulously researched, passionately felt, and elegantly written." I fully agree with this. Yet, as other reviewers have noted, meticulous research doesn't mean there is no agenda, and the author's passion may strike some as irritating bias. I have given this book five stars because it does what it does superbly. However, you should know something of what the author has set out to do.
As the title suggests, Mehta is concerned as much with Gandhi's legacy as the man himself. There are three sections of the book, and the middle one is a good short biography of Gandhi. It is sandwiched by two sections which center around interviews with disciples and others who run Gandhian foundations, etc. This material is constanty interesting, and very well written. A portrait is painted of Gandhi's causes and message being largely ignored, trivialized, or merchandized - even by organizations and individuals who claim to be spreading his message. However, (with one notable exception) no one is demonized, and the tone is far from a moral tirade. Rather, one senses the author's sadness at seeing the ironies of history, and the very human process of losing touch with the real core of a revelation. I should emphasize that a number of individuals are very sympathetically portrayed. At least two disciples are seen as truly continuing Gandhi's work with integrity and dedication, if not quite on the Mahatma's level.
And what was the Mahatma's level, according to this author? Did he write the book to humanize Gandhi? Certainly, the author believes, and wants to convince the reader, that Gandhi was capable of making mistakes and did so, and was not "complete" and perfect. Yet for all that, he clearly sees Gandhi as a truly great person, with tremendous inner and worldly achievements to his name. Remember that Mehta wrote his book when about 400 biographies of Gandhi had already been published, mostly hagiographic (devotional biography of a saint) in nature. Yet this book contains lots of information not easily available elsewhere, mostly about complexities and ironies of Gandhi's life. I think the author relied on people already having been given an impression of Gandhi's spiritual greatness from other sources, and wrote his book as a "new angle," and therefor didn't emphasize that which was already the standard image of his subject. Don't get me wrong - Mehta's book contains a lot which would lead one to be in awe of Gandhi (how could any biography of Gandhi not?) - but I think the simple, shining elements of Gandhi's life and ideas were downplayed to leave room for complex and controvertial aspects.
In summary, I would recommend this book strongly for someone who is already duly impressed by Gandhi from other sources - whether his autobiography, or the famous film, or elsewhere. I would particularly recommend "Gandhi The Man" by Eknath Easwaran, which is full of powerful quotes and beautiful pictures, as well as a basic biography. This would help give some impression of the power and light which radiated from Gandhi. Yet in Easwaran's book, some of the darkness is downplayed to better see the light. Darkness about Gandhi himself, but mostly the darkness of the failure of many of Gandhi's programs and ideas in India. Yet Mehta's book suffers from the opposite problem - hiding the light to bring out the dark. Taken together, these two books would convey both the intensity and purity at the heart of Gandhi, and the complexities and questions surrounding him and his legacy.
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Top reviews from other countries
Lomaharshana
5.0 out of 5 stars Important, well-written, chronicle of Gandhiji and the post-independence state of Gandhiism
Reviewed in India on June 12, 2020
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This is a 2013 reprint by Penguin Random House India of a book about Gandhiji originally published in 1977. The contents of the book were first published before 1977 in the American magazine, New Yorker.
I bought the paperback version from Amazon India. It is a decent copy. Even the font, Adobe Caslon, reminds you of the New Yorker. But more than the font, Mehta’s journalistic style is trademark New Yorker. He writes about his subjects in non-hagiographical but respectful tones. He digs out contradictions and inconsistencies in his subjects’ thought and speech as if it was his main job, but he describes these contradictions as if they are natural, human, and nothing to be uncomfortable about. This journalistic equanimity and watchfulness is what made the book important for me. (Today's Indian journalists have a lot to learn from the New Yorker in this matter.) This distant irreverence may strike to Indian admirers of Gandhiji as disrespectful, but I feel it is not.
Mehta’s book is split into three parts, with sixteen chapters.
In the first part, he writes about people who lived with Gandhiji. An unnamed woman who lived in the Sewagram Ashram with Gandhiji; Pyarelal Nayyar, Gandhiji's secretary, who now lives in a dirty apartment in Delhi; a cynical and Rajaji, 93 and disappointed with Nehru's India, who says nobody knew Gandhiji as he did and he thinks today’s Gandhians who believe in simple living in a simple world are “cranks”, Gandhiji's daughter-in-law Nirmala; his granddaughter Sumitra Gandhi Kulkarni who has moved on to live a “normal” life; and Gandhi’s surviving benefactors Saraladevi Sarabhai, Janakidevi Bajaj and Ghanshyam Das Birla.
The second part of the book is a 130-page biography of Gandhiji, describing the life story that’s written in more than a thousand biographies and that every Indian knows very well. But here too Mehta’s professionalism works its magic. Irrelevant details are gone and crucial and fascinating questions, which are often ignored by other biographers, are answered. Such as, when did Gandhiji come up with idea of Satyagraha? How did Godse justify his actions in his trial? What did Gandhiji think of Jinnah? Did Gandhiji ever get support from common Indian muslims after the Khilafat movement? Did the Khilafat movement succeed? Et cetera.
But it was the third part of the book that struck me as the most important. It is a sombre description of Gandhiji “apostles” who have continued to live according to their interpretation of Gandhiji’s ideals, and whose lives are a reflection of the state of Gandhiism -- mainly non-violence and sarvodaya -- after India’s independence. We meet Charu Chowdhury, who continued to live in Noakhali and Dhaka in Bangladesh, because Bapu told him too. (This entailed several years in Pakistani jails.) We meet Nirmal Kumar Bose, a Communist, who was with Gandhiji during the tragic days of Noakhali. We meet Abha Gandhi, who was physically supporting Gandhiji when we was shot by Godse, and who now runs a hospital in Gujarat. We also meet Gandhiji’s doctor, Sushila Nayyar, the Kripalanis, and Raihana Tyabji. And then Mehta takes us to meet Vinoba Bhave, Gandhiji’s foremost disciple. He takes us to Jalalabad, Afghanistan, to meet Gaffar Khan, who has spent fifteen years in a Pakistani jail after independence and who dreams of a separate state of Pakhtunistan. We also meet G. Ramachandran, Maurice Frydman, and Madeleine Slade. And a lonely Satish Chandra Dasgupta.
What is fascinating about this is that most of these people are unknown to us after Gandhiji's passing away. I did not know what happened to Abha Gandhi, to Gaffar Khan, to Satish Dasgupta, for instance. And what is thought-provoking about it is that, without once making it explicit, without once arousing disrespect about the great man or his companions, Mehta makes us wonder about the value of Gandhiji’s ideas. That is the real merit of this book.
Almost a hundred years ago, Mahatma Gandhi brought out the best in us Indians. We cannot afford to forget him, even if we disagree with him. Each Indian generation must struggle and figure out its own interpretation of ahimsa, satyagraha, and sarvodaya. In his book, Ved Mehta shows us how we might do this. Highly recommended.
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Amit
5.0 out of 5 stars A essential book for Gandhi lover.
Reviewed in India on April 1, 2015
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This book represent Gandhi as person along with the hidden contour of freedom struggle. There is mention of Maurice Frydman. He is intriguing as always. Must read for any book lover. A gem.
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