A highly original, stirring book on Mahatma Gandhi that deepens our
sense of his achievements and disappointments.his success in seizing
India.s imagination and shaping its independence struggle as a mass
movement, his recognition late in life that few of his followers paid
more than lip service to his ambitious goals of social justice for
the country.s minorities, outcasts, and rural poor.

Pulitzer Prize.winner Joseph Lelyveld shows in vivid, unmatched
detail how Gandhi.s sense of mission, social values, and philosophy
of nonviolent resistance were shaped on another subcontinent.during
two decades in South Africa.and then tested by an India that quickly
learned to revere him as a Mahatma, or .Great Soul,. while following
him only a small part of the way to the social transformation he
envisioned. The man himself emerges as one of history.s most
remarkable self-creations, a prosperous lawyer who became an ascetic
in a loincloth wholly dedicated to political and social action.
Lelyveld leads us step-by-step through the heroic.and tragic.last
months of this selfless leader.s long campaign when his nonviolent
efforts culminated in the partition of India, the creation of
Pakistan, and a bloodbath of ethnic cleansing that ended only with
his own assassination.

India and its politicians were ready to place Gandhi on a pedestal
as .Father of the Nation. but were less inclined to embrace his
teachings. Muslim support, crucial in his rise to leadership, soon
waned, and the oppressed untouchables.for whom Gandhi spoke to
Hindus as a whole.produced their own leaders.

Here is a vital, brilliant reconsideration of Gandhi.s extraordinary
struggles on two continents, of his fierce but, finally, unfulfilled
hopes, and of his ever-evolving legacy, which more than six decades
after his death still ensures his place as India.s social conscience.
and not just India.s.

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