The New York Times Book Review - Alex von Tunzelmann
…extraordinarily intimate…Gandhi posed a huge challenge to his world in his time, and still does. Guha's admiration for his subject is clear throughout this book. He tries to explain controversial aspects of Gandhi's life by contextualizing them within Gandhi's own thinking. Some of Gandhi's fiercer critics may feel this is soft-pedaling, but it does help build a fair, thorough and nuanced portrait of the man. Gandhi spoke for himself more than most people in history, but even the most controlling people cannot control how history sees them. Guha lets Gandhi appear on his own terms, and allows him to reveal himself in all his contradictions.
Publishers Weekly
★ 08/20/2018
In the second half of his two-part biography of Gandhi, Guha (Gandhi Before India) mines newly discovered archival material to produce a portrait of the Indian leader that is both panoramic in scope and surprisingly intimate, both admiring of Gandhi and cognizant of his flaws. On his return from South Africa in 1915, Gandhi was a much-admired but little-known figure outside of his own Gujarati community and India’s urban elite. In the next three decades, he mobilized national support for Indian self-rule, traveling the length and breadth of the subcontinent preaching his philosophy of satyagraha, or nonviolent resistance. Along the way, as Guha details through exhaustively pieced-together correspondence, Gandhi’s beliefs evolved: his intellectual sparring with B.R. Ambedkar, the leader of India’s “untouchables,” led him to soften his more conservative stance on caste, and his relationship with his long-suffering wife, Kasturba, grew to resemble an equal partnership in its later years. Guha contextualizes Gandhi’s anticolonialism as merely one strand in a rich skein of political and moral beliefs, arguing that Gandhi’s campaigns for Hindu-Muslim unity, the abolition of untouchability, and the promotion of moral self-discipline (or swaraj) were inseparable from his goal of ending British rule in India. Incisively written, this is a landmark account of Gandhi’s engagement with the world he would transform forever. (Oct.)
From the Publisher
[A] monumental biography. . . . Extraordinarily intimate.” —The New York Times Book Review
“Wise, graceful and entertaining. . . . Gandhi: The Years That Changed the World, 1914-1948 will not be bettered, and it is essential reading even for those who do not think of themselves as India buffs, because Gandhi is a maker of our whole modern world.” —Ferdinand Mount, The Wall Street Journal
“A comprehensive account of the most remarkable figure of the past century.” —San Francisco Chronicle
“An important biography. . . . Guha admires Gandhi’s achievements, but does not gloss over the man’s flaws.” —The New York Times
“Expertly chronicled.” —The Washington Post
“Massive, meticulous, and engrossing.” —The Times Literary Supplement
“Deeply affecting. . . . A rendering of the subject in such fullness that the reader feels himself wrestling directly with the protagonist, his time, and his ideas. . . . Guha’s biography builds with perfect tone and economy of expression towards its moving conclusion.” —Financial Times
“[A] monumental biography.” —Edward Glaeser, The Wall Street Journal
“The book’s details of Gandhi’s life help the reader comprehend how he influenced the world.” —The Christian Science Monitor
“Drawing from hundreds of sources, including some never before available to historians, Guha presents a nuanced portrait of a brilliant spiritual and political leader with egalitarian principles and a vision for a nonsectarian India. . . . Readers will be richly reward.” —Library Journal (starred review)
“Magnificent.” —The American Interest
“A magisterial account of a compassionate man. . . . The author skillfully traces the evolution of Gandhi’s political beliefs. . . . He conveys Gandhi’s playfulness as well as his intellect.” —The Economist
“Dramatic and detailed. . . . [The] second and final volume of Guha’s huge, definitive biography of Mahatma Gandhi draws on every imaginable source.” —Foreign Affairs
“A thoroughly researched and well-written account and a faithful chronicle.” —New Statesman
“Guha mines newly discovered archival material to produce a portrait of the Indian leader that is both panoramic in scope and surprisingly intimate, both admiring of Gandhi and cognizant of his flaws. . . . Incisively written, this is a landmark account of Gandhi’s engagement with the world he would transform forever.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review)
“This masterly assessment should serve for several generations, and for non-Indians as well.” —The Literary Review
“Superb. On nearly every page, Guha offers evidence why Gandhi remains relevant in the world 70 years after his death.” —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
“The most exhaustive account yet of Gandhi’s temporal and spiritual crusades. A vivid and absorbing read. . . . Guha is as dogged a researcher as Gandhi was an agitator.” —The Sunday Times (London)
Kirkus Reviews
★ 2018-08-13
Following Gandhi Before India (2014), noted political historian Guha continues with a massive and much-needed study of his subject's emergence as a world leader.
Gandhi (1869-1948) arrived in India, after living in South Africa, in 1915 and immediately began to agitate for independence, renouncing what he called "violence and anarchy" and building an ashram-based movement of satyagraha, or nonviolent resistance to oppression. His earliest years in India were occupied with forging political alliances, building the case for independence with Annie Besant, Muhammad Ali Jinnah, and other like-minded (but quite divergent) activists. As Guha writes, though profoundly influential and now sainted, Gandhi was human, with all the freight that carries. He may have renounced sex in his 30s, but he experimented with temptation late in life; he may have wished he'd been celibate before siring difficult heirs, only one of whom, he said, "had been born to compensate me for the dissatisfaction I feel from my other three sons." The author portrays Gandhi as a masterful politician intent on a number of reforms apart from independence, including the dismantling of caste and religious barriers and advancement of gender equality. In his political dealings, he confronted numerous obstacles, including fellow Indians who wished to press for an established religion and the thorny question of whether to support the Allies in their war against the fascist powers in World War II, which afforded Jawaharlal Nehru and other leaders a lever by which to insist that Britain relinquish empire in order to battle for democracy. If some of Gandhi's ideas seem old-fashioned today—e.g., his insistence on the village and agrarian pursuits as the bases for a free nation—then many of them are resolutely forward-looking, as when he told a visiting delegation of African-Americans, "it may be through the Negroes that the unadulterated message of non-violence will be delivered to the world."
Superb. On nearly every page, Guha offers evidence why Gandhi remains relevant in the world 70 years after his death.
