Hi everyone!
"Great Soul" by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Joseph Lelyveld is an eye-opening and ultimately surprising (to me anyway) new biography of the late great Mahatma Gandhi. Anyone who knows me knows that I am a bit of an India-phile. I first started taking notice of Indian culture in 2009 when I saw my first Bollywood film "Race" and I have been rabid about wanting to learn more about Indian culture and history ever since. I was particularly interested to learn more about the life of Gandhi-ji whose campaigns of civil disobedience against British colonial rule were instrumental in helping shape a modern independent India, sometimes it seemed (at least according to Mr. Lelyveld's engaging book) in spite of himself.
Prior to reading this book, the depth of my knowledge about the Mahatma was more-or-less limited to Richard Attenborough's Oscar-winning 1982 biopic starring Ben Kingsley. I haven't seen the film in thirtysomething years so I am not overly familiar with the details depicted within in, though I do remember repeated scenes of Gandhi in jail, the great Salt March, his reluctance regarding the eventual partition of India upon independence, and his assassination at the hands of Hindu nationalists. I also remember how he preached the importance of self-reliance, encouraging Indians to spin their own cloth as opposed to relying on British imports. A more recent Hindi-language film "Gandhi My Father" depicted the troubled relationship the Mahatma had with his eldest son Harilal, a portrayal that wasn't particularly sympathetic to Gandhi-ji, and ultimately is what inspired me to further investigate his life. Philip Glass's opera "Satyagraha" whose title is taken from Gandhi's overall philosophy is also a source of considerable interest.
While Mr. Lelyveld succeeds in conveying the complicated life of India's "Great Soul," the reader is left with a troublesome portrait of the man many consider something close to a 20th century saint. He begins by spending a considerable number of pages discussing Gandhi's life as a young lawyer in South Africa and his establishment of two communes inspired by the great Russian writer and philosopher Leo Tolstoy. Gandhi was particularly active early in his life with the cause of promoting greater commonality and understanding between Moslems and Hindus, and the destruction of the traditional Hindu caste system, a cause that began in South Africa but continued and was further shaped by his years spent back in India.
Mr. Lilyveld doesn't shy away from the less savory aspects of Gandhi's life and philosophy. As portrayed here, Gandhi is a man of singular determination, often at the expense of his family. Gandhi's wife, an illiterate but seemingly well-intentioned woman, quickly fades from relevance as Gandhi develops an ambiguously non-sexual but intensely devoted relationship with a German Jewish body-builder named Hermann Kallenbach. The two remained passionately involved for much of Gandhi's life. Whether this affair was ever consummated remains in question, though letters exchanged between the two might hint at something less than platonic. As part of his Satyagraha, Gandhi swore off all sexual intimacy. In order to be a true pilgrim for the cause, Gandhi believed that one must live one's life with total sexual pureness, though in his last years, Gandhi was known to have had a predilection for young women whom he invited to share his bed, sleeping naked, and engaging in "non-sexual" massages.
As presented in this book, Gandhi is a man of deep contradictions, whose actions were often interpreted as running counter to the philosophies he seemed to embody throughout his work. He is originally ambivalent about gaining independence from Britain, deeply believing that the key to success of India as an independent nation was in abolishing the caste system and not necessarily the ruling British Raj. He was also a champion of bettering the lives of India's Moslems, a cause which ultimately cast him in opposition to the Hindu nationalist movement. I was particularly surprised to learn that Gandhi actively campaigned on behalf of the establishment of a new Moslem Caliphate upon the fall of the Ottoman Empire following World War One. As partition drew near, Gandhi sought to live out his remaining months in an area that became part of modern-day Pakistan, and was the scene of some of the worst Muslim-Hindu brutality at that time. Many Hindus felt he had betrayed them which ultimately prompted his assassination in 1947, an event which Gandhi rather eerily seemed to have predicted.
Mr. Lelyveld's biography exhausted, disturbed, and enlightened me. His narrative style is never less than engaging and I recommend this book for anyone interested in learning more about one of India's greatest and most formative public figures. One needn't have a strong knowledge of colonial history or Gandhi's life to appreciate this book. I don't know how the book was received in India upon its publication last year but I can only imagine it stirred some controversy. Lelyveld's "great soul" is a difficult man, a man of the people despite his upper-caste background. While Gandhi's work inspired and one can argue created a modern nation, he is presented here as only a moderately successful politician, whose greatest contribution to Indian and world history is a demonstration of how sheer determination and force of will can rally a nation's dispossessed and inspire them to an awesome if troubling degree.
Ciao.
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