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Manu Gandhi, M.K. Gandhi’s grand-niece, joined him in 1943 at the age of fifteen. An aide to Gandhi’s ailing wife Kasturba in the Aga Khan Palace prison in Pune, Manu remained with him until his assassination. She was a partner in his final yajna, an experiment in Brahmacharya, and his invocation of Rama at the moment of his death. Spanning two volumes, The Diary of Manu Gandhi is a record of her life and times with M.K. Gandhi between 1943 and 1948. Authenticated by Gandhi himself, the meticulous and intimate entries in the diary throw light on Gandhi’s life as a prisoner and his endeavour to establish the possibility of collective non-violence. They also offer a glimpse into his ideological conflicts, his efforts to find his voice, and his lonely pilgrimage to Noakhali during the riots of 1946. The first volume (1943–44) chronicles the spiritual and educational pursuits of an adolescent woman who takes up writing as a mode of self-examination. The author shares a moving portrait of Kasturba Gandhi’s illness and death and also unravels the deep emotional bond she develops with Gandhi, whom she calls her ‘mother’.
What India’s founders derived from Western political traditions is widely understood. Less well-known is how India’s own rich knowledge traditions of 2,500 years influenced these men. Vajpeyi furnishes this missing account, showing how five founders turned to classical texts to fashion an original sense of Indian selfhood.
Given the popularity and success of the Hindu-Right in India's electoral politics today, how may one study ostensibly 'Western' concepts and ideas, such as the secular and its family of cognates, like secularism, secularisation and secularity in non-Western societies without assuming them simply as derivative, or colonial legacies or contrast cases of Western societies? While recognizing that the dominant language of political modernity of Western societies is not easily translatable in non-Western societies, The Secular Imaginary elaborates upon an intellectual history of secularity in modern India by focusing on the two most influential political leaders – M.K. Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru. It is an intellectual history of both idea(s) and intellectuals, which sheds light on Indian narratives of secularity – the Gandhian sarva dharma samabhava, Nehruvian secularism, and unity in diversity. It revisits this dominant narrative of secularity of the twentieth century that influenced and shaped the imagination of the modern nation-state.
The first critical, annotated edition of M. K. Gandhi's most famous written work, published seventy years after his death In the mid-1920s, prompted by a "small, still voice" that encouraged him to lay bare what was known only to him and his God, M. K. Gandhi began writing and publishing his autobiography. Drafted during a period of intensive fasting and "in-dwelling" at his ashram in Ahmedebad, his story of the soul portrayed the deeper, more inward experiences that made him externally an innovator in the struggles against violence, racism, and colonialism. The book, written in Gujarati and translated into English by Mahadev Desai, would become an international classic, hailed as one of the "100 Best Spiritual Books of the 20th Century." This first critical edition of this seminal work by leading Gandhi scholar Tridip Suhrud offers an unprecedented window into the original Gujarati text. Including both alternative English translations and illuminating notes, as well as a deeply researched introduction, it will bring renewed critical attention to one of the world's most widely read books.
This book focuses on varied forms of self-referential storytelling or life writing and its emergence as a democratic and inclusive genre, both globally and in India, and its intersections with history, fiction, memory, truth and identity. The book examines the practice of life writing and its scope for accommodating diverse voices, distinct identities, collaborations and non-hierarchical connections as it gives voice to oral, silenced and marginalized communities. It explores forms like auto/biographical fiction, digital storytelling, graphic memoirs, and testimonies of migration and exile, among others. The eclectic collection of essays in this volume draws attention towards the transformat...
Writing Life looks at the lives and work of three 19th century thinkers of Gujarat Narmadashankar Lal Shankar, Manibhai Nabhubhai & Govardhanram Tripathi. (The last mentioned is the author of Saraswatichandra). Poets, essayists and Novelists, these three writers deeply influenced the intellectual life of Gujarat. Moreover, the book shows, how the idea of `social reform is deeply linked in their work to the idea of `the nation . The author also shows how Gandhi, following these writers, created another notion of `nation , `reform and the moral dimensions of these.
This book presents a rethinking of the world legacy of Mahatma Gandhi in this era of unspeakable global violence. Through interdisciplinary research, key Gandhian concepts are revisited by tracing their genealogies in multiple histories of world contact and by foregrounding their relevance to contemporary struggles to regain the ‘humane’ in the midst of global conflict. The relevance of Gandhian notions of ahimsa and satyagraha is assessed in the context of contemporary events, when religious fundamentalisms of various kinds are competing with the arrogance and unilateralism of imperial capital to reduce the world to a state of international lawlessness. Covering a wide and comprehensive...
Ramchandra Gandhi, famous for his rich and varied interests, left behind a large corpus of writings, both philosophical and non-philosophical. Introducing the readers to the creative Indian philosopher, this volume highlights the principal thrust of his works, critically locates them within the larger political, philosophical, literary and socio-cultural context, and accounts for his lasting influence. For the first time, essays on Ramchandra Gandhi’s earlier works and later writings have been brought together to take stock of his contribution to contemporary Indian thought as a whole. Written by philosophers as well as those belonging to literature and the social sciences, the essays record his experimental ventures both in form and content, and shed light on key themes in language, communication, religion, aesthetics, spirituality, consciousness, self, knowledge, politics, ethics, and non-violence. The book will appeal to those in philosophy, political science, history, sociology, literature, and Gandhian studies.
This book engages with the socio-cultural imaginings of Gandhi in literature, history, visual and popular culture. It explores multiple iterations of his ideas, myths and philosophies, which have inspired the work of filmmakers, playwrights, cartoonists and artists for generations. Gandhi’s politics of non-violent resistance and satyagraha inspired various political leaders, activists and movements and has been a subject of rigorous scholarly enquiry and theoretical debates across the globe. Using diverse resources like novels, autobiographies, non-fictional writings, comic books, memes, cartoons and cinema, this book traces the pervasiveness of the idea of Gandhi which has been both idoli...
A compilation of all the issues of 2015.