Gandhi -- A Select Bibliographic Guide
A
minimal familiarity with the outlines of Gandhi's life might be
acquired by consulting any one of the following biographies: Geoffrey Ashe, Gandhi (New York, 1969); Judith Brown, Gandhi: Prisoner of Hope (Yale,
1990): Louis Fischer, The
Life of Mahatma Gandhi (New York, 1950); Dhananjay Keer, Mahatma Gandhi: Political Saint and Unarmed Prophet (Bombay,
1973); B. R. Nanda, Mahatma
Gandhi: A Biography (1st ed., 1958; expanded edition, New Delhi: Oxford UP, 1981); and Robert Payne, The Life and Death of Mahatma Gandhi (Dutton,
1969). This list does not
indicate my endorsement of any particular biography, and you can
pick up some other biography of your choice.
There are very short biographies of Gandhi as well, some
of considerable merit, such as George Woodcock’s little study,
Mohandas Gandhi, for
the Modern Masters series (New York: Viking Press, 1971), Catherine Clement’s Gandhi: Father
of a Nation (London: Thames
& Hudson, 1996); Bhikhu Parekh’s Gandhi (Oxford University Press, 1997); and Krishna Kripalani’s Gandhi: A
Life (1968; reprint ed., New Delhi: National Book Trust, 1982) In 1997, on the 50th anniversary
of Indian independence, a number of new studies of Gandhi’s life
were released, but the more recent biographies of Gandhi are not
demonstrably better than previous ones.
For a more comprehensive account, see the 8-volume biography
by D. G. Tendulkar, Mahatma: Life of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (New
Delhi, 1951), which has the advantage of reproducing many of Gandhi's
speeches and writings, often in their entirety, and the 4 volumes
of Pyarelal's biography,
The Early Phase and The Last Phase (Ahmedabad, various years).
But Tendulkar has few insights into Gandhi’s life and thinking
and is predominantly a chronicler.
Constant use should be made of The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, 100 volumes (Delhi: Government of India, Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, Publications Division, 1951-1995; this includes the supplementary volumes). Quite handy iis Index of Subjects to the Collected Works (1988). The three-volume anthology edited by Raghavan Iyer, The Moral and
Political
Writings of Mahatma Gandhi (New York and Delhi: Oxford UP, 1989) is not only more manageable
but is superbly edited, and except for specialists seeking to
write on Gandhi at length, will suffice as a representative and
thoughtful selection of Gandhi’s voluminous writings.
There are, besides, literally hundreds
of anthologies of Gandhi’s writings, and in his own lifetime Navajivan
Press as well as other publishers brought out collections of Gandhi’s
writings on particular subjects, such as nature cure, Hindu-Muslim
relations, village reconstruction, non-violence, and so on.
For a small sample, see the following booklets (and in
some cases small books) of Gandhi’s thoughts on particular subjects
released by Navajivan: The Moral
Basis of Vegetarianism (1959); Woman’s
Role in Society (1959); Trusteeship
(1960); Medium of Instruction
(1954); Bapu and Children
(1962); Bread Labour [The Gospel of Work] (1960); and The
Message of the Gita (1959).
Among the more creative anthologies, the following readily
come to mind: Pushpa Joshi, ed., Gandhi on Women (Ahmedabad: Navajivan
Publishing House, 1998, in association with Centre for Women’s
Development Studies, New Delhi; cf. the selections found in Gandhi to the Women, ed. Anand Hingorani
[Delhi, 1941]); Nehru on
Gandhi (New York: John
Day Company, 1942); Gandhi on Non-Violence, ed with introduction
by Thomas Merton (New York: New
Directions paperback, 1964 -- this is a thoughtful albeit much
too brief introduction to the subject); What
is Hinduism? (New Delhi: National
Book Trust for Indian Council for Historical Research, 1994). An extremely useful survey on the anthologizing
of Gandhi is to be found in Stephen Hay, “Anthologies Compiled
from the Writings, Speeches, Letters, and Recorded Conversations
of M. K. Gandhi”, Journal
of the American Oriental Society 110, no. 4 (October-December
1990), pp. 667-76.
Alter, Joseph S. Gandhi’s
Body: Sex, Diet, and the Politics of Nationalism. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2000.
Ambedkar, B. R. What Congress and Gandhi Have Done to the Untouchables.
1945, reprint ed., Lahore, 1977.
For a contemporary rejoinder, see K. Santhanam's Ambedkar's
Attack (New Delhi: Hindustan
Times, 1946).
Bondurant, Joan. Conquest
of Violence: The Gandhian
Philosophy of Conflict. Rev.
ed., Berkeley: University
of California Press, 1971.
Borman, William. Gandhi
and Non-Violence. New
York: State University of New York Press, 1986.
Chatterjee, Margaret. Gandhi’s
Religious Thought. University
of Notre Dame Press, 1983.
Dalton, Dennis. Mahatma
Gandhi: Nonviolent Power
in Action. New York: Columbia
University Press, 1993.
Dhavan, Gopinath. The Political
Philosophy of Mahatma Gandhi.
Bombay, 1946; reprint, Delhi, 1990.
Extremely good for the ‘grammar’ of satyagraha.
Erikson, Erik H. Gandhi’s
Truth: On the Origins of
Militant Nonviolence. New
York: W. W. Norton, 1969. Psychoanalytic interpretation.
Fox, Richard. Gandhian
Utopia: Experiments with Culture. Boston:
Beacon Press, 1989.
Green, Martin. The Challenge
of the Mahatmas. New
York: Basic Books, 1978.
Green, Martin. The Origins
of Nonviolence: Tolstoy
and Gandhi in their Historical Settings.
Pennsylvania State University Press, 1986.
Green, Martin. Gandhi: Voice
of a New Age Revolution. New
York: Continuum, 1993.
Hunt, James D. Gandhi
in London. New Delhi: Promilla & Co., 1978.
Hutchins, Francis G. India’s
Revolution: Gandhi and
the Quit India Movement. Cambridge,
Mass.: Harvard UP, 1973.
Iyer, Raghavan. The Moral and Political Thought of Mahatma
Gandhi. New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1973. Perhaps the single best study of a conventional
sort of Gandhian thought.
Jordens, J. T. F. Gandhi’s
Religion: A Homespun Shawl. New York: St.
Martin’s Press; London: Macmillan,
1998.
Juergensmeyer, Mark. Fighting
with Gandhi. New York,
1984.
Kapur, Sudarshan. Raising
Up a Prophet: The African-American Encounter with Gandhi. Boston: Beacon
Press, 1992.
Khanna, Suman. Gandhi
and the Good Life. New
Delhi: Gandhi Peace Foundation, 1985.
Kishwar, Madhu. Gandhi
and Women. Delhi: Manushi Prakashan, 1986. [First published in two successive issues of
the Economic and Political
Weekly 20, nos. 40-41 (1985).]
Nanda, B. R. Gandhi
and His Critics. Delhi: Oxford UP, 1985.
Parekh, Bhikhu. Colonialism,
Tradition and Reform: An Analysis of Gandhi’s Political Discourse. New Delhi: Sage,
1989.
Parekh, Bhikhu. Gandhi’s
Political Philosophy: A
Critical Examination. London: Macmillan, 1989; reprint ed., Columbus, Missouri:
South Asia Books, 1996.
Patel, Jehangir P. and Marjorie
Sykes, Gandhi: The Gift of the Fight. Rasulia, Madhya Pradesh: Friends Rural Centre, 1987. Anecdotal rather than scholarly but very insightful.
Pinto, Vivek. Gandhi’s
Vision and Values: The
Moral Quest for Change in Indian Agriculture. New Delhi: Sage,
1998.
Pouchepadass, Jacques. Champaran
and Gandhi: Planters, Peasants
and Gandhian Politics. New
Delhi: Oxford UP, 1999. [Compare: Rajendra
Prasad, Satyagraha in Champaran
(2nd ed., Ahmedabad:
Navajivan Publishing House, 1949) and D. G. Tendulkar, Gandhi in Champaran (New Delhi: Publications Division, Government of India,
1957).]
Prasad, Nageshwar, ed. Hind Swaraj:
A Fresh Look. Delhi: Gandhi Peace Foundation, 1985.
Rao, K. L. Seshagiri. Mahatma
Gandhi and Comparative Religion.
New Delhi: Motilal
Banarsidass, 1978.
Swan, Maureen. Gandhi: The South African Experience. Johannesburg:
Ravan Press, 1985. Critical
of Gandhi but not wholly persuasive.
Terchek, Ronald J. Gandhi: Struggling
for Autonomy. Lanham,
Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield, 1999. A study with a more expansive conception of
Gandhian politics than ordinarily encountered in the literature.
