THE COMPLETE BLOG ON MAHATMA GANDHI

By Muriel Lester (Muriel Lester was Gandhi's hostess during his visit to England for the Second Round Table Conference. A valiant fighter for peace, she was international Organising Secretary of the Fellowship of Reconciliation for many years. In this article she tells about her first meeting with Gandhi In this article the author conveys why she believed in Gandhi and his policies. She emphasizes on his simplicity, his sense of humor and his honesty which were his greatest assets. Her visit to the Ashram brought no surprises to her as she was living at Kingsley Hall, a community centre, where self-identification with the "the poorest, the lowliest and lost" had been the practice. Such was Gandhi's aura that leaders world over practised his nonviolence and the humblest and simplest people still live by his principles.) I first went to India in 1926. I went specifically to see Gandhi. In London we had only come to hear about this new Indian leader just ...

By Ramachandra Guha (In this article the author tries to awaken Indians to what Gandhi really was and what we should learn from him. He explains the futility of bashing the West for all our cultural and economical ailments. Instead, he wants Indians to take what is good from the West and leave the rest even citing examples of countries like Japan and Singapore who have not let their culture be affected by the West and have yet managed to emulate them in a number of ways. ) Gandhi is for most Indians the ultimate touchstone of moral authority, playing a part in public discourse roughly equivalent to that of Thomas Jefferson in the United States or the Quran in Islamic countries. It is thus hardly surprising that he is quoted on every side of every major debate in India today. What is distinctive about the contemporary invocations of Gandhi, however, is that they are almost always attached to attacks on the West. The strategist hawk and the farmers’ leader are at one in thi...

A Lecture by Professor Madhu Dandwate (Very often Gandhi was considered a very stern and uncompromising individual, one who was not willing to tolerate weaknesses in himself as well as others. Some thought him to be inhuman in his quest for freedom and perfection. In his lecture Professor Dandwate gives us ample incidences whereby one realizes that there was a very humourous and humane side to Gandhi. The authenticity of the incidents enumerated by Professor Dandwante is based on the fact that they have been narrated by Gandhi's associates and freedom activists.) My colleague, Inder Gujralji, Dr. Vivekanandan, Ladies and gentlemen, To me it is indeed a privilege to have the opportunity to deliver JP Memorial Lecture on "Gandhi's Human Touch;, a subject which is very close to my heart. I think, in the present world, full of hatred, bitterness, cruelty, racial discrimination, communal tensions, inequities, human degradation and erosion of values, Gandhi is mo...

By Albert West (Albert H. West was one of the closest associates of Gandhiji in South Africa. In 1904 he gave up his business in Johannesburg and, at Gandhiji’s invitation, took charge of the weekly Indian Opinion. He was a member of the Phoenix Settlement and lived on a very small salary. His wife, mother and sister also became inmates of the Settlement. He managed the paper for more than fourteen years, until Manilal Gandhi took charge. He visited India in 1963 at the invitation of the Government of India. This article focuses on Gandhi's earliest efforts at awakening people to the method of passive resistance. He fought for the rights of indentured labourers (Indians) in South Africa non-violently. Here he established the first settlement - The Phoenix Settlement - on which he based all other Ashrams (settlements) that were established by him and his followers. In South Africa Gandhi evolved as a crusader of non violence and had the good fortune of developing lif...