Un-Gandhian Gandhi

by Markovits, Claude

• ISBN13: 9781843311270
• ISBN10: 1843311275
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2004-11-30
• Publisher: Anthem Pr

Summary

This major study reconsiders the creation of the Gandhian legend through the myriad texts and images that helped spread it through both India and the Western world. In revealing how the picture of the Mahatma as saint-as-politician was founded on Indian nationalistic selectivity and limited Western representations of Gandhi, Claude Markovits shows how Gandhi's legend has obscured the facts of his public career. Gandhi's professional role in the public sphere, Markovits argues, was heavily influenced by his long and critical phase of maturation in South Africa, a period often dismissed as the precursor to his celebrated work in India. Markovits proposes that Gandhi's later Indian career, marked by his meteoric rise to prominence, was the result of his own radical self-reinvention as he negotiated the pitfalls of political life in order to create his influential political manifesto. In re-evaluating critical stages of Gandhi's career, and his sometimes ambivalent ideological positions, Markovits confronts the discrepancies between his early and late careers, closely rereading the Mahatma's varying intellectual positions as described both within his own writings and in those by commentators and biographers. Rather than seeing Gandhi as an upholder of traditional Indian values, Markovits stresses the paradoxical modernity of Gandhi's anti-modernism.

Author Biography

Claude Markovits is Director of research at CNRS

Table of Contents

Preface	vii
INTRODUCTION	1	(12)
I. Perceptions of Gandhi
1 IMAGES OF GANDHI	13	(27)
Gandhian Iconography	13	(2)
Gandhi and the West: The Saint and His Critiques	15	(8)
Gandhi's Image in France	23	(4)
Gandhi on the Screen: Consecration of the Icon	27	(2)
Gandhi in Indian Eyes: Diversity of Perceptions and Practices	29	(11)
2 THE IMPOSSIBLE BIOGRAPHY OF MOHANDAS K. GANDHI	40	(16)
Gandhi's Biographers	40	(4)
Gandhi and the Limitations of Biography as a Genre	44	(6)
Gandhi as His Own Biographer: The Autobiography	50	(6)
3 GANDHI'S POSTHUMOUS LIFE	56	(21)
Gandhi in India After 1948: A Disputed Legacy	56	(6)
Gandhism and Its Interpreters	62	(6)
Gandhi and Political Philosophy	68	(3)
Gandhi, Political Ecology, and Alternative Movements	71	(6)
II. Gandhi in History
4 BIRTH OF A LEADER	77	(14)
Private Life, Public Life	77	(1)
The Contribution of South Africa	78	(7)
The Emergence of a National Leader in 1915-1920	85	(3)
The Transformation of Gandhi: Towards a New Political Idiom	88	(3)
5 GANDHI AND INDIAN INDEPENDENCE	91	(24)
Gandhi and the End of Fear	91	(8)
Gandhi as an Organizer	99	(4)
Gandhi's Role in Anti-British Campaigns, 1920-1942	103	(12)
6 GANDHI AND INDIAN SOCIETY: THE REFORMER AND HIS LEGACY	115	(14)
Gandhi and the Dignity of Manual Labour	115	(4)
Gandhi and the Reconstruction of the Indian Village	119	(7)
Gandhi and the Fight for the Abolition of Untouchability	126	(3)
7 GANDHI IN THE TIME-FRAME OF INDIAN HISTORY	129	(17)
Between Victorian Intellectual and Neo-traditionalist Hindu	129	(8)
Gandhi and Bourgeois Nationalism	137	(2)
The Nature of Gandhi's Charisma	139	(2)
Gandhi and the Expectations of the Peasantry	141	(5)
8 GANDHI AND NON-VIOLENCE	146	(16)
Non-violent Resistance: Gandhi's Contribution	146	(2)
From Satyagraha to Non-violence: A Gandhian Itinerary	148	(7)
Nationalism and Non-violence in India in Gandhi' Lifetime: Myth and Reality	155	(3)
Gandhi and the Pacifists	158	(1)
The Exemplary Nature of Gandhian Non-violence	159	(3)
CONCLUSION	162	(4)
Select Bibliography	166	(5)
Index	171