Most biographies of Mahatma Gandhi tell the story of a great political leader who led India to freedom. But for Gandhi, his politics was a part of his spiritual quest. Swaraj meant self-rule and not merely political autonomy, and Gandhi's struggles were meant to aid the quest for individual self-perfection. Everything he did–the Dandi march or his fasts for self-purification–was part of this struggle for self-realisation.
This English translation of Narayan Desai's epic four-volume biography in Gujarati, Maru Jivan Ej Mari Vani–hailed as one of the finest insights into the life of Gandhi–brings alive Gandhi's quest as one indivisible whole, in which "the political" is not outside the realm of "the spiritual". My Life is My Message liberates the Gandhi story from the constraining tyranny of political discourse and gives centrestage to his "soulsearchings". The struggle within and the struggle without, are both seen as aspects of the same reality–just as the inner journey of the self is depicted in its interaction with the life of the collective. What emerges is a full picture of Gandhi.
Drawing from a wealth of sources–what Gandhi wrote in letters, books and newspapers, spoke in intimate conversations with his fellow "servant co-workers", and in speeches and interviews, besides what those around him wrote and spoke about him–the narrative is illumined, above all, by the author's own life as an inveterate "Gandhijan", ever since his childhood years in Gandhi's ashrams.
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