The Woman Beside Gandhi: a Biography of Kasturba, Wife of the Mahatma PDF Download

Author: Sita Kapadia
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781637540534
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description
The Woman Beside Gandhi is a biography of Kasturba, wife of the Mahatma. Though there are countless references to her in the voluminous works by and about Gandhi, Kasturba remains virtually unknown. And yet it was she who stood up to him, was his teacher in non-violent resistance and the compassionate mainstay of his austerely demanding ashrams. And yet again it was Kasturba, appointed by Gandhi to be the leader of women's resistance, who by her own example, her speeches and her tireless rounds of towns and villages, motivated women by the thousands to make rapid, radical changes in their restricted personal lives and participate in mass civil disobedience for freedom. Seeing Kasturba go fearlessly to prison in South Africa and several times in India, so inspired and empowered women, that they too went to prison, fighting for their cause. The touching stories of these unknown, unheralded women are here in this book, filling an important vacuum in the world of letters especially as it pertains to women's emancipation. Three trips to India, meetings with over 200 people who knew Kasturba in person, and a great deal of research through books and places unvisited by other scholars, has gone into the writing of this ground-breaking biography. Sita Kapadia takes the reader with Kasturba, the child bride, and her boy husband from small towns to three continents, through ashrams and prisons. Combining diligent research with engaging interviews in a free-flowing and vibrant narrative, Kapadia shows how bravely and selflessly Kasturba lived her life, unlike anyone else's in the annals of human history. Gandhian scholar Dennis Dalton calls it a unique and superlative biography.

Author: B.M. Bhalla
Publisher: Roli Books Private Limited
ISBN: 819456610X
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 285

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Book Description
Born in Dinga district of Gujrat in what is now Pakistan, Prof. B.M. Bhalla has had a long and distinguished teaching career in Delhi University. His works have been published in various national and international journals and his translation of the Punjabi poet Shiv Kumar Batalvi’s celebrated verse epic Luna won him the prestigious Delhi State Sahitya Academy Award in 2003.

Author: Giriraj Kishore
Publisher: Niyogi Books
ISBN: 9386906481
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 341

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Kasturba Gandhi is the fictionalised biography of Kasturba Gandhi, a lady as strong and great as Mahatma Gandhi. A lady who earned a place in history because of her personal sacrifices and strength of conviction in what was right as much as on account of being the wife of Mahatma Gandhi in his fight for basic human rights for Indians in South Africa and the Indian Freedom Movement. She was the first Indian woman who voluntarily faced a jail sentence in a foreign soil – in South Africa – in her fight for basic rights for Indian women. The book gives a glimpse of how a strong woman can empower herself staying within the folds of tradition and convention. It offers a rarely portrayed facet of Gandhi – a family man, a father, a husband. It shows how his transformation from Mr Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi to Mahatma Gandhi happened with the support of a woman who was a silent partner in the struggle. How she let him realise his larger goals at a cost to herself and family in the larger interests of mankind. How she willingly courted jail terms in Africa, an alien land with no grip on the language and keeping her vegetarian habits intact. How she took up the causes started by Bapu, when he was jailed in India and was imprisoned. How she breathed her last in jail - in Agha Khan Palace where she was jailed last.

Author: Arun Gandhi
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780692563304
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :

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Arun Gandhi is the fifth grandson of Mahatma (Mohandas) and Kastur Gandhi through his second son Manilal Gandhi. Together with his late wife Sunanda, the couple have generated an extraordinary read in The Forgotten Woman: The Untold Story of Kastur Gandhi. Here is a book that is not only informative and accessible, but also graced by an elegance and sensitive understanding of a grandmother who was far from being ignorant or clueless a propos the importance of her husband's mission in life. Kastur Gandhi wife of Mahatma Gandhi. Arun informs his readers in the introduction that he refuses to believe that his grandmother Kastur was incompetent as this was not his experience, nor that of his parents. Although she may not have been formally educated and could not read or write, upon reading this fascinating book we discover she certainly was far from being an unaware and a blundering fool. And as Arun states: "without her unstinted cooperation Grandfather could not have achieved the spiritual heights that he did." Beginning with an account of the Satyagraha struggle which Gandhi led in South Africa for seven years, Kastur had to give up a great deal and make sacrifices while living an austere life that many a woman would have rebelled against and probably would have also thrown out their husbands. There is even an anecdote where Mahatma wanted to turf out Kastur from their home. Perhaps initially she may not have understood her husband's technique of passive resistance that ruled out both verbal and physical violence, however, eventually she did come around to accept its principles as she championed it and embraced it whole heartedly. As Arun mentions, "that even though she could not, on her own account, accept any of her husband's peculiar new notions unless she was convinced he was right, she would always try to understand his way of thinking and, whenever possible, acquiesce to his wishes." What I found astonishing was her acceptance of her husband's harsh and sometimes cruel treatment of their children, herself, relatives and others.

Author: Arun Gandhi
Publisher: Penguin UK
ISBN: 9351184234
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 458

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‘I LEARNED THE LESSON OF NONVIOLENCE FROM MY WIFE. HER DETERMINED RESISTANCE TO MY WILL ON THE ONE HAND, AND HER QUIET SUBMISSION IN THE SUFFERING MY STUPIDITY INVOLVED ON THE OTHER HAND, ULTIMATELY MADE ME ASHAMED OF MYSELF AND CURED ME OF MY STUPIDITY’ —GANDHI Kastur Kapadia was betrothed to Mohandas Gandhi when they were both just seven years old. The couple married when they were thirteen and Kastur had five children, the first of whom was born when she was sixteen. Together Gandhi and Kastur laid the foundations for the movement of nonviolence to which they devoted their lives. When Gandhi was imprisoned, Kastur was often jailed with him. No obstacle was too great for this extraordinary woman who gave up a life of comfort for one of utter poverty. When Kastur died, the whole nation wept for the woman the people called simply ’Ba’ ... Mother. Kasturba: A Life is the result of a lifetime of research by Arun Gandhi, grandson of the Mahatma and Kasturba. As well as recounting historical events behind the birth of a nation, it is also a love story, which ended with the terrible tragedy of Gandhi’s assassination in New Delhi in 1948. Until now, Gandhi’s biographers have dwelled upon his legend. This biography is the powerful story of two human beings, triumphing together against overwhelming odds.

Author: Pramod Kapoor
Publisher: Roli Books Private Limited
ISBN: 8193600916
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 291

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Book Description
Pramod Kapoor, the founder and publisher of Roli Books (established in 1978), is a connoisseur of images. A sepia aficionado, he has over the course of his illustrious career conceived and produced award-winning books that have proven to be game changers in the world of publishing. Be it the hit ‘Then and Now’ series and the seminal Made for Maharajas, or even the internationally acclaimed New Delhi: The Making of a Capital. In 2016, he was conferred with the prestigious 'Chevalier de la Legion d'Honneur (Knight of the Legion of Honour), the highest civil and military award in France, for his contribution towards producing books that have changed the landscape of Indian publishing and to promoting India's tangible and intangible heritage within the country and abroad. His first book as author, Gandhi: An Illustrated Biography, is the result of years of painstaking research on a subject close to his heart. Kapoor is dedicated towards decoding Gandhi for the modern generation.

Author: Neelima Dalmia Adhar
Publisher:
ISBN: 9789386036537
Category : Statesmen's spouses
Languages : en
Pages : 395

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Author: N. C. Beohar
Publisher: Notion Press
ISBN: 1643248472
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 497

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Kasturba Gandhi, the wife of Mahatma Gandhi silently endured the gradual deterioration of her four sons because of the lack of proper formal education which was denied to them by the peremptory regimentation of their illustrious father. Harilal, the eldest protested more vociferously while the three younger brothers followed the dictates of the patriarch more tamely. The four sons were active-passive resisters in their own rights. But they received almost no approbation from their father while there were words of charity for others similarly situated. The Saint ordained the pursuit of a life of poverty and self-denial. Kasturba translated and implemented these disciplines in her personal life. But could it be expected that an ambitious mother would agree to a course of similar life for her sons? This book is a simple effort to probe into these questions with regard to Kasturba Gandhi: the Silent Sufferer.

Author:
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199098077
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 178

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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’.

Author: Ramachandra Guha
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 038553230X
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 544

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Book Description
Here is the first volume of a magisterial biography of Mohandas Gandhi that gives us the most illuminating portrait we have had of the life, the work and the historical context of one of the most abidingly influential—and controversial—men in modern history. Ramachandra Guha—hailed by Time as “Indian democracy’s preeminent chronicler”—takes us from Gandhi’s birth in 1869 through his upbringing in Gujarat, his two years as a student in London and his two decades as a lawyer and community organizer in South Africa. Guha has uncovered myriad previously untapped documents, including private papers of Gandhi’s contemporaries and co-workers; contemporary newspapers and court documents; the writings of Gandhi’s children; and secret files kept by British Empire functionaries. Using this wealth of material in an exuberant, brilliantly nuanced and detailed narrative, Guha describes the social, political and personal worlds inside of which Gandhi began the journey that would earn him the honorific Mahatma: “Great Soul.” And, more clearly than ever before, he elucidates how Gandhi’s work in South Africa—far from being a mere prelude to his accomplishments in India—was profoundly influential in his evolution as a family man, political thinker, social reformer and, ultimately, beloved leader. In 1893, when Gandhi set sail for South Africa, he was a twenty-three-year-old lawyer who had failed to establish himself in India. In this remarkable biography, the author makes clear the fundamental ways in which Gandhi’s ideas were shaped before his return to India in 1915. It was during his years in England and South Africa, Guha shows us, that Gandhi came to understand the nature of imperialism and racism; and in South Africa that he forged the philosophy and techniques that would undermine and eventually overthrow the British Raj. Gandhi Before India gives us equally vivid portraits of the man and the world he lived in: a world of sharp contrasts among the coastal culture of his birthplace, High Victorian London, and colonial South Africa. It explores in abundant detail Gandhi’s experiments with dissident cults such as the Tolstoyans; his friendships with radical Jews, heterodox Christians and devout Muslims; his enmities and rivalries; and his often overlooked failures as a husband and father. It tells the dramatic, profoundly moving story of how Gandhi inspired the devotion of thousands of followers in South Africa as he mobilized a cross-class and inter-religious coalition, pledged to non-violence in their battle against a brutally racist regime. Researched with unequaled depth and breadth, and written with extraordinary grace and clarity, Gandhi Before India is, on every level, fully commensurate with its subject. It will radically alter our understanding and appreciation of twentieth-century India’s greatest man.