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Gandhi 1914-1948: The Years That Changed the World QUOTES

Gandhi 1914-1948: The Years That Changed the World QUOTES

1 " In his speeches on Azad Hind Radio, Subhas Bose referred to Gandhi as the ‘Father of the Nation’. This seems to be the first time Gandhi was called this. The usage soon became ubiquitous. "

― Ramachandra Guha , Gandhi 1914-1948: The Years That Changed the World

2 " In Gandhi’s view of the world, ‘generally, it is the father who should be the bread-winner’, while ‘family life is the first and greatest thing. Its sanctity must remain. "

― Ramachandra Guha , Gandhi 1914-1948: The Years That Changed the World

3 " I cannot leave so important a question as the protection of my people to conventions and misunderstandings. The Mahatma is not an immortal person . . . There have been many Mahatmas in India whose sole object was to remove untouchability and to elevate and absorb the Depressed Classes but every one of them have failed in their mission. Mahatmas have come and Mahatmas have gone. But untouchables have remained as untouchables. "

― Ramachandra Guha , Gandhi 1914-1948: The Years That Changed the World

4 " While economics played a role, so did individuals, and one individual in particular. The official history underestimated the personal charisma of Mohandas K. Gandhi. His name, and his methods, fired the popular imagination. It was he who conceived of and led the campaign against the Rowlatt Act, he who conceived and led non-cooperation, he, who, by making common cause with the Muslims on the Khilafat, brought India’s two major communities together against the Raj. "

― Ramachandra Guha , Gandhi 1914-1948: The Years That Changed the World

5 " We claim reserved seats if accompanied by adult suffrage,’ stated Ambedkar, ‘but in the absence of adult suffrage we want separate electorates. "

― Ramachandra Guha , Gandhi 1914-1948: The Years That Changed the World

6 " freedom of a nation cannot be won by solitary acts of heroism’; rather, it ‘requires the patient, intelligent, and constructive effort of tens of thousands of men and women, young and old’. "

― Ramachandra Guha , Gandhi 1914-1948: The Years That Changed the World

7 " Both Arun Shourie and Arundhati Roy see history in terms of heroes and villains. Neither seeks to place the choices made by Gandhi and Ambedkar in context, seeking only to elevate one by disparaging the other. Roy has all of Ambedkar’s polemical zeal but none of his scholarship or sociological insight. Shourie, meanwhile, perhaps loves India as much as Gandhi did, but he loves it in the abstract, without empathy for those Indians who suffer discrimination at the hands of their compatriots. Both seek—by the technique of suppressio veri, suggestio falsi so beloved of ideologues down the ages—to prove a verdict they have arrived at beforehand: that Gandhi was the Enemy of the Dalits, for Roy; that Ambedkar was the Enemy of the Nation, for Shourie. "

― Ramachandra Guha , Gandhi 1914-1948: The Years That Changed the World

8 " In the third week of January, a massive earthquake hit Bihar. When the news reached Gandhi, he was in the town of Tirunelveli. Speaking at a public meeting, he saw ‘a vital connection between the Bihar calamity and the untouchability campaign. The Bihar calamity is a sudden and accidental reminder of what we are and what God is; but untouchability is a calamity handed down to us from century to century. It is a curse brought upon ourselves by our own neglect of a portion of Hindu humanity. "

― Ramachandra Guha , Gandhi 1914-1948: The Years That Changed the World

9 " Gandhi’s fast unto death to keep the Depressed Classes in the Hindu fold was to begin at 12 noon on 20 September 1932. "

― Ramachandra Guha , Gandhi 1914-1948: The Years That Changed the World

10 " As an upper-caste reformer, Gandhi was motivated by a sense of guilt, the desire to make reparation for past sins, whereas as one born in an ‘untouchable’ home, Ambedkar was animated by the drive to achieve a position of social equality and human dignity for his fellows. "

― Ramachandra Guha , Gandhi 1914-1948: The Years That Changed the World

11 " The socialists’ manifesto called for ‘the progressive nationalization of all the instruments of production, distribution and exchange’. Gandhi thought this ‘too sweeping’, commenting archly that ‘Rabindranath Tagore is an instrument of marvellous production. I do not know that he will submit to being nationalized. "

― Ramachandra Guha , Gandhi 1914-1948: The Years That Changed the World

12 " When Greenberg’s article was brought to his notice, Gandhi replied to it in Harijan, arguing that while non-violence would surely be harder against dictators, it must still be tried. ‘Its real quality is only tested in such cases,’ he observed. ‘Sufferers need not see the result during their lifetime. They must have faith that if their cult survives, the result is a certainty. The method of violence gives no greater guarantee than that of non-violence.’49 "

― Ramachandra Guha , Gandhi 1914-1948: The Years That Changed the World

13 " On 14 August, Gandhi met B.R. Ambedkar in Bombay. This was the first meeting between the two men, one for more than a decade the most important political leader in India, the other, younger by twenty-two years, and seeking to represent his own, desperately disadvantaged community of so-called ‘untouchables’. Both men knew of each other, of course; Ambedkar had been inspired by Gandhian ideas during his ‘Mahad Satyagraha’ of 1927, which Gandhi had praised in the columns of Young India. "

― Ramachandra Guha , Gandhi 1914-1948: The Years That Changed the World

14 " In response to Bose’s re-election, most members of the CWC resigned. They included Patel, Kripalani, Bajaj and Rajendra Prasad, all Gandhi loyalists. The resignation of these working committee members left ‘the Congress with a president marked for the helm, but without a crew to run the ship’.10 "

― Ramachandra Guha , Gandhi 1914-1948: The Years That Changed the World

15 " A friend from his London days, who had followed his subsequent career closely, remarked in 1934 that Gandhi ‘is a problem. To Rulers and Governors he is a thorn in their side. To logicians he is a fool. To economists he is a hopeless ignoramus. To materialists he is a dreamer. To communists he is a drag on the wheel. To constitutionalists he represents rank revolution.’2 To this list we might add: ‘To Muslim leaders he was a communal Hindu. To Hindu extremists he was a notorious appeaser of Muslims. To the “untouchables” he appeared a defender of high-caste orthodoxy. To the Brahmin he was a reformer in too much of a hurry. "

― Ramachandra Guha , Gandhi 1914-1948: The Years That Changed the World