In his Autobiography, Gandhi wrote, "What I want to
achieve - what I have been striving and pining to
achieve these thirty years - is self-realization, to see
God face to face...All that I do by way of speaking and
writing, and all my ventures in the political field, are
directed to this same end". While hundreds of
biographies and histories have been written about Gandhi
(1869 - 1948), nearly all of them have focused on the
political, social, or familial dimensions of his life.
Very few, in recounting how Gandhi led his country to
political freedom, have viewed his struggle primarily as
a search for spiritual liberation. Shifting the focus to
the understudied subject of Gandhi's spiritual life,
Arvind Sharma retells the story of Gandhi's life through
this lens. Illuminating unsuspected dimensions of
Gandhi's inner world and uncovering their surprising
connections with his outward actions, Sharma explores
the eclectic religious atmosphere in which Gandhi was
raised, his belief in reincarnation, his conviction that
morality and religion are synonymous, his attitudes
toward tyranny and freedom, and, perhaps most important,
the mysterious source of his power to establish new
norms of human conduct. This book enlarges our
understanding of one of history's most profoundly
influential figures, a man whose trust in the power of
the soul helped liberate millions.
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