Mahatma Gandhi : His Own Story

Book excerpt: The Material of this Autobiography, which Mahatma Gandhi has called The Story of My Experiments with Truth, was first dictated by him in his own mother-tongue to one of his fellow political prisoners during long imprisonment in the years 1922-24. It was afterward continued in a serial form, as a feature of his Gujarati paper, called Navajivan, and translated into English by his intimate friends, Mahadev Desai and Pyarelal Nair, receiving at the same time his own careful revision. Miss Slade, who is known in Mr. Gandhi's Asram as Mirabehn, also assisted in shaping its final English form. The whole series of short chapters has now been published by the Navajivan Press at Ahmedabad in two large volumes, containing over twelve hundred octavo pages. Another book of equal importance has been used, wherein Mahatma Gandhi describes personally his own (Soul-Force) in South Africa, and the translation has been made by Valji Govindji Desai. Its Indian publisher is Mr. S. Ganesan, Triplicane, Madras, India. When we turn to the three volumes and try to gain the clue to Mahatma Gandhi's estimate of human conduct, it will be found to entre in three cardinal virtues, current in all his writings. These are Truth, Loving-kindness, and inner purity. Since this book was compiled and edited the Indian situation has become very grave indeed.