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Book Cover
E-book
Author Sharma, Arvind, author

Title Gandhi : a spiritual biography / Arvind Sharma
Published New Haven : Yale University Press, [2013]

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Description 1 online resource (vii, 252 pages)
Contents Birth and adolescence -- Child marriage -- God enters Gandhi's life -- Gandhi in London -- Gandhi and Raychand -- Gandhi's conversion experience -- Out of Africa -- Spiritual warfare -- Touching the untouchable -- Fighting fire with light -- Mahatma Gandhi and Ramana Maharshi -- Spiritual temptations -- Spiritual serendipity -- Beefing up vegetarianism -- The sex life of a celibate -- The Bhagavad Gita, Gandhi's other mother -- Gandhi, God, and goodness -- Demythologizing and analyzing Gandhi -- Gandhi's spiritual biography and contemporary history
Summary 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 national, political, social, economic, educational, environmental, 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 of 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 karma and rebirth, 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 spirit helped liberate millions
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references (pages 207-239) and index
Notes Print version record
Subject Gandhi, Mahatma, 1869-1948
SUBJECT Gandhi, Mahatma, 1869-1948 fast
Gandhi, Mohandas Karamchand 1869-1948 gnd
Subject Statesmen -- Religious life -- India -- Biography
Religious leaders -- Biography
Religious leaders
Statesmen -- Religious life
Spiritualiteit.
India
India.
Zuidwest-Aziƫ.
Genre/Form Biographies
Biografieƫn (vorm)
Biographies.
Biographies.
Form Electronic book
ISBN 9780300187380
0300187386