The book was well-written and consistently stayed on message.
Like most people familiar with the Gandhi from the movie Gandhi and from prior biographies, I was unaware that his South African life experience was both a period in which he repeatedly tried alternative paths to the one he eventually chose. He was a reluctant practitioner of civil disobedience who might never have used it if the courts and the political establishment in South Africa had not been so contemptuous of him, the Indian community and the law.
I also did not realize that his process of migrating from using the legal system and both trial and appellate litigation to focusing on civil disobedience was one littered with mistakes and painful learning experiences. The mistakes he made were often subtle ones, but with significant negative consequences. He learned a lot, but he was a more flawed leader and advocate than the person we admire.
The other insight that came through loud and clear was his public self-confidence and charisma was hard won. He was not a good public speaker when he started. That clear deficiency in his legal skill set drew him to a less competitive environment in South Africa, where his deficiencies were neither as noticeable nor as damaging to his clients or his cause.
It is refreshing and helpful to read a book like this to remind us that great heroes and leaders do not have these qualities at the beginning or even well into their adult lives, but can develop them with hard work and humbling learning processes.
The book clearly delineates the path by which Gandhi rationally became the person with the skills, the passion, and the values to have an outsized impact on the Indian independence movement. We also can understand, although the book does not touch upon this subject, why Dr. Martin Luther King sent a member of his movement to India to study what Gandhi had done and how he had done it. Without that understanding, the American civil rights movement might have failed to have the impact it did.
When we read this book, we can see the echoes of Gandhi’s tactics and strategies with the staged brutality on American TV screens and in photographs published in American newspapers and magazines that forced us to confront the evil of Jim Crow in the South.
Other books focus on how civil disobedience has had its effects. This one is unique in describing how civil disobedience tools were developed and refined.
I strongly recommend this book for anyone who cares about non-violent change.
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