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Gandhi
 
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Gandhi [Hardcover]

Peter Ruhe (Author)
4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
Price: CDN$ 59.95 & this item ships for FREE with Super Saver Shipping. Details
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Mahatma Gandhi is the perfect subject for Peter Rühe's impressive pictorial biography Gandhi. Not only was Mahatma Gandhi a consciously humble, compassionate man of principle, prepared to die for his lifelong belief in Satyagraha, or non-violent protest, he was also powerfully photogenic. Rühe has been a Gandhi specialist and visual archivist for nearly 20 years and has compiled his gallery mostly from the vast collections of Kanu Gandhi, a great-nephew, and Vithalbhai Jhaveri, former member of the Indian National Movement. After studying law in England, Gandhi spent two decades in South Africa, where he trained for the rest of his life, his activism fully ignited by the Black Act of 1906, forcing Indians to register. From 1921, the familiar visual identity starts to emerge: lean, bespectacled and unblinking, head shaved, and clad in loincloth and chaddar (a sheet worn as a wrap), in response to the Foreign Cloth Boycott. Influenced by Western writers such as John Ruskin, Henry David Thoreau and Leo Tolstoy, he became deeply pained by the impotence of his teachings in the face of Nazi slaughter of the Jews, but India, and its Purna Swaraj, remained his true passion. However, when independence came, on 14 August 1947, he only saw failure with the establishment of independent states of India and Pakistan, and the religious violence that ensued.

Aside from the wonderful historical photography of the Salt March of 1930, his rallies where the audience disappears into the horizon, and his constantly frail, often fasting, physical state, the most poignant selections show Gandhi adhering to the simple life he espoused: eating, shaving, spinning, travelling and speaking, or with unbearable pathos, watching over his dead wife's body. Quirky gems include meeting Charlie Chaplin in London's East End, giving a "silent message" on his habitual day of silence to reporters who busily seem to scribble it down, and, after his assassination, his funeral procession being given, with grim irony, a military salute. While Louis Fischer's The Life of Mahatma Gandhi provides an authoritative, contextualised analysis, Gandhi frames his extraordinary life with a simplicity and warmth that goes some way to explaining the reverence he inspired, and why, when he died, Nehru spoke not just for India in lamenting that "the light has gone out of our lives". --David Vincent

Review

This book allows us an intimate insight into the life of one of the 20th century's great figures. -- The Sunday Times Magazine, September 9, 2001

This collection of rare photography provides a strong, intimate, entertaining, and moving documentary... -- India in New York, July 13, 2001

This is an unusual Gandhi book as it is essentially a photographic record of Gandhi's life produced by an art publisher. -- The Gandhi Way, No. 69, Autumn 2001

We have now in one volume a magnificent, luminous collection of photographs of Gandhi... -- Los Angeles Times, November 18, 2001
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Customer Reviews

3 Reviews
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Average Customer Review
4.3 out of 5 stars (3 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
3.0 out of 5 stars This is a difficult book to read., Dec 18 2001
By 
Allan M. Gathercoal "fdoamerica" (Norcross, GA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   
This review is from: Gandhi (Hardcover)
This is a difficult book to read.

It is a difficult read, not because of the historical writing of Peter Ruhe, who has done a commendable job, nor because of the photo editing by Sophie Spencer-Wood, a top rate job indeed; but because the publisher, Phaidon Press, choose to print the text using a very small type with a recessive color using glossy paper. Sad, especially when you open to the text section and see there are 2 " top, 2 " left and 1 " bottom margins. Go figure. To make the matter worse under each photo caption, the publisher uses an even smaller type and in a tan color.

Phaidon Press failed to consider that the audience most likely to buy to this book, will be, by majority, mid-aged or older. Thus, they, like me, probably will need reading glasses. However, even with good reading glasses, the smallness of type, the faded black ink (on the verge of gray) and the glaring glossy paper made reading this book very strenuous and difficult.

That said, I found Peter Ruhe's writing balanced and refreshing. He chronologically lays out Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi's life in an engaging, investigative manner. Ruhe is an admirer of Mahatma but not enamored enough to be a blind devote. He points out the times that Gandhi's belief in satyagraha (truth-force) blinded him. One such time, related to the evil of Nazi Germany, "Gandhi insisted that Hitler was merely misguided. In his mind the German leader could be dissuaded from further conquest by the power of reason or, if necessary, satyagraha". Though Gandhi had achieved mystical status, to Ruhe he was still a man, although, one of the world's greatest.

The 400 Black and White photos curated by Sophie Spencer-Wood are excellent They illustrate the time line of this great man's life. The reproduction of the photos is top rate, and this alone makes the book a worthy addition to any Mahatma Gandhi collection. Gandhi's body was cremated, January 31. 1948. The words of Jawaharlal Nehru, India's first Prime Minister, eulogize Gandhi even today, "the light has gone out of our lives, and there is darkness everywhere, our beloved leader... the father of the Nation is no more." Recommended

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5.0 out of 5 stars Photographs of Mahatma Gandhi..., Jun 30 2002
By A Customer
This review is from: Gandhi (Hardcover)
Excellent book, the photo-biography on Mahatma Gandhi the Father of India was a real pleasure to read and a wonderful account of his life told in pictures. One forgets that Mahatma Gandhi wanted India to be one nation-state and not divided into India and Pakistan, it was Nehru, Jinnah and the British that separated India. Granted there would have been problems, but they would have been under one nation-state and not two as there is between India and Pakistan today...
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5.0 out of 5 stars Magnificent!, Jan 4 2002
By A Customer
This review is from: Gandhi (Hardcover)
This book is an amazing compilation of photographs, in chronological order, telling you about the life and philosophy of Gandhi. The pictures tell the story themselves and help you get a feeling of how things really were and the true magnitude of the movement for an independent India.
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