Preface on history project on the topic mahatma gandhi and indian national movement
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Mahatma Gandhi appeared on the political scene of India around the year 1917 with his novel technique of struggle called Ahinsa and Satyagraha. ... He launched in all three great agitations for winning the national independence of India. Civil Disobedience Movement (1930-1934) has its own significance.
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Gandhiji perhaps never wrote merely for the pleasure of writing. Thought and writing were always tools with him for more efficient action. They were used either to clear up a knotty problem in his own mind or in that of his co-workers. His writings therefore do not exactly give a correct representation of what he actually was but what he always tried to be. It is a record of ideals and aspirations and of criticism of events and situations in the light of those ideals. By their very nature they reflect the difficulties which confronted him from time to time and also how he was able to met them more or less successful in the course of life's experiments. The reader should approach this book of selections with that reservation in mind then he will be able to gather whatever help he can in the pursuit of his own ideal.
A word is now necessary to explain the arrangement followed in the presentation of the selections. The foundation of Gandhiji's life was formed by his living and growing faith in God, and in the oneness of the whole human family. So his ideas about God have been given the first place in the first chapter. The discipline which every man should follow in order to realize his highest ideal, whether we call it God, or Truth, or Humanity, is common to all; and it comes in the second chapter. The third contains a summary of Gandhiji's views on various philosophical, social and political questions, and may thus be regarded as practically a summary of the rest of the book. In fact, this is why a few passages occurring elsewhere, have also found place in this chapter on fundamental ideas.