Conclusion

Summary

The reader of this volume will have encountered many Gandhis. They have ranged chronologically from the boy growing up in conservative, Western India, under British imperial rule; to the diffident student in London and failed lawyer in Bombay; to the self-taught activist, public figure, and lawyer in South Africa; and finally to the influential leader of the Indian nationalist movement who was also, uniquely and surprisingly, the founder of several ashram communities, which he considered to be his best work and where he tried to work out the core elements of his spiritual vision of the good human life in the pursuit of Truth. The reader will also have encountered different aspects of Gandhi’s life and thinking, including his developing ideas on the nature of politics, the state and the nature of the Indian nation, his wrestling with a range of acute human problems as they were manifested in Indian society, and his attempts to envisage an economic foundation for moral human lives and societies. Undergirding all of these aspects of his life and thought was his particular understanding of the nature of true religion, and his passionate quest for Truth as the underlying principle of all life, as another name for a divine force that addressed him personally and prompted his actions.

Furthermore, it is evident that during and after Gandhi’s life, people appropriated him and his image, thereby creating further ‘Gandhis’. Many groups and individuals have understood him in the framework of their pre-existing ideas, used him to forward their own agendas, or found him an inspiration for change in situations he never encountered himself. We know, for example, that while he was alive, and particularly during the years he was a major leader in India and increasingly known as a Mahatma, peasant groups understood him as a miracle worker, as a semi-divine saviour, but also used his image as a means of coercion and local discipline using moral assumptions already present in their worlds.