This essay presents a critical analysis of Louis Fischer's
biographical account of Mahatma Gandhi in his work Gandhi: His
Life and Message for the World (1954). The essay first summarizes briefly Fischer's account of Gandhi's life and message. The better part of the paper is devoted to an analysis of the Fischer bio-graphy. The essay concludes with a brief summary of what has been said.
The title of Fischer's book well describes what the author
wishes to accomplish: he wants to give an account of both the life
and the message of India's revered holy man, who played such an
important and dominant role in the life of the nation in the
thirty years before it achieved independence on August 15, 1947.
In this brief summary of Fischer's book we record the principal
events of Mahatma Gandhi's life. The following section devotes
more thought to his methods and his message to fellow Indians and to the world.
Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi was born in Porbandar a seaside town on the Kathiawar Peninsu1a in western India in October, 1869.
Karamchand Gandhi, the Mahatma's father, was a politician who served as prime minister in the small realms of Porbandar, Rajkot and Wankaner, all in the west of India; his mother, Putlibai, was a devout and illiterate Hindu woman. Fischer notes that M.K. Gandhi was a shy boy and young man, possessed of a substantial temper. He was not an exceptional student nor was he above rebelling as a young man against the strict religious Hindu code (he would go off with a Moslem friend on occasion and eat meat).
Though Gandhi's father died in 1885 and the family had compara-tively little wealth, the future Mahatma was able to secure sufficient funds to sail for England, a three-year course of studies in Law awaiting him. He left a wife and first-born son behind when he went to England on the eve of his nineteenth birthday (13).
While studying at the University of London, Gandhi, like...