Gandhi
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Prisoner of Hope
Judith M. Brown
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"This is the best biography of Gandhi so far and deserves to be read by everyone interested in him and in modern India."—Bhikhu Parekh, New Statesman and Society
"Judith Brown has written the most systematic, balanced, and clear biography of Gandhi I have yet seen."—Howard Spodek, Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science
"In fascinating detail, Brown chronicles the fate of nonviolent tactics in South Africa and, after 1915, in India, where Gandhi—now clad in loincloth and sandals—quickly became a patriotic hero."—Jim Miller, Newsweek
"It is a superb book, elegantly written, and I would recommend it to anyone who wants to know more about Gandhi as well as the social context which helped to mould him as a man and a politician."—Tariq Ali, Guardian
"This is as fine an exposition of Gandhi’s religious beliefs as we are likely to get. … [Brown] has clearly established herself as [Gandhi’s] leading interpreter to her generation."—Antony Copley, History Today
Judith M. Brown is Beit Professor of the History of the British Commonwealth at Oxford University.
"Superb. . . . An exhilarating work, temperate, broad-ranging, and newly inspiring."—Kirkus Reviews
"Brown’s carefully researched account of Gandhi as a ’prisoner of hope’ will confront its readers with the question of whether the new life he taught and lived was achievable or beyond their reach. Her stunning and authoritative compilation is sure to be an indispensable reference for all Gandhi scholars. At the same time, it will generate controversy. While capturing Gandhi’s remarkable relevance for a world grappling with how to life in peace and plenty, Brown’s assessment argues that his ideas and practice have been largely ignored in modern India."—Lloyd I. Rudolph and Susanne Hoeber Rudolph, authors of Gandhi: The Traditional Roots of Charisma
"Judith Brown’s marvelously shrewd, inclusive, and fair-minded account of a life slow to burgeon but flowering, eventually, to overwhelming effect, is the most just and balanced that I have yet encountered. Her minute, chronological examination of his career embraces all its many moral grandeurs and spiritual glories. His hesitations and inconsistencies, his obstinacies and rages, his errors of judgement and failures of nerve and insight are also faithfully chronicled, but in such a beautifully proportionate way that they detract but little from the overpoweringly positive effect of his life when viewed as a whole. . . . This is a book worthy of the greatness it celebrates."—Martin Fagg, Church Times
"Brown has written commandingly and refreshingly of a man whom dozens of writers . . . have gone at."—Colman McCarthy, Washington Post Book Review
"[This book] seeks to disentangle myth from reality."—British Book News
"Brown’s political analysis is as acute as her interpretation of Gandhi’s philosophy. . . . This is a valuable book. . . . [For] those who wish to know about the original (and very different from the legendary) Gandhi."—Karan Thapar, Times of London
"Judith Brown’s study refreshingly looks at the practical Gandhi as well as the living symbol. . . . She is sufficiently sympathetic and intuitive to give us a fullyrounded picture. Westerners could not hope for a better and more integrated biography."—Howard Clark, Sanity
"Judith Brown is excellent. . . . [This book] is restrained, balanced and scholarly; it is both sensitive and sensible. . . . There are few pages in this book which do not provoke admiration or disagreement, and some degree of affection or mockery for the human spirit."—Philip Mason, Tablet
"[Judith Brown] is in a position, as no other writer has been so far, both to comprehend his life as a whole and to place it in a broader contact."—Dr. Francis Robinson, Features and Arts, World Service in English Book Talks
"[Gandhi] is almost certainly the best explanation of this enigmatic man. . . . Brown . . . recognises his greatness and humanity."—Louis Heren, Ham and High
"Judith Brown’s excellent biography . . . sees him in the realpolitik of the Congress Party he was leading in India’s freedom struggle against the British."—Rahul Bedi, Sunday Telegraph
"Gandhi: Prisoner of Hope . . . [is] surely a definitive biography."—Maggie James, Academic File, London
"Judith Brown’s excellent new biography . . . is four-dimensional. She discusses the inner life of Gandhi, including his deepest fears, hopes anxieties, struggles, complexes, ways of thinking and holding himself together. . . . The result is a fairly comprehensive book that does justice to the complexity of Gandhi’s life and thought. Brown has dug deep into the archives and unearthed some new material. . . . This is the best biography of Gandhi so far and deserves to be read by everyone interested in him and in modern India."—Bhikhu Parekh, New Statesman and Society
"Prisoner of Hope is certainly first rate, with a lively yet literate style and a scrupulously objective point of view."—William Novick, Datebook
"Placing Gandhi’s long life—he lived to be nearly 80—in historical context, Brown penetrates beneath the plastersaint image of Gandhi at prayer or at his spinning wheel to reveal the origins of his ideas about how to attain ’swaraj’ (self-rule) for India through ’satyagraha’ (truth force) and ’ahimsa’ (non-violence). . . . Brown’s biography is an exhaustively researched and meticulously detailed work of scholarship."—Sue Standing, Boston Herald
"In fascinating detail, Brown chronicles the fate of nonviolent tactics in South Africa and, after 1915, in India, where Gandhi—now clad in loincloth and sandals—quickly became a patriotic hero."—Jim Miller, Newsweek
"This is perhaps one of the most comprehensive books written on Gandhi, yet simple enough for a reader without intensive background to follow, and well enough referenced to permit follow through for more scholarly work."—Thomas Timburg, India
"Judith Brown is at her best when she reconstructs the last few years of this ’frail old man’. . . . To encompass the Gandhi phenomenon in a single volume is a virtually impossible task, but Judith Brown has almost accomplished it. This is not the definitive biography (if ever one can be written) but it is easily the best so far."—Gowher Rizvi, Times Higher Education Supplement
"It is a superb book, elegantly written, and I would recommend it to anyone who wants to know more about Gandhi as well as the social context which helped to mould him as a man and a politician."—Tariq Ali, Guardian
"It is surprising that there has been no major biography of Gandhi for a long time; Judith Brown’s is likely to become the standard work. She does not try to paint a picture of a ’plaster saint,’ but discusses his failures and failings fully. Her epilogue is a brilliant summingup of Gandhi and his place in modern India. She is exacting in her judgments, both of Gandhi and of the politicians who today run modern India."—Kevin Rafferty, Financial Times
"Mahatma Gandhi is to Indians what St. George was to the English. In a culture as susceptible to sainthood as India's, criticisms of Gandhi are still taken as acts of high moral treason. Judith Brown has found a way to tell the truth without offending. Calling him a 'prisoner of hope' for his unshakable belief in the triumph of truth, she adopts a serious, affectionate tone that de-fangs the facts she lays out."—Firdaus Kanga, Sunday Times
Publication Date: October 23, 1991
24 b/w illus.
