Description
Book SynopsisAt the age of eighteen, a shy and timid Mohandas Gandhi leaves his Gujarati home for a life on his own. At forty-five, a confident and fearless Gandhi arrives back in India ready to boldly lead his country to freedom. What transforms him? The law.
Trade Review"An excellent study of Gandhi's 20 years as a young attorney in South Africa." Washington Post "This well-written book is the first scholarly work to connect Gandhi's nonviolent civil disobedience to the failure of the courts in racialized South Africa." American Historical Review "A very powerful and original contribution to Gandhian studies." -- Nigel Collett Asian Review of Books "DiSalvo, through painstaking work in the legal archives of South Africa and in the archives of the Sabarmati Ashram, has written the first account of Gandhi's life in law... The Man Before the Mahatma is without doubt among the finest in a long biographical tradition." -- Tridip Suhrud The Caravan: A Journal of Politics and Culture "South Africa was ... a profoundly racist society... This inescapable reality forced on Gandhi a response. Here Charles DiSalvo's book, examining Gandhi's life as a lawyer, is particularly worthwhile." -- Tim Stafford Books And Culture "Among the more arresting works on this phase of Gandhi's life ... an astonishingly detailed and revealing study of Gandhi's law practice." -- Vinay Lal Ufahamu: A Journal of African Studies "Charles DiSalvo's inspiring M. K. Gandhi, Attorney at Law: The Man Before the Mahatma ... offers a detailed and deeply thoughtful study of the ambiguous place of law in the life of a man who led millions of people to freedom." -- Frank R. Herrmann America
Table of ContentsIntroduction 1. Dispatched to London 2. The Barrister Who Couldn't Speak 3. An Abundant and Regular Supply of Labour 4. Dada Abdulla's White Elephant 5. Not a White Barrister 6. Formation Lessons 7. Waller's Question 8. A Public Man 9. To Maritzburg 10. Moth and Flame 11. Sacrifice 12. Transition and the Transvaal 13. No Bed of Roses 14. Disobedience 15. Courthouse to Jailhouse 16. Malpractice 17. Courtroom as Laboratory 18. Closing Arguments Mohandas K. Gandhi Chronology Abbreviations Notes Sources Acknowledgments
