Customer Reviews

The Life and Death of Mahatma Gandhi (Leaders of Our Time)

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Mr. Payne's account of the Mahatma's life is at once reverential of the great one, while recognizing that he was a human with human frailties. The Life and Death of Mahatma Gandhi portrays the development, the greatness and the failures of a saint, who changed the world and challenged forever the global culture of violence. To understand that Gandhiji was a flawed human being additionally gave me great hope that from quite humble material, saints are born. The Mahatma is also presented in his great strength, as a leader of men, a shrewd politician, and as a lover of God.

I'm quite shocked that Robert Payne is so criticised when he obviously treated this Gandhi biography with an honest even handed integrity that not only praises someone he admires but also exposes someone that has also possesses the human frailties to be found in all of us.
With Gandhi just as much as any other person that has walked on the world stage and has been either loved or hated we like to know just what they really are like outside of what they are portrayed.
With Gandhi we learn among other things how he suffered much guilt for enjoying the sexual pleasures of his young wife as his father died in an adjoining room.
We learn while Gandhi himself was afforded a good education himself to practise law he was not so generous to his oldest son Harilal to allow the same and was very hard even cruel with him.
Honoured in India Has The Father of the Nation Gandhi's ideological non violent civil disobedience movement and efforts to gain India's independence has inspired and motivated others all over the world to seek change through non violent means and Payne's book applauds it.
The Gandhi movie starring Ben Kingsley appears to be taken directly from Payne's Biography.

This biography on gandhi pales in comparison to other biographies done on him. Robert Payne seems hell bent on looking at incidences in Gandhi's life as either personal or selfish motives. While he manages to convince us of a possibility of a different viewpoint in some instances, in most cases he seems unduly critical and overtly suspicious. Looks like Mr. Payne believes that every motive in life has a selfish reason behind it. Sadly this paradigm does not allow him to dissect gandhi fairly. There are many facets to this great leader, both unfavourable and favourable, but it requires careful study of gandhi's philosphy and a unbiased approach which this book sadly lacks. There are better biographies available.....