Saturday, May 07, 2011

Revolutionary London

In last Tuesday night’s Radio 3 Essay about Gandhi - Home Rule for the Soul - Professor Sunil Khilnani revealed the small but untriguing detail that Gandhi arrived in England in 1909 just four days after the murder of Sir Curzon Wyllie.

For much of his stay Gandhi 'went native with radical young Indians in London', who believed that only through violent means could they achieve their aim of independence for India.

But on the ship home to South Africa Gandhi wrote his first major work, Hind Swaraj, a critique of modern civilization and a defence of non-violent resistance.

It was banned by the British who viewed it as a seditious manifesto.


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