The Story of My Experiments with Truth.

GANDHI, Mohandas K. (Mahatma).

Item Number: 101676

Ahmedabad: Navajivan Press, 1927-29.

First editions of Gandhi’s famed autobiography covering his life from childhood to 1921. Octavo, 2 volumes. Engraved tissue-guarded frontispiece portraits of Gandhi to each volume. Association copy, inscribed by Gandhi on the front free endpaper to Raja Shamraj Rai, “To Raja Shamraj Rai Rajwant Bahadur MT Gandhi 9-3-34.” The recipient, Indian nobleman Raja Shamraj Rajwant Bahadur assembled India’s greatest library, famed for its diverse collection of rare antiquarian manuscripts and important books. With the Raja’s ownership inscriptions beneath Gandhi’s inscription which read, “(1) S.R.A.S. The two volumes were presented to me by Mr. Badrul Hessom of Hyd. Book Depot on 10-11-1932. (2) The above autograph of Mahatma Gandhi was taken on 9-3-1934 during his visit to Hyderabad.” Very good in the scarce original dust jackets. Scarce, with no record of inscribed copies of this work ever to  have appeared.

"My purpose," Mahatma Gandhi writes of this book, "is to describe experiments in the science of Satyagraha, not to say how good I am." Satyagraha, Gandhi's nonviolent protest movement (satya = true, agraha = firmness), came to stand, like its creator, as a moral principle and a rallying cry; the principle was truth and the cry freedom. The life of Gandhi has given fire and fiber to freedom fighters and to the untouchables of the world: hagiographers and patriots have capitalized on Mahatma myths. Yet Gandhi writes: "Often the title [Mahatma, Great Soul] has deeply pained me. . . . But I should certainly like to narrate my experiments in the spiritual field which are known only to myself, and from which I have derived such power as I possess for working in the political field."