Songs from Prison: Translations of Indian lyrics Made in Jail.

GANDHI, Mohandas K.

Item Number: 82324

New York: The Macmillan Company, 1934.

First American edition of a collection of songs and lyrics by Gandhi, written during his imprisonment in Yeravada Jail, Poona. Octavo, original cloth. Very good in a very good dust jacket. Introductory note from John S. Hoyland.

Mohandas K. Gandhi was the leader of the Indian independence movement against British rule. Employing nonviolent civil disobedience, Gandhi led India to independence and inspired movements for civil rights and freedom across the world. He is unofficially called the Father of the Nation. Gandhi's vision of an independent India based on religious pluralism, however, was challenged in the early 1940s by a new Muslim nationalism which was demanding a separate Muslim homeland carved out of India. Eventually, in August 1947, Britain granted independence, but the British Indian Empire was partitioned into two dominions, a Hindu-majority India and Muslim-majority Pakistan. As many displaced Hindus, Muslims, and Sikhs made their way to their new lands, religious violence broke out, especially in the Punjab and Bengal. Eschewing the official celebration of independence in Delhi, Gandhi visited the affected areas, attempting to provide solace. In the months following, he undertook several fasts unto death to stop religious violence. The last of these, undertaken on January 1948 when he was 78, also had the indirect goal of pressuring India to pay out some cash assets owed to Pakistan. Some Indians thought Gandhi was too accommodating. Among them was Nathuram Godse, a Hindu nationalist, who assassinated Gandhi on January 30, 1948. Gandhi's birthday, October 2, is commemorated in India as Gandhi Jayanti, a national holiday, and worldwide as the International Day of Nonviolence.