A. Vast Canvas

About five months before his martyrdom, Mahatma Gandhi gave us in a short sentence a key to an understanding of his complex personality and of his place in human history; he told the Shanti Seva Dal, ‘My life is my message.’ Nothing more needs to be said. It is appropriate that Raghavan Iyer, editor of the three-volume selections from Gandhiji’s Moral and Political Writings should have placed this five-word ‘message’ at the end of the final volume, summing up not merely the preceding almost two thousand pages but very much more that obviously could not be included in Gandhiji’s own words or in the words of others competent to assess one or other aspect of a significant active life spanning half a century, inspiring millions in India and elsewhere and giving direction and purpose to mankind’s thoughts and actions on the individual and the collective plane.