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Summary:
In this fascinating and meticulously researched book, bestselling historian Arthur Herman sheds new light on two of the most universally recognizable icons of the twentieth century, and reveals how their forty-year rivalry sealed the fate of India and the British Empire.
They were born worlds apart: Winston Churchill to Britain’s most glamorous aristocratic family, Mohandas Gandhi to a pious middle-class household in a provincial town in India. Yet Arthur Herman reveals how their lives and careers became intertwined as the twentieth century unfolded. Both men would go on to lead their nations through harrowing trials and two world wars—and become locked in a fierce contest of wills that would decide the fate of countries, continents, and ultimately an empire.
Gandhi & Churchill reveals how both men were more alike than different, and yet became bitter enemies over the future of India, a land of 250 million people with 147 languages and dialects and 15 distinct religions—the jewel in the crown of Britain’s overseas empire for 200 years.
Over the course of a long career, Churchill would do whatever was necessary to ensure that India remain British—including a fateful redrawing of the entire map of the Middle East and even risking his alliance with the United States during World War Two.
Mohandas Gandhi, by contrast, would dedicate his life to India’s liberation, defy death and imprisonment, and create an entirely new kind of political movement: satyagraha, or civil disobedience. His campaigns of nonviolence in defiance of Churchill and the British, including his famous Salt March, would become the blueprint not only for the independence of India but for the civil rights movement in the U.S. and struggles for freedom across the world.
Now master storyteller Arthur Herman cuts through the legends and myths about these two powerful, charismatic figures and reveals their flaws as well as their strengths. The result is a sweeping epic of empire and insurrection, war and political intrigue, with a fascinating supporting cast, including General Kitchener, Rabindranath Tagore, Franklin Roosevelt, Lord Mountbatten, and Mohammed Ali Jinnah, the founder of Pakistan. It is also a brilliant narrative parable of two men whose great successes were always haunted by personal failure, and whose final moments of triumph were overshadowed by the loss of what they held most dear.
Customer Reviews:
Average Customer Rating:
Walking contradiction partly truth and partly fiction
Customer Rating:
This book changed my image of both men. I belive it removed the polish and made them human. Their strength was in the fact that both men could fall so far down and climb back to the top over and over again.
Explains so much of what is going on in the world even today
Customer Rating:
This is a critical history book in explaining not just the past but casting light on present conflicts in different regions in the world. From the recent terrorist attacks in Mumbai, to the war in Iraq, "Churchill and Gandhi" will help readers gain additional insights. Churchill is arguably the most important individual who shaped events in the British empire. Gandhi is a figure who is widely respected perhaps more so in the west than India. Obama names Gandhi along with Lincoln and MLK as his favorite historic figures. This book enlightened me a great deal however I must admit that there were periods of great boredom and some problems with editing.
Why must biographies of great historical people be so long? Do shorter biographies not have the same prestige for the author? This book and many like it would be so much better condensed. Perhaps professors respect authors of long books, but for an average reader like myself who is looking to gain more historical knowledge as well as be entertained it is disappointing. There was so much that could have been eliminated from this book without making the book worse for it. For example, the author included too many of Gandhi's satyagraha campaigns. Readers get the idea of his political strategies without having to read through all of these campaigns, many of which were politically unsuccessful. I was also very surprised how little there was on the Blitz and Churchill's leadership at that time. There were also many parts that were repeated unnecessarily.
The research and hard work that went into this book is impressive but the editing and entertainment value of this book is not as good. Along the same theme, I strongly recommend "All the Shah's Men: An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror" by Stephen Kinzer. Kinzer captures Mossadegh's life along with the British and American influences in 1950's Iran in a very entertaining and educational style.
Churchill, the racist and imperialist and Gadhi, the humanist
Customer Rating:
I know that Churchill has been voted the man of century (20th century) and the savior of western civilization. All this may be true but it is also true-and this book confirms it-that he was a racist and an imperialist of the first order. He did not think that the oriental races,as he called them, were capable of self-governance. His attitude seems somewhat similar to American slave owners. The author tries to draw parallels between lives and goals of Churchill and Gandhi. Parallels that do not always work. Churchill called Gandhi names-naked fakir of India-and wanted him shot but Gandhi never once reciprocated. That itself shows to some extent who was the bigger man. Mr. Herman also has some poppy-cock notions about Mountbatten and Nehru conspiring to partition India-mostly to the advantage of India and depriving Pakistan of Kashmir. The only evidence he offers is a book by Andrew Roberts I am not familiar with. He insinuates that Mountbatten collaborated with Nehru because Nehru was a fellow socialist having an affair with Edwina. I think Mountbatten was more likely to murder Nehru if he indeed suspected him of having an affair with his wife. Perhaps, Mr. Herman's dislike for socialists is so great that he is inspired to write utter nonsense. Mr. Jinnah, contrary to all accounts that I have read, is portrayed as a reluctant convert to partition after arm-twisting by Mr. Churchill. What a fantasy Mr. Herman has created!
Herman's whitewashing of the British record on famine
Customer Rating:
Ignore my rating--I didn't want to rate the entire book, but comment on one aspect of it that bothered me--the astonishingly benign attitude the author displays towards the record of famine under British rule during the late 1800's. That, of course, is not the subject of the book, but he does touch on it as he must.
First, I am comparing Herman's account to that of Mike Davis in "Late Victorian Holocausts". Davis paints a convincing and harrowing portrait of British callousness and blind adherence to free market ideology that led to the deaths of millions of Indians, first in the famines of the late 70's and then again 20 years later.
How does Mr. Herman treat these two famines? On page 32, he mentions the 70's famine in a few sentences, and then tells us that Lord Lytton, "conscientious and hardworking", "set in motion a famine program that would, with only a single exception, prevent another major outbreak for nearly seventy years." If you've read Davis, that summary will leave you speechless. Lord Lytton's policies during the 70's famine helped kill millions of people, and that "single exception" that Mr. Herman mentions, the famine 20 years later, killed millions more. Both were comparable in scale to what happened under Stalin in the 30's. Later, on page 66, Mr. Herman speaks approvingly of British famine relief policies.
I am no expert on India or famines, but Amartya Sen, who does know something about the subject, endorsed the accuracy of Mr. Davis's account in his review in the NYT. So assuming they are correct, Mr. Herman's version of events is shockingly inaccurate.
Good on facts but poor on repercussions
Customer Rating:
This is a fascinating account of the relationship between India and Britain for the first half of the twentieth century through the lives of these two countries greatest men. However, it failed to hit the mark in terms of truly explaining Gandhi's role in India's independence and on Indian psyche and also Churchill's imperialist legacy in our modern world.
The author has certainly done a good job in reconstructing the trials and tribulations of both men. He has proved without doubt that these men were built of extraordinary stuff. I think this is the best part of the book. Now, where the book falls short is in its attempt to analyze the repercussions of their lives.
It is definitely true that all of Gandhi's satyagraha movements eventually fizzled out without any apparent gain, or resulted in uncontrolled mob violence. But one can't really infer from these that Gandhi's message of ahimsa (non-violence) was lost on the Indian public, and that it was the threat of violence rather than non-violence which forced the British to leave India.
What the author failed to understand, even though he presented all the necessary evidence, was that Gandhi united a wide segment of India's society behind the Independence movement which earlier had been the monopoly of the elites in India's society. It was this mass mobilization which got stronger over time even after every failed satyagraha that eventually forced the British to leave.
Also, it is incorrect to state that the message of non-violence didn't leave its mark on the Indian public. It is definitely true that India erupted into mass communal violence in 1947, and even to the present day similar violence is quite common. However, at the same time there is a very strong under-current of non-violent civil disobedience in modern Indian politics. For example, when Indira Gandhi and her son attempted to grab power unlawfully, they were forced out of power by large-scale non-violent protests. More recently, similar public action has become common-place in deciding various political issues.
The British didn't leave India simply because they were afraid of violence in 1946. After all they had weathered a lot more violence in the prior century. What was different in 1946 was that the British belief of racial superiority had vanished and with it any justification for ruling India. Now, the author does talk about this change in British beliefs, but he doesn't go into its reasons. It was surprising that even though the author presented a lot of evidence of Gandhi's strong image in the west, almost fairy-tale like, he failed to draw a connection between this and the changed racial perceptions in Britain.
Finally, on the matter of Churchill, the author conveniently sweeps under the rug his misadventures in Iran. As has been written in other prominent historical works, Churchill tried unsuccessfully to force a coup in Iran, and then instigated Eisenhower to have the CIA do the dirty job. This was America's first real taste of imperialism and it was really taken up by Kissinger in his many coups and guerrilla wars in the Latin American countries. Churchill essentially handed the torch of imperialism to the Americans. Of course, we can all feel the repercussions of this legacy in the form of Islamic terrorism and Hugo Chavez.
Still, despite its shortcomings in understanding the significance of its subject, I have given the book 4 stars because its very readable history.
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