New York Times Clippings

Dear Friends,

Ever since 1948, when I came to Columbia to study journalism, I have been a great admirer of the new York Times. Over the last sixty years I must have returned to USA ten times, and each visit gives me the joy of renewing my love with NYT. Generally I come here with mission to bring something from India to the Indians here and also for the Americans. In return I try to send back to friends in India clippings of news and articles from NYT that have impressed me. Here is a list of some of these, and I would urge friends to spare a little time to download from the internet whatever they can. I shall only add that NYT has been for me a continuing school for studies in world affairs and I wish an abridged Indian edition of the newspaper could be published.

Mahendra Meghani

What I would like to share with friends form The New York Times:

Aug. 17:

On can you visit, Obama Child Shows

Health Care's Generation Gap

Aug 19:

Greyhound's buses to roll in London Waiting at Heathrow

Aug 20:

Don Hewitt, brought newsmagazine style Life Lessons? Taking some weight off

Aug 29:

Postal Service is Bulligh

Look to the rainbow (Bob Herbert)

For best results, Take the sting out

Yes, I'm pregnant

Aug 30:

What's next, Sidewalk tolls?

A world always close to family

Aug 31:

Invisible Immigrants

Hints of pluralism begin to appear

Sep 1:

That's why it's called the international date line,

A Chicago production,

Sleep may be nature's time management tool for magazines,

The down days continue

Sep3:

Ike's other warning

How can we get kids to ear right?

Sergei Mikhalkov, Russian anthem's lyricist

Giving back stature stolen

Beleagured bookseller

French bookstore to close

Sep 4:

Kennedy's rough waters

Sep 10:

For OPEC, current oil price is right

One million fill classes

Remembering Walter Cronkite

Russian Schools to teach 'The Gulag'

Making the case for leadership

Big food vs. big insurance

Sep 12:

South Korea's new export

Sep 13:

Why can't she walk to school?

In her 50s, looking for love

Sep 14:

Norman Borlaug, Plant scientist

After safe exit

Trust in news media falls

Sep 15:

High-five Nation (David Brooks)

Google site lets readers flip through news

Dear Friends

November 4, 2009

Dear Friends,

My US visa, expiring today, has been extended now. So I hope to spend about two more months in America. Due to a cold I caught in IL, I had to cancel the visit to FL in October. The host there, Shailesh Patel of Port Orange, is kindly arranging a new program, so I hope to spend the last week of November in FL.

At 86 I am afraid I am unfit to spend winter in NJ. So I should like to spend December in the southern states form GA to TX if some families there would wish to arrange hour-long readings from and display of 'The Gandhi Story'. If you think any of your friends might be interested in inviting me, could you kindly put me in touch with them. Thank you.

My niece in NJ, Dr. Bharati Mullick, is going to Ahmedabad by Air- India. I too have a return ticket to Ahmedabad by the same airline. So I propose to go back to India under her care. If all goes well, I might return to USA in May 2010 for another 6-month visit.

When I came to America in may 2009 to promote Lokmilap's latest publication The Gandhi Story, I had made a suggestion that every Indian gift a copy of the book to at least one native American friend. During the six months thereafter I have traveled to about 10 U.S. States and Canada and given hour-long readings from the book before small groups generally in the homes of friends. As a result, nearly 1200 copies of the book have been sold. 5,000 copies of the book have been printed, and we still have to go a long way before they are all distributed.

For people who have not seen the book, I have extracted some thoughts of Gandhiji from the book to be spread out through the internet. I have a mailing list of several hundred contacts in USA and Canada to whom I am sending out these 35 thoughts. And I request these friends to forward the extracts by email to their contacts. In this way we could introduce the book to thousands of potential readers. Those who then feel interested can obtain copies of the book for their families and friends.

Would you kindly email this message and the following thoughts entirely to those on your mailing list? Thank you very much.

Mahendra Meghani

mahendra@meghani.com

Some Thoughts From

THE GANDHI STORY

It was a habit with me to forget what I did not like, and to carry out in practice whatever I liked. I had read in books about the benefits of long walks in the open air and, having liked the advice, I had formed a habit of taking walks. It was mainly this habit that kept me practically free from illness and gave me a fairly strong body.

(P. 2, 4, 16)

*

I had not any high regard for my ability. But I very jealously guarded my character. When I merited, or seemed to the teacher to merit, a rebuke, it was unbearable for me. (P.3)

*

Being born in the Vaishnava faith, I had often to go to the haveli [temple]. But I did not like its glitter and pomp. Also I heard rumors of immorality being practiced there, and lost all interest in it. What left a deep impression on me was the reading of the Ramayana before my father. The reader was a great devotee of Rama. I quite remember being enraptured by his reading. That laid the foundation of my deep devotion to the Ramayana. I regard the Ramayana as the greatest book in all devotional literature. (P.9)

*

My father would visit the haveli as also Shiva's and Rama's temples, and would take us youngsters there. He had, besides, Musalman and Parsi friends who would talk to him about their own faiths. I often had a chance to be present at these talks. These things combined to inculcate in me toleration for all faiths. (P. 10)

I kept account of every farthing I spent [in London], and my expenses were carefully calculated. That habit has stayed with me ever since and, as a result, though I have had to handle public funds amounting to lakhs [hundreds of thousands], I have succeeded in exercising strict economy in their disbursement and, instead of outstanding debts, have had invariably a surplus balance in respect of all the movements I have led. (P. 15)

*

I always felt tongue-tied. I hesitated when I had to face strange audiences and avoided making a speech whenever I could. I must say that my constitutional shyness has been no disadvantage whatever. Its greatest benefit has been that it has taught me the economy of words. I have formed the habit of restraining my thoughts. And I can now give myself the certificate that a thoughtless word hardly ever escapes my tongue or pen. I do not recollect ever having had to regret anything in my speech or writing. (P.17)

*

I have met many a religious leader, and no one else has ever made on me the impression that Raychandbhai [Rajchandra] did. The thing that cast its spell over me was his wide knowledge of the scriptures, his spotless character, and his burning passion for self-realization. In my moments of spiritual crisis he was my refuge. In spite of this regard for him I could not enthrone him in my heart as my guru. The throne has remained vacant, and my search still continues. (P. 23)

*

Three moderns have left a deep impress on my life and captivated me: Raychandbhai by his living contact; Tolstoy by his book The Kingdom of God is Within You; and Ruskin by his Unto This Last. (P. 24)

*

It went against the grain with me to do a thing in secret that I would not do in public. (P. 25)

*

I very much liked the company of children, and the habit of playing and joking with them has stayed with me. I have ever since thought that I should make a good teacher of children. (P. 25)

*

Real suffering bravely borne melts even a heart of stone. And there lies the key to satyagraha. (P. 31)

*

I may have meant to say anything, but I must concede that my speech or writing was intended to convey the meaning ascribed to it by my hearer or reader in so far as he is concerned. We often break this golden rule in our lives. Hence arise many of our disputes. (P. 32)

*

There is no place on earth and no race which is not capable of producing the finest types of humanity, given suitable opportunities. (P. 36)

*

Hardly ever have I known anybody to cherish such loyalty as I did to the British Constitution. Not that I was unaware of the defects in British rule, but in those days I believed that British rule was on the whole beneficial to the ruled. The color prejudice that I saw in South Africa was, I thought, quite contrary to British tradition and only temporary. (P. 44)

*

I realized that the true function of a lawyer was to unite parties riven as- under. The lesson was so indelibly burnt into me that a large part of my time during the twenty years of my practice was occupied in bringing about compromises of hundreds of cases. I lost nothing thereby ─ not even money, certainly not my soul. (P. 48)

*

The heart's earnest and pure desire is always fulfilled. Service of the poor has been my heart's desire, and it has always thrown me amongst the poor and enabled me to identify myself with them. (P. 55)

Experience has shown me that we win justice quickest by rendering justice to the other party. (P. 65)

*

After considerable experience with the many public institutions which I have managed, it has become my firm convection that it is not good to run public institutions on permanent funds. Institutions maintained on permanent funds are often found to ignore public opinion. The ideal is for public institutions to live from day to day. The subscriptions that an institution annually receives are a test of its popularity and the honesty of its management.(P. 72)

*

Experience taught me that without infinite patience it was impossible to get the people to do any work. It is the reformer who is anxious for reform and not society, from which he should expect nothing better than opposition and even persecution. Why may not society regard as retrogression what the reformer holds dear? (P. 77)

*

I have always been loath to hide the weak points of the community or to press for its rights without having purged it of its blemishes. Though I had made it my business to ventilate grievances and press for rights, I was no less insistent upon self-purification. I saw that I could not so easily count on the help of the community in getting it to do its own duty, as I could in claiming for its rights. (P. 77)

*

Service is no mushroom growth . It presuppose the will first, and then experience. (P. 81)

*

Critical as my mind was in observing things, there was enough charity in me and so I always thought that it might, after all, be impossible to do better in the circumstances, and that saved me from undervaluing any work. (P. 82)

*

No matter what amount of work one has, one should always find some time for exercise, just as one does for one's meals. Far from taking away from one's capacity for work, it adds to it. (P. 83)

*

I saw a stream of sheep going to be sacrificed to [godess] Kali. We were greeted by rivers of blood. I was exasperated and restless. I felt that the cruel custom must be stopped, but I also saw that the task was beyond my capacity. I must go through more self-purification and sacrifice before I can hope to save these lambs from this unholy sacrifice. It is my constant prayer that there may be born some great spirit fired with divine pity, who will deliver us form this heinous sin. (P. 84)

*

I went to Kashi Vishwanath temple. I was deeply pained by what I saw there. The swarming flies and the noise made by the shopkeepers and pilgrims were perfectly insufferable. If anyone doubts the infinite mercy of God, let him have a look at these sacred places. How much hypocrisy and irreligion does the Prince of Yogis suffer to be perpetrated in His holy name! (P. 85)

*

So long as it was under my control, Indian Opinion [weekly] was a mirror of part of my life. Week after week I poured out my soul in its columns. I can not recall a word in those articles set down without thought or deliberation.(P. 87)

*

The newspaper is a great power, but just as an unchained torrent of water submerges whole county sides and devastates crops, even so an uncontrolled pen serves but to destroy. If the control is from without, it proves more poisonous than want of control. It can be profitable only when exercised form within. If this is correct, how many of the journals in the world would stand the test? But who would stop those that are useless? The useful and the useless must, like good and evil generally, go on together, and man must make his choice. (P. 88)

*

It is my faith, based on experience, that if one's heart is pure, calamity brings in its train men and measures to fight it. (P. 90)

*

It was borne in upon me that I should have more and more occasions for service, and that I should find myself unequal to my task if I were engaged in the propagation and rearing of children. After mature deliberation I took the vow [of celibacy] in 1906. But I had not the necessary strength. How was I to control my passions? It took me long to get free from the shackles of lust, and I had to pass through many ordeals before I could overcome it.
As I look back upon the twenty years of the vow, I am filled with pleasure and wonderment. If it was a matter of ever-increasing joy, let no one believe that it was an easy thing for me. Even [now] when I am past fifty-six years, I realize more and more that it is like walking on the sword's edge, and every moment I see the necessity for eternal vigilance. (P.98, 9)

*

Pledges should be taken on rare occasions. A man who takes a vow every now and then is sure to stumble. There is wisdom in taking serious steps with great caution and hesitation. But caution and hesitation have their limits. A man who takes a pledge must be prepared for the worst. If you have not the will or the ability to stand firm even when you are perfectly isolated, you must not take the pledge. (P. 105)

*

Money does bring us help, but my experience ranging over forty years has taught me that assistance thus purchased can never compare with purely voluntary service. (P. 107)

*

There is a law of nature that a thing can be retained by the same means by which it has been acquired. A thing acquired by violence can be retained by violence alone. (P. 170)

*

Before one can be fit for the practice of civil disobedience, one must have rendered a willing obedience to the laws. It is only when a person has thus obeyed the laws of society scrupulously does the right accrue to him of the civil disobedience of certain laws. (P. 207)

*

It is only when one sees one's own mistakes with a convex lens, and does just the reverse in the case of others, that one is able to arrive at a just relative estimate of the two. (P. 207)

*

To see the universal and all-pervading 'Spirit of Truth' face to face, one must be able to love the meanest of creations as oneself. And a man who aspires after that cannot afford to keep out of any field of life. That is why my devotion to Truth has drawn me into the field of politics. Identification with everything that lives is impossible without self-purification. To attain perfect purity one has to become absolutely passion-free in thought, speech and action . I know that I have not in me yet that purity. That is why the world's praise fails to move me. (P. 211)

*

[Extracted by Mahendra Meghani form The Gandhi Story: In His Own Words: Condensed and compiled by Mahendra Meghani. P. 12+220+24 (photographs) = 256 : $10 [including overseas airmail postage]. Lokmilap Trust, Bhavnagar, India, 2009.

To order copies of The Gandhi Story, please make payment by check in name of Anjani Dave to : 12 Providence Blvd, Kendall Park, NJ 08824 (Tel: 732-821-2443, nanudi@aol.com ). She will at once email the order to Lokmilap in India, and your copies will be immediately sent to you by airmail, to reach your address in 10 days.

*

Literature for the Millions

Literature for the Millions

I may fight the British rule, but I do not hate the English or their language. In fact, I appreciate their literary treasures. And Dean Farar’s book on the life of Christ is one of the treasures of the English language. You know how he labored to produce that book? He read everything about Jesus in the English language, and then he went to Palestine, saw every place and spot in the Bible that he could identify, and then wrote the book in faith and prayer, for the masses of England, in a language all of them could understand.

Have we men like Farar who will produce great literature for the village folk? I have hundreds of such folk for whom I want real life-giving literature. I want literature that can speak to the millions. We have neglected the village folk though we depend on them entirely for our food. We have never thought of their needs.

There is no good book in French or German but is translated into English within a short time of its publication. Even its own classics are made available to the average reader, even to the children, in convenient abridged sizes and at the cheapest prices. Have we anything like it? The field is vast and unexplored, and I want our litterateurs to explore it. I want them to go to the villages, feel the pulse of the people, examine their needs and supply what they want.

M.K. GANDHI

[Condensed by Mahendra Meghani from the weekly ‘Harijan’: November 14 and 21, 1936]

*

I have taken up journalism merely as an aid to what I have conceived to be my mission in life. My mission is to teach the use of the matchless weapon of satyagraha. Therefore I may not write in anger or malice. I may not write merely to excite passion. The reader can have no idea of the restraint I have to exercise in the choice of topics and my vocabulary. Often my vanity dictates a smart expression or my anger a harsh adjective. It is a terrible ordeal to remove these weeds. The reader sees the pages of ‘Young India’ fairly well dressed up. Well, let the world understand that the fineness is carefully and prayerfully cultivated.

M.K. GANDHI

Good Poems for Hard Times

Introduction

Back when I had much too much time on my hands, I was ambitious to be a poet and even went so far as to write a few poems and send them away to magazines, double-spaced, with a stamped envelope. The poems were full of passionate obscurity; and yet, being 21 and confident of my calling, I felt validated by the magazines’ rejection of them and could have gone on writing the stuff for years and years. What killed my career was encouragement. I wrote a poem called ‘Crucifixion’ and a friend of mine (himself a poet) wrote me a letter praising it that only made me see how cheap and fraudulent it was and I didn’t want to be that kind of fake. Aside from the occasional limerick for somebody’s birthday, I’ve been clean ever since.

But my most intense and authentic experience of poetry was stealing the Oxford Anthology of Verse from Dayton’s department store in downtown Minneapolis when I was 16. It was a lovely big book and I opened it, inhaled the pages, let temptation burgeon and simmer, and since Dayton’s sales personnel were occupied with Christmas customers, I stuffed the book under my jacket and walked out, and thought, You should go to jail for this. I came to love that book. Poetry is a necessity as simple as the need to be touched and similarly a need that is hard to enunciate. The intense vision and high spirits and moral grandeur are simply needed lest we drift through our days consumed by clothing options and hair styling and whether to have the soup or the salad.

The meaning of poetry is to give courage. It is meant to poke you, get you to buck up, pay attention, rise and shine, look alive, get a grip, get the picture, pull up your socks, wake up and die right. Poets have many motives for writing, but what really matters about poetry is the miracle of incantation in rendering the gravity and grace and beauty of the ordinary world and thereby lending courage to strangers. This is a necessary thing. At times life becomes almost impossible, and you curl up under a blanket in a dim room behind drawn shades and you despise your life, which seems mean and purposeless, a hoax and a cheat, your shining chances all wasted, nobody can change this or make this better, love is lost, hope gone. But it can help to say words. Poems help. In Mrs. Fleischman’s eleventh-grade English class, my assignment was to memorize Shakespeare’s sonnet “When in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes,” and so I did, and having it in my head for forty years has brought me many moments of clarity, and other poems. They don’t come to me in moments of hilarity, but often when feeling bereft or drowning in work, Shakespeare’s lark at break of day from sullen earth arises, the heart is calmed, and one goes on.

America is in hard times these days, the beloved country gripped by persistent jitters, what mustn’t be lost, in this dank time, is the passion of young people for truth and justice and liberty; and when this spirit is betrayed by the timid and the greedy and the naïve, then we must depend on the poets. What your life can be, lived bravely and independently, you can discover in poetry.

People complain about the obscurity of poetry, but actually poetry is rather straightforward compared to ordinary conversation; rarely in ordinary conversation do people speak from the heart and mean what they say. It’s there in poetry. Forget everything you ever read about poetry, it doesn’t matter poetry is the last preserve of honest speech and the outspoken heart all that matters about poetry to me is directness and clarity and truthfulness.

My dad and I were as different as could be (I made sure of that), but his life had a clarity that I find in poetry. He was a carpenter, and if I close my eyes, I can see him, thirtyish, handsome, sawdust in his hair, running a 2x4 through a circular saw, trimming it, holding it up to the studs, pulling a nail out from between his front teeth, taking the hammer from the loop on his pants where it hung, and pounding in the nail, three whacks, and a tap for good luck. This simple act, repeated a thousand times as he built the house up over our heads, had the cadence and fervor of poetry; his life was poetry. His voice and the heat of his life can be found in poetry and nowhere else: poetry is about driving the nail into the pine, mowing grass, about our common life.

Poetry is free speech. It is ever on the side of the irrepressible spirit. It is on the side of exhilaration and the stupendous vision, the sight of the stars through the barred window, the perfection of small birds. Poetry is made of the grandeur that is available to a man with no fortune but with somewhere to walk to and ears to hear and a mind to transport him. He may be defeated in love and finance and yet the night belongs to him, he feels entrusted with the stunning sky, the guardian of the houses on the street and all the people in them. So are poets, the angels and shepherds of the sleeping world.

Song

W.H. Auden

The chimney sweepers

Wash their faces and forget to wash the neck;

The lighthouse keepers

Let the lamps go out and leave the ships to wreck;

The prosperous baker

Leaves the rolls in hundreds in the oven to burn;

The undertaker

Pins a small note on the coffin saying “Wait till I return,

I’ve got a date with Love.”

And deep-sea divers

Cut their boots off and come bubbling to the top,

And engine-drivers

Bring expresses in the tunnel to a stop;

The village rector

Dashes down the side-aisle half-way through a psalm;

The sanitary inspector

Runs off with the cover of the cesspool on his arm

To keep his date with Love.

W.H. Auden (1907-1973) was born in York, England. His father was a physician, his mother a nurse. By age 15 he knew he wanted to write, and at Oxford, he was a lackluster student and an ambitious poet. He left England for America in 1939 for which he was accused of cowardice, though it was English society, the class system, his parents, the old order, more than the war, that he was escaping. His best-known poems ‘September 1, 1939’, ‘As I Walked Out One Evening’, ‘In Memory of W.B. Yeats’ and ‘To an Unknown Citizen’ all appear in Another time (1940) except for his famous elegy, ‘Stop All the Clocks’, from his play The Ascent of F6 (1938). He lived in New York City, a tireless teacher, essayist, editor, playwright and poet. He moved back to England the year before he died. A poet is, before anything else, a person who is passionately in love with language.

Garrison Keilor

(‘Good Poems for Hard Times’)

Gandhi, the Light-bearer

Gandhi, the Light-bearer

Stephen Hobhouse

Each of us human beings has had to construct a world of his own out of materials set before him. Within this universe of our consciousness there are certain objects which stir the central fibers of our nature, our heart and our reason; and there comes to us in our better moments a constant longing to know them, to love them, to identify ourselves with them more and more completely, ever seeking to liberate ourselves from the trivial and the impure.

I am one of the many who find this central attraction chiefly in the inexpressible wonder and beauty of personality through the best and loveliest of men and women who cross our path whether in the flesh or in books, as well as in the same wonder and beauty breathed upon us from visible nature; in sky and earth and living things. And from these I am inescapability drawn to a faith in that which we call God.

Unhappily, too, I am equally conscious of dark elements of ugliness and discord which mar the growth of harmonious life. They are present within the hearts of men. Unaided I too often lose faith and am all but helpless before the demonic power of these evil tendencies; and I must turn for aid to a closer fellowship of spirit with some other personality.

I have been born and bred in a community where past and present have united in confronting me with the historic figure of Jesus Christ. The same spirit lives in other human personalities whose memory is preserved as the shining lights of our race’s history. I think of them all as messengers of the eternal Christ. Of these historic light-bearers, one of the greatest of all time is Mohandas K. Gandhi.

The decay of ancient faiths, the tyranny of the machine, the evil use of science by misguided industrialists and militarists have produced in world history an unexampled crisis. It is even conceivable that civilization or orderly, kindly, enlightened human society may perish completely in the universal confusion engendered by the self-seeking of human passions.

Gandhi’s great ideals of Ahimsa and Satyagraha present the only means by which salvation can come to the diseased environment in which we find ourselves.

[From a forthcoming publication of tributes to Gandhi,

compiled by Mahendra Meghani]

We Are All Hindus Now

We Are All Hindus Now

Lisa Miller

America is not a Christian nation. We are, it is true, a nation founded by Christians, and according to a 2008 survey, 76 percent of us continue to identify as Christian (still, that's the lowest percentage in American history). Of course, we are not a Hindu—or Muslim, or Jewish, or Wiccan—nation, either. A million-plus Hindus live in the United States, a fraction of the billion who live on Earth. But recent poll data show that conceptually, at least, we are slowly becoming more like Hindus and less like traditional Christians in the ways we think about God, our selves, each other, and eternity.

The Rig Veda, the most ancient Hindu scripture, says this: "Truth is One, but the sages speak of it by many names." A Hindu believes there are many paths to God. Jesus is one way, the Qur'an is another, yoga practice is a third. None is better than any other; all are equal. The most traditional, conservative Christians have not been taught to think like this. They learn in Sunday school that their religion is true, and others are false. Jesus said, "I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the father except through me."

Americans are no longer buying it. According to a 2008 Pew Forum survey, 65 percent of us believe that "many religions can lead to eternal life"—including 37 percent of white evangelicals, the group most likely to believe that salvation is theirs alone. Also, the number of people who seek spiritual truth outside church is growing. Thirty percent of Americans call themselves "spiritual, not religious," according to a 2009 NEWSWEEK Poll, up from 24 percent in 2005. Stephen Prothero, religion professor at Boston University, has long framed the American propensity for "the divine-deli-cafeteria religion" as "very much in the spirit of Hinduism. You're not picking and choosing from different religions, because they're all the same," he says. "It isn't about orthodoxy. It's about whatever works. If going to yoga works, great—and if going to Catholic mass works, great. And if going to Catholic mass plus the yoga plus the Buddhist retreat works, that's great, too."

Then there's the question of what happens when you die. Christians traditionally believe that bodies and souls are sacred, that together they comprise the "self," and that at the end of time they will be reunited in the Resurrection. You need both, in other words, and you need them forever. Hindus believe no such thing. At death, the body burns on a pyre, while the spirit—where identity resides—escapes. In reincarnation, central to Hinduism, selves come back to earth again and again in different bodies. So here is another way in which Americans are becoming more Hindu: 24 percent of Americans say they believe in reincarnation, according to a 2008 Harris poll. So agnostic are we about the ultimate fates of our bodies that we're burning them—like Hindus—after death. More than a third of Americans now choose cremation, according to the Cremation Association of North America, up from 6 percent in 1975. "I do think the more spiritual role of religion tends to deemphasize some of the more starkly literal interpretations of the Resurrection," agrees Diana Eck, professor of comparative religion at Harvard. So let us all say "om."

[Published Aug 15, 2009 Newsweek]

A Letter To Friends

June 1, 2009

Dear Friends,

May I enclose a brochure giving a brief outline of Lokmilap’s work during six decades. It also contains a list of nearly 250 publications brought out by it during these years.

The special mission of my visit to USA this year is to promote The Gandhi Story published recently. It is an integrated abridgement of the only two books which tell the story of Gandhi in his own words: The Story of My Experiments With Truth or An Autobiography, and Satyagraha in South Africa. A total of 1,000 pages of the original works have been condensed into about 250, and twenty-four pages of pictures have been added.

For years it has been my earnest desire that these two books may be read widely all over the world, especially by the young generation. But their great length made it difficult to attract millions of readers. The lapse of copyright in Gandhi’s writings (at the end of 2008) made it possible for me to attempt a combined condensation of the two volumes.

Both books were written by Gandhi in the 1920s in Gujarati and, with his approval, translated into English by two of his colleagues. Now the condensations too are available in both languages. The Gujarati version’s 50,000 copies were sold out in two months because, though priced at 40 rupees, Lokmilap spent R 500,000 in giving it to students at the incredibly low price of R 5.

Now I have come to America to promote the English version. In response to my request, friends in AZ, CA, TX and IL have agreed to receive me and arrange hour-long readings from the book before small groups. Air-parcels of the book have been sent to the friends so that people can examine the book and buy copies at US $ 10 (including airmail charges from India). During July and August I hope to travel to these states.

If you find this project worthy of your support you also could invite me for a reading (I am going to be here till October). But many friends may not find it convenient to do so. They could then stock, say, about 30 copies of the book, casually show them to friends who may like to purchase them. Eventually they could send to Lokmilap a consolidated check for all the books. As soon as we hear from you, we can send you an air-parcel from India, to reach America within ten days. For any more information could you can email at mahendrameg@gmail.com.

Thanking you.
Mahendra Meghani