Thursday, May 13, 2010

Gandhi and Chesterton

"In 1909 Gandhi read an article by Chesterton on Indian nationalism in the Illustrated London News....Gandhi was thunderstruck by the article. He immediately translated it into Gujariti, and on the basis of it he wrote his book, Hind Swaraj, his own first formulation of a specifically 'Indian' solution to his country's problems. Thus you might argue, not quite absurdly, that India owed its independence, or at least the manner in which it came, to an article thrown off by Chesterton in half-an-hour in a Fleet Street pub."

-G.K. Chesterton: A Centennary Appraisal (ed. John Sullivan), "Chesterton the Edwardian", P.N. Furbank (1974)

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