Life of a Gandhian: Karmayogi Dadasaheb Chaudhari

by Mr. Laxman Bhole

Life of a Karmayogi Dadasaheb Chaudhari is a biographical-cum-political novel. It depicts a distinguished police inspector resigning from service in 1930 after a tortuous self-struggle coupled with meditation on Gandhian thinking followed by commitment to its lifelong practice. He started an ashram at his native village in East Khandesh of Bombay Province of British India on the model of Gandhiji’s Sabarmati Ashram, inspired and organized youth in the district, participated in the freedom struggle and Gandhiji’s constructive program of village upliftment and the society based on Gandian values. His choice of devoting to realize the ideals of Sarvodaya (Welfare of All) in the face of opposition from the conservative clique and exploiters of tribals vividly highlights the need for spirituality and service to society. Sub-plot with romantic color and native cultural glimpses is an additional feature of this novel. Almost everyone has sometime or other, a desire to do social service. This novel is, to that extent, the actualization of such a desire.

410 pages, Paperback

Published November 16, 2016

Reviews

[Phylicia · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was written by a friend of mine from a writers' group, and he stated in the acknowledgements that the group helped (I wasn't involved at the time), so there would be a lot fewer grammatical and punctuation errors if I were. Granted that Laxman isn't from America, and I understand that he tried to depict what a Ghandian's life is like, it's over 400 pages, but with my help, it could be much shorter. I gave it four stars because he's a good friend, and I took away one star for the numerous errors. I gave him six pages long, with double-spaced notes of comments and questions (I know you probably don't care), but it's really interesting.
I learned a lot of new words (which have been repeated and could have used another word for).