22 April 2022
In 1922 Mohandas K. Gandhi was at the crest of a surge — in self-confidence, mass appeal, organisational prowess. He was in a whirl of activity, travelling ceaselessly, addressing rallies, generating and responding to correspondence, writing vigorously for his new journal Young India, and catalysing a civil disobedience movement against the British Raj of unprecedented scale when he was arrested for sedition, tried and sentenced to six years imprisonment. A razor’s edge divided frenzied action from a sudden hush. Transformed overnight from being leader of a mass movement to being Prisoner Number 8677, in his first jailing in India, Gandhi turned inwards. This lecture will try to picture the dynamics of an electrifying energy flasked into a forced stillness.