Lighting a candle in the dark

Photo provided to China Daily

"After the Japanese invaded China, Gandhi immediately wrote an open letter to the Japanese people," Nazareth says.

Gandhi wrote: "I must first acknowledge that I have no malice towards you. However, I intensely dislike your aggression against China ... You will not be able to realize this ambition, and will instead become the instigator of Asian disintegration."

"It's easy to think of Gandhi as a pacifist," Nazareth says. "That is a complete misunderstanding of the man. He was a revolutionary, a warrior. He simply didn't take up the tools of violence and war to achieve his goals."

Courage and self-assurance enabled Gandhi and his followers to "remain unruffled even when false accusations and ridicule were being hurled at them". After journalists tut-tutted when Gandhi visited King George V and Queen Mary to have tea wearing his loincloth and sandals, he was accosted by a group of youngsters who shouted "Hey, Gandhi, where's your trousers?" Nazareth writes that Gandhi responded with a hearty laugh and replied, "You people wear plus-fours, mine are minus fours!"

Nazareth says he most keenly admires the endearing humility of Gandhi, who liked to say, "I have nothing new to teach the world. Truth and nonviolence are as old as the hills." Critics such as Christopher Hitchens, on the other hand, have seen arrogance in the Indian leader's eagerness to mediate international disputes and in a scolding letter he wrote to Hitler at the outbreak of World War II.