Book
Gandhi's Truth: On the Origins of Militant Nonviolence
A psychohistorical study of Mohandas Gandhi in middle life, centred on the textile strike at Ahmedabad in 1918. Erikson asks how Gandhi came to move the people of India both spiritually and politically, so that, in the publisher's words, he became the revolutionary innovator of militant nonviolence and India the motherland of large-scale civil disobedience. The book traces how Gandhi's generativity, the concern of middle life with what one establishes and guides for those who come after, and his method of nonviolent resistance grew out of his personal history and out of the historical situation of his time. With Young Man Luther it set the pattern of psychohistory. It received the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award in 1970.
Main ideas
- The Ahmedabad textile strike of 1918 is the focal event through which Gandhi's method of militant nonviolence is examined.
- Gandhi's generativity in middle life, his concern with what he would establish and guide for others, is the central theme of the study.
- His method of nonviolent resistance grew out of the meeting of his personal history with the historical situation of his time.
- The book asks how one leader could move a people at once spiritually and politically and make large-scale civil disobedience possible.
What it shows
- 1950
Erik Erikson introduced Generativity
Erikson named generativity versus stagnation as the seventh age in Childhood and Society, and made Gandhi's generativity in middle life a central theme of Gandhi's Truth (1969).
- 1958
Erik Erikson developed Psychohistory
Young Man Luther (1958) and Gandhi's Truth (1969) set the pattern for psychohistory, reading a leader's personal crises together with the historical crises of their time.