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PREFACE
Gandhi is popularly known as Bapu and Father of the Nation (India). He accomplished the unique feat of freeing India from the mighty British Empire. He accomplished it with the use of soul-force but without the use of force, coercion or violence. He was able to arouse and mobilise the masses to join his Satyagraha or insistence for truth based on nonviolent resistance to liberate India from the British rule. This is very well summarised up in this popular song composed by poet Pradeep which is worded as 'Dedi hame azadi bina khadga bina dhal, Sabarmati ke sant tune kar diya kamal (O! Saint from Sabarmati, You did wonder by giving us the freedom without the use of sword or the shield). How did he achieve such a feat? It stems from the basis of his philosophy and how he superimposed these spiritual values for social transformation which is the subject matter of this book?
Ever since Gandhi lived, he had been the subject of maximum research on his views, philosophy, and way of life. Recently all publications about Gandhi and by him were compiled on www.gandhiheritageportal.org and www.mkgandhi.org to enable their free access to all interested people globally. He claims himself as a Hindu and Hinduism as a confederation of all Indic religions. Having said that the question arises as to which member/s of Hindu confederation of religions had significant impact on his philosophy and how he used their impact on him to address the masses to bring them together to achieve liberation of India as well as his own objective of self-realization /seeing God face to face or attaining Moksha.
A number of Western academicians have tried to write about early influence and effects of Jainism on his philosophical interpretations and inferred that Jainism, as one of numerous
