Indigo About the author Louis Fischer ( - ) was born in Philadelphia. He served as a volunteer in the British Army between and . Fischer made a career as a journalist and wrote for The New York Times , The Saturday Review and for European and Asian publications. He was also a member of the faculty at Princeton University.
The following is an excerpt from his book- The Life of Mahatma Gandhi . The book has been reviewed as one of the best books ever written on Gandhi by Times Educational Supplement. Notice these expressions in the text. Infer their meaning from the context.
urge the departure harbour a man like me conflict of duties seek a prop When I first visited Gandhi in at his ashram in Sevagram, in central India, he said, “I will tell you how it happened that I decided to urge the departure of the British. It was in .” He had gone to the December annual convention of the Indian National Congress party in Lucknow. There were , delegates and many visitors. During the proceedings, Gandhi recounted, “a peasant came up to me looking like any other peasant in India, poor and emaciated, and said, ‘I am Rajkumar Shukla.
I am from Champaran, and I want you to come to my district’!’’ Gandhi had never heard of the place. It was in the foothills of the towering Himalayas, near the kingdom of Nepal. Under an ancient arrangement, the Champaran peasants were sharecroppers. Rajkumar Shukla was one of them.
He was illiterate but resolute. He had come to the Congress session to complain about the injustice of the landlord system in Bihar, and somebody had probably said, “Speak to Gandhi.”