SOURCE: "Mahatma Gandhi—Yogi and Commissar: A Re-valuation," in The Heel of Achilles: Essays 1968-1973, Hutchinson of London, 1974, pp. 221-54.

A Hungarian-born English novelist, journalist, and popular philosopher, Koestler was a respected figure in twentieth-century intellectual life. In the following excerpt, which was originally published in 1969, he discusses what he calls the "disastrous aspects of Gandhi's life and philosophy. '

Gandhi is unique in political history. He has invented an entirely new and humane technique for the liberation struggle of an oppressed people and carried it out with the greatest energy and devotion. The moral influence which he has exercised upon thinking people through the civilized world may be far more durable than would appear likely in our present age, with its exaggeration of brute force. For the work of statesmen is permanent only in so far as they arouse and consolidate the moral forces of their peoples...