SOURCE: An introduction to Mahatma Gandhi: Essays and Reflections on His Life and Work, edited by S. Radhakrishnan, George Allen & Unwin, Ltd. revised edition, 1949, pp. 13-39.

In the following excerpt, Radhakrishnan discusses the religious basis of Gandhi's politics.

The greatest fact in the story of man on earth is not his material achievements, the empires he has built and broken, but the growth of his soul from age to age in its search for truth and goodness. Those who take part in this adventure of the soul secure an enduring place in the history of human culture. Time has discredited heroes as easily as it has forgotten everyone else; but the saints remain. The greatness of Gandhi is more in his holy living than in his heroic struggles, in his insistence on the creative power of the soul and its life-giving quality at a time when the destructive...