SOURCE: "Mahatma Gandhi," in Mahatma Gandhi: Essays and Reflections on His Life and Work, edited by S. Radhakrishnan, George Allen & Unwin, revised edition, 1949, pp. 386-88.

Forster was a prominent English novelist, critic, and essayist whose works reflect his liberal humanism. His most celebrated novel, A Passage to India (1924), is a complex examination of personal relationships amid the conflicts of the modern world. Although some of Forster's critical essays are considered unsophisticated in their literary assessments, his Aspects of the Novel (1927), a discussion of fictional techniques, is regarded as a minor classic in literary criticism. In the following essay, Forster offers a memorial tribute to Gandhi.

The organizers of this meeting (of Cambridge Majlis) have asked me, before I call on the principal speakers, to pay a short tribute [to Gandhi] myself. In doing so I do not desire to emphasize the note of grief. Grief is for those...