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This paper discusses M. K. Gandhi's selected short writings of the early and mid-twentieth century by topics, themes and some major timely issues. Gandhi's April 1933 advice to his readers, spelling his central moral–spiritual experiential truths, frames this writing. In an apperceptive view of Gandhi, he morally, spiritually, and socially 'contextualized' and 'nuanced' his direct, concise writings. These expressed his life's core: 'truth and nonviolence'. Three following topics exemplify his daily regimens in 'food, health and hygiene', commentaries on independence-seeking India during the troubled and violent 1940s, and his last 1947 radio speech. The two concluding sections overview how twenty-first-century 3.4 billion modern Indians still lack unity across different castes, religions and regional socioeconomic inequalities. Gandhi's self-cultivated, disciplined moral, social, and civil bonds are needed. The drivers of such change must be the morally inspired, self-disciplined diverse younger Indians.

Time for Tea: Women, Labor, and Post/Colonial Politics on an Indian Plantation. Piya Chatterjee. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2001. 417 pp.

Postcolonial Developments: Agriculture in the Making of Modern India. Akhil Gupta. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1998. 410 pp.

The industrial accident in Bhopal, India, in which a Union Carbide fertilizer plant spewed a poisonous gas (either methyl isocyanate or phozgene) over a thickly populated part of the city (population 700,000) in Dec 1984 killing 2,250+ people & affecting 200,000 others with chronic health problems, continues to be a unique tangle of legal, scientific, & historical-cultural considerations. Since the disaster, a dichotomy between the "inside" (India, the state of Madhya Pradesh, & the people of Bhopal) & the "outside" (US business interests & Western science & technology) has framed the perception of the event in India. US & Indian responses are detailed, & it is argued that a careful reading of the situating forces is essential for the proper analysis & explanation of the industrial accident. Action-neutralizing forces, such as clashing legal cultures, warped technology transfer, & low accountability, are examined, & it is stated that nothing substantial has transpired to aid those suffering in Bhopal. It is concluded that such technological disasters provide evidence that modern man has yet to learn how to make technological power coexist with moral responsibility & long-range human & environmental survival. 2 Photographs. F. S. J. Ledgister

Analyses the Bhopal industrial accident, which continues to kill about 500 people a year, as a failure of modernity and instrumental rationality which govern the contemporary societies. (SJO)