tavis: good evening from los angeles, i am it was its, our conversation with the former editor of the "new york times," joseph lelyveld and his time in south africa, the book is called "great soul." joseph lelyveld coming up right now. >> all i know his name is james, and he needs extra help with his reading. >> i am james. >> yes. >> everyone making a difference, you help us all look better.

>> nationwide insurance supports tavis smiley, nationwide is proud to join tavis to removed illiteracy, nationwide on your side. >> and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. tavis: joseph lelyveld is a pull i pullitz prize author and in 1966 won about his title, move your shadow, and his latest is "the

great soul" about gandhi. it's a pleasure. >> thank you. tavis: the subtitle is interesting, his struggle with india, a lot of the text has to do with his early time in south africa. in a nutshell what do the early years tell us about the soul that we would eventually come to know of grandy. >> great soul is a transation of mahatma, and you don't declare to be a mahatma, and it was declared five or six years after he returned to india. but he lived in south africa for a full 21 years. and a third of his adult life. and it's there his social vision and his values really took shape in that very difficult societ, n

in that context. i think that the -- what i am trying to show in this book is that he came back to india with a grasp what have he wanted to accomplish there. and it wasn't something that india, although india was prepared to embrace him as a leader, and revere him. but it wasn't something that india was prepared to embrace, because of traditional social values. and that's why i say his struggle with india, and brought back values and india was not ready in the long run to accept. tavis: we will come back to india, what was gandhi

experiencing in south africa to share those values? >> he became a leader in a small community and a racially mixed land where the bulk of the population were africas. but whites were seizing power and came to be the nation that we know as south africa. and gandhi, gandhi in -- found himself in a variety of conflicts with the whites. what he was trying to do really was to claim equal rights for indians. as british indians, he called them. as citizens of the british empire, he was not yet talking about independence and he was saying that we are citizens of

the british empire and deserve the same rights as whites. he left the black majority out of the discussion. and the whites weren't interested in equality with indians. and they replied that why should we treat indians as equals. when indians don't treat one another as equals. they were refers to the caste system and for gandhi that was a real thunder bolt. he saw all at once that social equality and indian freedom were wrapped up together as core issues. and that's the beginning of gandhi becoming gandhi. tavis: i am thinking about an interesting juxtaposition, that you wrestle with as well. this great american, in my mind

the greatest american and martin luther king reveres gandhi and goes to his place and sleeps on the floor. and all the stuff that you know how king adored gandhi. king takes gandhi's principle to get this society to include african-americans and blacks. but early in his life gandhi was on the indian question but didn't include blacks in his vision and what do you make of that juxtaposition? >> it's an illuminating one. gandhi didn't have a national vision for south africa. few did in that period. the black organizations that became the liberation movement that now governs in south africa. had not come into existence

during the bulk of gandhi's time there. he met some people who would become leaders among blacks. but he only met them narrow. but in the context of that time and period, i don't mean to whitewash it, that's not a pun. tavis: no pun intended. >> but i think it's understandable. over time it becomes clear that as you watch everything that gandhi says about the african majority in south africa. over time it becomes clear he understands what is going on there and he's got some picture of how the future has to be. but his basic idea, that's not

my struggle and i have to worry about my own people. tavis: how then did gandhi come to decide, and i hear you point you made earlier, you don't declare yourself, and it's thrust upon you. but how did he decide to accept the calling, to accept the vocation of dedicating his life to this principle of human rights? >> i think he had accepted it by the time he left south africa. he did an interesting blending of traditional indian and religious values and more modern social values. it's a common thing in hindu life, had been. at a certain point a man seeking spiritual fulfillment would

detach himself from this world and give up his family and go on a pill -- pilgramage, and you have to work in this world as a way to achieve spiritual fulfillment. he did that strange costume change and became the gandhi we picture, having been a well attired suited british style lawyer. and he went to traditional places for spiritual fulfillment

and started a movement. tavis: at what age would you suggest that gandhi that is in full acknowledge of his purpose. he starts at south africa and goes back india, but at what age in the thrust of? >> i say he makes this transformation in his life in his late 30's. 37 or 38. and the key moment comes in 1913 when he would have been 44. so late 30's and early 40s. tavis: the reason i ask that, that's to be sure a journey and evolution. king by contrast is dead by 39. he's a nobel lawyer and starts

leading the montgomery boycott at 26. and dispurgement on gandhi, but gandhi who king wants to emul e emulate. >> gandhi doesn't have models to emulate on the path he's set out. that's one answer. i had an interesting discussion with an audience in new york a couple of nights ago on something adjacent to this point. i raised the question, i wonder what would have happened to king if he had escaped the assassin's bullet and lived into his 80's. and how would we feel about him now? tavis: very differently. >> he would have fought a lot of lost causes. he was moving into inner-city poverty and into the issue of

war and peace, and the vietnam war that wasn't popular. tavis: and wealth and distribution. >> that's right, and would he have been seen as a kind of peripheral figure in the end? or would he have found some way to the stay at the center of our soci social. tavis: i have had that debate with my friend and had this over and over again and how we would regardmartin luther king and that raises a question, how did gandhi from 44 to his death stayed focus? >> that's interesting, gandhi returning from south africa to india, becomes in a period of five or six year, the nation's recognize and revered leader.

and this is before communication and living in villages and no radios. tavis: no twitter. >> nothing remotely like it. and yet somehow where he goes to speak crowds turn out and they can't hear because there is not that ampication. but they want to see him and the reverence of gandhi grows apart from his values. and a notion that he cares about us in a new and different way. we haven't seen a leader like this before. and as leader of the national movement is in and out of politics for the rest of of his life. he will be very active in a campaign for three or four years, and sort of retire to the

periphery, because he's got more important things to do. especially in the area of social values. and the movement departs and then yanks it back in the direction he hopes it will go. gandhi's life is ossillation and withdrawing from the main movement. and as if dr. king had resigned from the southern leadership conference. and he said that he resigned because he felt they were paying lip service to his values. tavis: and to your point, king didn't resign but his own board criticized him for his vietnam

speech. and a riff in his organization. i was going a speech the other day in seattle, and i had your book in my bag for a couple of days. and flipping through it. and i am giving a talk about love. and our public discourse. and my talk is wrestling with this question of what happened to the notion of love in our public discourse. what happened to the love in the debate in the public square. and example one, gandhi, he putting love at the epicenter of the debate. and you say that and you get laughed out of the room, and king does it and kennedy does it and gandhi, and now you get laughed to how love fits into the public discourse.

how is it that this guy is the first to put the notion of love, and everyone has equal value put this at the center of public policy discourse? >> you have to look at india to answer that. indians were not used to thinking of themselves as indians. they were bengalhi's and hindus, they were sikhs and all of these ethnic and religious groupings and the various caste groupings created a great turning stew. in south africa gandhi had the problem of taking a small indian community and binding it together. and there he learns to say one word describes who we are, it's

indian. and we have to have mutual respect to be free. it's an analysis to freeing people apart and that was his answer. tavis: when gandhi talks about that soul source, what does he mean? >> it means truth, for gandhi nonviolence was not just a renouncing of violence. nonviolence was a form of struggle. and, and firmness in truth, he meant you have to be able to take the blows, literally and met phorically that come at you, without reacting violently.

so he would have his campaigns which were geared to getting tens of thousands of people to behave in a disciplined manner. it seldom really worked, because you didn't have tens of thousands of people trained in nonviolence. if you were lucky, you had hundreds. and gandhi would wait years before calling another campaign. but he did it successfully on a few occasions. really in my mind the two greatest examples of nonviolent resistance that we have had were gandhi's march in 1931. and the march from alabama in 1965. and there is nothing that quite achieve that is level of discipline. but you see if in our own times

if you look at cairo and tules, maybe not tripoli, because they got guns. but gandhi's ideas that you took the blows and that took more courage than a soldier on the battlefield. tavis: that premessage is not prospect, that turning the cheek is a joke. and king got that and compared to the salt march. i wonder how it is on a personal level, i am talking about his soul, his inner being. how he navigated through the push back. we know now that dr. king was depressed. he did a lot of crying and shedding of tears and after his own people and when the country turned against him for the

vietnam depression. and in the end of life, it took a toll, and the autopsy on kings's body and he had the inside of an old man. how did gandhi deal with that push back? >> not by heavy drinking or heavy eating. gandhi went through an incredible discipline every day involving long walks, small meals and long baths, massage. to keep himself, he doesn't look like a he-man but to keep himself fit and ready. he managed it by a process of constant self recreation too. he was always reinventing himself for new trials.

gandhi said once that i am not a quick despairer. i quote that several time in the book. he had a sense of himself being in it for the long haul. but towards the end of his life, in my mind the dramatic period, when india is becoming independent but falling apart with partiction and mass killings and every population group against each. and gandhi comes close to despair, i am a sinking ship. and on independence day when everyone gathers in new delhi to celebrate freedom, gandhi is not there and refuses to be intrude

on the national radio station. this is a sorry affair, and not the way that he imagined and that it would be a result of the a great social transformation. in which the indian middle classes and elite would recognize their responsibility of raising up the poorest people. tavis: how is gandhi regarded in thes day -- these days in india? >> i am learning a lot, my book is banned in some areas and there was a demonstration with a noose around me, hang joseph lelyveld in new delhi, and i am accused of a reputation of the

father of a nation. it makes me realize how brittle in some indian minds the concept of gandhi is. they think of him as a pious man and fearless man that thought them courage. but there is a lot of of the message that is contention that offends some indians. tavis: what is it most about the narrative of his life as we think we know it that is so inaccurate? >> i don't think that the narrative of his life is inaccurate. i see this as augmenting the narrative of his life, supplementing it. the narrative of his life as he

told it in his auto biography, and that he was a leader and in the movement of the 20th century. he's all of those things. and he's a man who dreamed of achieving a level of love, as you put it, between hindus and muslims. abolishing untouchability. the idea that the mere presence or contact with another social group could pollute a person. and instilling values of nonviolence. and really focusing on the poorest in the society, and none of these things have exactly happened. it would be a miracle if they had happened. but for gandhi it was a huge

disappointment. and that's why i tried to argue with indian in mind that he remains the social conscience of india today. but the people that struggle with those issues relate gandhi. tavis: the great book great soul by joseph lelyveld. good to have you, that's our show tonight and until next time, good night from l. a. and keep the faith. >> for more informations on todayo show, visit tavis smiley at pbs.org. tavis: hi, join me next time with governor deval patrick, and

more, that's next time. >> all i know that is james and he needs help with his reading. >> i am james. >> for everyone making a difference, you make us all look better. >> nationwide is proud to join tavis to remove obstacles economic empowerment. >> and by contributions from viewers like you, thank you.