I've been reading recently about Mohandas Gandhi -- chiefly because I accidentally encountered a fascinating article by a fellow named Eljiro Hazama, published last year in the journal MODERN INTELLECTUAL HISTORY, a journal published out of Cambridge University. Hazama says the usual account of Gandhi's philosophy (with its two key components, satyagraha and ahimsa ) is a myth. Satyagraha means something like "force of truth" in Sanskrit. Ahimsa means "without killing," and usually refers to dietary and ritualistic matters. The "myth" that Hazama is complaining about consists of the view that these are old Hindu religious principles that Gandhi learned in the course of a religious education as a child, and that his life consists simply of a series of applications. Hazama argues that Gandhi nowhere uses "ahimsa" in the political sense of "non-violence" as an element in a political philosophy until he is in his mid 40s. He used...