ABSTRACT
In 1908, Gandhi “translated” Plato’s Apology from English into Gujarati. Working from an edition of the text published in Arthur Fifield’s Simple Life series, Gandhi reconfigured Plato’s work to suit his own agenda of nonviolent political protest. This chapter argues that the intellectual example of two other Simple Life authors, Leo Tolstoy and Henry David Thoreau, informed how Gandhi read Plato as well as how he recast the canonical story of Socrates into a template for anti-colonial civil resistance. Influenced by Thoreau and Tolstoy, Gandhi enlisted Socrates as an exemplary precursor and ongoing collaborator for his political campaigns.
