Asha Sharma

Samuel Evans Stokes, Jr., a son of a prominent Philadelphia family, was a 21-year-old Quaker missionary when he arrived in India in 1904 to work in a home for lepers. He soon became disillusioned with the foreign missionary community and began a new spiritual quest, adopting Indian dress, forgoing the privileges of a Westerner in colonial India, and founding a mendicant religious brotherhood. Later in life he married a Rajput Christian girl, converted to Hinduism, and adopted a new name. Stokes became a leader in Gandhi's independence movement in the 1920s, and was the only American jailed by the British for this cause. Originally published: New Delhi : Penguin Books India ; New York, NY : Penguin Putnam, 1999, with title An American in khadi : the definitive biography of Satyanand Stokes. Samuel is a relative of PAFM member Megan Stokes-Holt and occasional attender Asha Sharma, the author.… (més)