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Re: Where can I find info on Gandhi?
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Subject: Re: Where can I find info on Gandhi?
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From: Rajendra.P.Sharma@att.com
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Date: 12 Oct 1995 22:43:01 GMT
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Approved: srh <srh@rbhatnagar>
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Article: 394 of soc.religion.hindu
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Newsgroups: soc.religion.hindu
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Organization: AT&T
>I am writing an essay on Gandhi and was wondering if anyone
>could tell me where to look for info. [Charlie]
Here it is. Thanks. ---raj
=========================Please Cut Here================================
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Mahatma (Mohandas Karamchand) Gandhi
Generations to come will scarce believe that such a one
as this ever walked upon this earth in flesh and blood
--- Einstein.
1. Introduction
Throughout history most national heroes have been warriors,
but Gandhi ended British rule over India without striking a
blow. Moreover, Gandhi was not endowed with any unusual
artistic, scholarly, or scientific talents. He never earned
a degree or received any special academic honors. He was
never a candidate in an election or a holder of public
office. Yet when he died, in 1948, practically the whole
world mourned him. Einstein said in his tribute: Gandhi
demonstrated that a powerful human following can be
assembled not only through the cunning game of the usual
political maneuvers and trickeries but through the cogent
example of a morally superior conduct of life. Other
tributes compared Gandhi to Socrates, to Buddha, to Jesus,
to Saint Fancis of Assisi.
The life of Mahatma (great soul) Gandhi is abundantly
documented (he wrote his autobiography at age 56); perhaps
no life in any period has been more so. Certainly it was an
extraordinary life, fusing, as it did, ancient Hindu
religion and culture and modern revolutionary ideas about
politics and society - from any viewpoint, a strange
combination of perceptions and values. Gandhi's life was
filled with contradictions. He was one of the gentlest of
men, a devout and almost mystical Hindu, but he had an iron
core of determination. Nothing could change his convictions.
Some called him a master politician; others believed him a
saint; and millions of Indians called him Mahatma and Bapu
(father).
2. A Brief Life-Sketch
2.1 Gandhi's Early Life
Gandhi was born was born on October 2, 1869, in Porbandar,
India. His large (joint) family belonged to the Hindu
merchant caste (class). His father had been prime minister
of several small native states. Gandhi was married
(arranged) when he was only 13 years old. When he was 19,
he defied custom by going abroad to study law at University
College in London. In 1891 Gandhi was admitted to the bar
but returned at once to India to practice law, but met with
little success.
In 1893 he went to South Africa to do some legal work. South
Africa was then under British rule. Almost immediately, he
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was abused because he was an Indian who claimed his rights
as a British subject. At Natal he was the first so-called
colored lawer admitted to the supreme court. He then built a
large practice.
His interest soon turned to the problem of fellow Indians
who had come to South Africa as laborers. He had seen how
they were treated as inferiors in India, in England, and
then in South Africa. In 1884, he founded the Natal Indian
Congress to fight for Indian's rights. Yet he remained loyal
to the British Empire. In 1899, during the Boer War, and the
Zulu revolt, he raised an ambulance corps and served the
South African government.
Later in 1906, however, Gandhi began his peaceful
revolution. He declared he would go to jail or even die
before obeying an anti-Asian law. Thousands of Indians
joined him in this civil disobedience campaign. He was
imprisoned twice. Yet in World War I he again organized an
ambulance corps for the British before returning home to
India in 1915 (he had gone to South Africa on one year's
assignment but stayed there for 21 years to work for Indians
rights).
2.2 Gandhi's Campaigns
Gandhi's writings and devout life won him a mass of Indian
followers. They followed him almost blindly in his campaign
for swaraj (home rule). He worked to reconcile all classes
and religious sects, especially Hindus and Muslims. In an
effort to lift barriers against Untouchables, he brought
many to live in his mud-walled village (ashram).
In 1919 he became a leader in the Indian National Congress
political party. In 1920 he launched a noncooperation
campaign against Britain, urging Indians to spin their own
cotton and to boycott British goods, courts, and government.
This led to imprisonment from 1922 to 1924. In 1930, in
protest of a salt tax, Gandhi led thousands of Indians on a
200 mile march to the sea to make their own salt. Again he
was jailed. He often fasted in prison to call attention to
his cause. The British always released him to avoid being
blamed for his death.
In 1934 he retired as the head of Congress but his
leadership remained unchallenged. Gradually, he became
convinced that India would receive no real freedom as long
as it remained in the British Empire. Early in World War II
he demanded immediate independence as India's price for
aiding Britain in the war. He was imprisoned for the third
time, from 1942 to 1944.
During these years, Gandhi lived as simply as a villager on
a community owned farm with his family and disciples (like a
large joint family). He ate only vegetables and wore the
homespun loincloth and shawl of a Hindu ascetic. His people
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loved him for his humility, devotion, and gentleness. They
called him Bapu and Mahatma, a title given only to saints.
2.3 Freedom and Death
Gandhi's victory came in 1947 when Great Britain granted
India freedom. The independence, however, split India into
two countries (India and Pakistan) which grieved Gandhi. He
was saddened also by the fierce Hindu-Muslim rioting that
accompanied the partition. Gandhi walked from village to
village, preached non-violence, and urged that Hindus and
Muslims should live together in peace. On January 13, 1948,
at the age of 78, Gandhi began his last fast. His purpose
was to end the bloodshed among Hindu, Muslim, and other
groups. On January 18, their leaders pledged to stop
fighting and Gandhi broke his fast. Twelve days later, on
January 30, 1948, in Delhi, while on his way to his regular
prayer meeting, Gandhi was shot and killed by a Hindu
fanatic opposed to partition.
2.4 Gandhi's Beliefs
Gandhi's life was guided by a search for truth. He believed
that truth could be known only through tolerance and concern
for others, and that finding a truthful way to solutions
required constant testing. He dedicated himself to truth, to
nonviolence, to celibacy, to control of the palate, to
poverty, to scripture-reading, to humility, to honesty, and
to fearlessness. He called his autobiography My Experiments
with Truth. Gandhi overcame fear in himself and taught
others to master fear. He believed in Ahimsa (nonviolence)
and taught that to be truly nonviolent required great
courage. He lived a simple life and thought it was wrong to
kill animals for food or clothing. Indeed, he closed his
autobiography with the following words: In bidding farewell
to the reader, I ask him to join with me in prayer to God of
Truth that He may grant me the boon of Ahimsa in mind, word
and deed [4].
Gandhi developed a method of direct social action, based
upon principals of courage, nonviolence, and truth, which he
called Satyagraha (holding on to truth). In this method, the
way people behave is more important than what they achieve.
Satyagraha was used to fight for India's independence and to
bring about social change.
3. The Early Years
Gandhi was born as the last son of a younger mother (25) and
an aging father (47) in the port city of Porbandar, on the
Arabian Sea. The ships went back and forth between India
and Arabia and the east cost of Africa - down to South
Africa, where the man Gandhi would later would find his
vocation.
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3.1 The Joint Family
Moniya or Mohan (as he was called as a boy) was born and
grew up in a three-story ancestral house, which was wedged
between two temples. The house had many small rooms built
around a small courtyard; their smallness accentuated by the
flickering light of kerosene-burning mud lamps. Gandhi's
father was the head of the household. The house was shared
by his father with his five brothers. Although they all had
their own kitchens, they pooled their income to meet
expenses, in the traditional manner of Hindu joint family.
The family followed ancient models where a member's conduct
was strictly regulated. Thus his mother was the first one to
rise and the last to go to bed, eating only when she could
manage it. The mother never made any distinction between
her own children and other children in the family [4]. The
father had to look after the well being of every member of
his clan, whether they were ready to get married, settle
down, or assume jobs. He is even said to have helped his
wife in household work.
Growing in a joint family, young Moniya developed a healthy
sense of self by learning to trust and respect others,
helping and being helped, and by receiving warm loving care
and nourishment from the family. The family environment also
provided practical lessons for developing the virtues of
patience, tact, hope, purpose, and competence.
3.2 The Individual
Gandhi attended first a local primary school and then a
secondary school which prepared its students for college.
Gandhi was an indifferent student and found schoolwork hard
- especially in upper high school, because all subjects were
taught in English, which he had trouble learning. At one
point he took Sanskrit, but that proved difficult too. He
was tempted to drop it and enroll for Persian, supposedly
easier. The sanskrit teacher stopped him, however, saying as
a Hindu how could he not learn Sanskrit? Gandhi didn't like
his father's praying, or his mother's fasting or temple
going. But for some reason he continued with Sanskrit.
He was a puny boy and was self-conscious about his frail
constitution. He was forced to do gymnastics and play
cricket, but he disliked both. He preferred going on
solitary walks, and preferred simple games that didn't
require much strength. But while he was playful and without
fear when he could set his own pace, he proved uninterested
in all organized games. For this he blamed his "shyness";
yet he didn't hesitate to take the role of peacemaker when
the playmates quarreled among themselves.
One day, a British inspector came to school and asked the
boys in Gandhi's class to write down five English words. He
then went around the class checking their spelling. No one
made a mistake except Gandhi, who misspelled "kettle." The
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schoolmaster tried surreptitiously to get Gandhi to copy the
correct spelling from his neighbor's slate, so that the
inspector would give the class a perfect score. Gandhi
wouldn't do it. The schoolmaster later chided him for
stupidity, but Gandhi felt sure he had done the right thing
[4]. This incidence is evidence of Mohan's truthfulness and
his integrity even then. This suggests that integrity, in
essence, is unexplainable - and without which no explanation
is valid.
Gandhi and a cousin tried smoking. They felt guilty and made
a suicide pact. But their courage failed them. I realized
that it was not as easy to commit suicide as to contemplate
it, Gandhi writes [4]. And since then, whenever I have heard
of someone threatening to commit suicide, it has had little
or no effect on me. He stopped his experiments with smoking
and never smoked again. This trait of realizing his mistake
and then " never again" lasted all his life. Utter
determination was his suite of armor!
3.3 The Mother
Moniya's mother was a simple, deeply religious (of a sect,
although orthodox Hindu, strongly influenced by Islam in
that it emphasized direct communion with God), small and
frail woman who never learned to read or write. She liked to
spin. Although she had no particular religious training, she
devoutly followed the religious vows and fasts prescribed
for self-discipline and self-purification. She took no
pleasure in eating. She is said to have reflected that it is
a pity that one could not dispense with it [eating]
altogether, for its end was terrible. It [food] entered the
mouth fresh and fragrant, and left the body as waste.
During the four months of the monsoon season, she would
fast, as her religion dictated, often for two or three days
at a time, not breaking the fast until she had seen the sun.
We children on those days would stand, staring at the sky,
waiting to announce the appearance of the son to our mother,
writes Gandhi [4]. I remember days when, at his [the sun's]
sudden appearance, we would rush and announce it to her. She
would run out to see with her own eyes, but by that time the
fugitive sun would be gone, thus depriving her of her meal.
"That does not matter," she would say cheerfully, "God did
not want me to eat today." And then she would return to her
round of duties. On the other hand, she was an utterly
undogmatic religious person of a kind who wished to pursue
only what made her feel right and clean. Indeed, she imbued
her little son with a tolerance for any religion as long as
it cultivated a deep sense of communion with the unseen and
silent.
Undoubtedly a certain basic religiosity was first
personified for Moniya in his mother. These included:
vegetarianism and the periodical fasting, cleanliness and
purification, the making of confessions and the taking of
vows, and above all, ahimsa, avoiding harm to living beings.
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Also, it may be more than a coincidence that, later, when
launching his Construction Program Gandhi started with
emphasis on spinning and weaving. Her mother's religion
also prepared the boy for refusing to take anyone's word for
what anything meant, either in the Hindu scriptures (which
he discovered in his youth with the help of Western
writings) or in the Christian gospels, whose essence he
later tried to resurrect in Eastern and Modern terms.
3.4 The Father
At the age of thirteen, while he was still in high school,
Gandhi was married at his aging father's insistence (never
to be forgiven by the son). Gandhi quickly learned the role
of a passionate, jealous, and exacting husband. Both
children had a will and temper of their own, and the
marriage had its stormy side from the start. In Gandhi's
youthful mind, he was his wife's teacher. Later he would
realize that by her own forebearing example it was she who
had been teaching him. Her patience, her strength, her
capacity to endure and to forgive must have taken root deep
within him during those early years, not to blossom until
his campaigns in South Africa several years to come.
Just before the wedding, his father had a nearly fatal
accident. Thus young Gandhi divided his intensely intimate
attention between his wife and the care of his father. His
skillful nursing of his father could now replace his service
to his mother, for it freed her from the nursing duties
which otherwise would have had to supersede all else. But
Gandhi confesses to having thought of his wife when
messaging his father and of his father when being with his
wife, while both marriage and nursing meant a neglect of his
studies.
Gandhi places service to the father and the crushing guilt
of failing in such service (he was with his wife at the time
his father died) in the center of his adolescent turbulence.
3.5 The Friend
An important figure in Mohan's life, his evil genius or the
tragedy of [gandhi's] life is his Muslim friend who was
three years older than him and who lived across the street
from the Gandhi's. He became fast friends with him when he
finally returned to school after the wedding. This friend
had a bad reputation in the neighborhood; he prided himself
on his physical prowess on the sports field and in the
brothels of the town. Both the mother and child-bride warned
Mohan against falling under the friend's bad influence.
One day his friend made an appointment for Mohan in a
brothel. He paid in advance, arranged for a room, and told
Mohan that all he had to do was to amuse himself. Mohan went
in and sat down next to the woman on the bed. He couldn't do
or say anything. The woman abused him and pushed him out of
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the room. I felt as though my manhood had been injured, and
wished to sink into the ground for shame, he writes [4].
His friend also convinced Mohan to eat meat saying that meat
eaters are stronger and hardier because of it (and so if all
Indians ate meet, they would be able to throw out the
Englishmen who ruled them). At a lonely spot on the
outskirts of town, he gave Mohan a slice of bread along with
some goat's meat. The meat was tough as leather, but Mohan
persevered with it, and it made him sick. That night he got
little rest. A horrible nightmare haunted me, he writes [4].
Every time I dropped off to sleep, it would seem as though a
live goat were bleating inside me, and I would jump up full
of remorse. In the Gandhi household, eating meat not only
was forbidden but also was considered tantamount to eating
human flesh. For a year this meat eating experiment
continued in secret. Gandhi would have to lie to his mother,
when she asked him to take his food, saying I have no
appetite today; there is something wrong with my digestion.
He knew how shocked she would be if she knew she harbored a
meat eater. His guilt at the deception got the better of
him, and he decided that out of respect for his parents he
would postpone meat eating until they were dead and he was
free to do what he liked. As it turned out, he never ate
meat again in his life.
3.6 A Different Culture
Gandhi graduated from high school with a mediocre average
and went doggedly to college (his first train ride). For the
first time, he was living away from home - on his own, in a
lodging, without even his wife (the fourth stage of Carter
and McGoldrick's framework for conceptualizing the family
life cycle). He didn't like college - his English was still
very weak, and he did badly in his studies - and he was
homesick. He began having headaches and frequent nosebleeds.
In the spring of 1888 (age 19), he went home.
An uncle suggested he go to England to study law. It took
only three years to become a barrister, and a London degree
in British India was certain to bring success. Reluctantly,
for they were very close, his mother gave her consent
(Gandhi made a vow to her mother that in England he would
not go near meat, liquor, or women). The expenses came to
more than anyone had guessed; at last his wife had to sell
her jewelry to buy the ticket, and Gandhi's older brother
paid for the rest. His friend saw him off to London at
Bombay.
His first few months in England were a nightmare (culture
shock). Everything around him was different: everything he
said or did was out of place. Manners, clothes, expressions,
the meaning of slightest gesture - all these had to be
learned, often through error and ridicule. He could not
shake off his homesickness. Never had he been so alone. For
weeks Mohan was on the verge of turning back and taking the
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next boat home. But his pride would not allow it. Something
deeper within him was determined to stick it out.
At first, Mohan thought he could become an English
Gentleman. He applied himself to this task with fervor:
clothes (bought expensive tailored suits and a silk top hat,
taught himself how to tie a necktie, and learned to admire
himself before a mirror while he struggled to discipline his
hair with an English brush), ballroom dancing (gave up in
three weeks as he couldn't keep in step with music), Western
music (violin lessons), French and elocution lessons.
After about three weeks, Mohan awoke abruptly from these
dreams of grandeur. How could changing the way he dressed
make him anymore than what he already was? To change his
life he had to change his way of thinking, and that was
something that went deeper than any differences in custom or
culture. Better to be truthful to oneself than try to act
like someone else. If my character made a gentleman of me,
he writes [4], so much the better. Otherwise I should
forego the ambition. He began to experiment with a simpler
life.
He understood he would remain Indian. Therefore he became
more Indian. He now concentrated on his studies and
developed self-reliance. He began his dietary experiments.
He read books on vegetarianism, joined the London Vegetarian
Society, and founded the West London Food Reforms Society.
He also (self)studied philosophy and religious books,
notably Theosophy, and the Hindu Geeta. The latter
influenced him a great deal. The essential teaching of Geeta
is that one should do one's duty irrespective of reward or
punishment, pleasure or pain, gain or loss, victory or
defeat, life or death; that the highest action is that which
has the least regard for results or consequences (means and
the ends are the same); and that any action is better than
no action.
Three years later, in 1891, Gandhi passed his law
examinations, was called to the bar, and enrolled in High
Court. The very next day he sailed for India.
4. The Middle Years
Upon his return to India, Gandhi learned that his mother had
passed away (knowing how much he loved her, his brother had
withheld the news). Gandhi buried his grief and tried to
turn his face toward the promise of his legal future. He was
not, however, successful in his chosen profession, since he
became tongue-tied in court.
It was at this point that Gandhi's life took one of those
mysteriously fruitful turns that some like to ascribe to
"fate" or "chance." Gandhi, looking back on his life from
the point of view of decades of inner revolution, called it
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instead an act of grace, the unfolding of events according
to some deep inner necessity of which he himself was
unaware. Battered by failure, with nowhere to look for help
outside, he was ready to turn inward on his long journey of
self-discovery. Chance or grace, provided him with that
challenge.
At the time, it didn't seem like much of an opportunity.
Through his brother, a local Muslim firm offered to help
Gandhi out with a year's contract with its office in South
Africa. It was a minor clerical position, well below the
salary and prestige his English education deserved. And it
meant more separation from his wife, who had borne them a
second son. It was, at least a job, a chance to gain some
experience and maybe turn his back foreever on his bad luck.
But the situation awaiting him was far from what he had
expected. The case Gandhi was called in on was a
complicated one, requiring real skill in accounting to
unravel years of complicated business transactions with
inadequate records. Gandhi's job was to advise the company's
legal counsel, but he was even more ignorant of bookkeeping
than he was of law. Moreover, far from gaining any respect
by his new move, he found himself in a land where the color
of his skin alone was enough to mark him off for daily
contempt and even physical abuse.
Gandhi was always a good observer of his own behavior. Every
time that he had run away from failure before, no matter
where he went, the same situation always seemed to recur in
even more threatening proportions. If changing the
environment did no good, why not try to change himself? It
was not something he reasoned out; it was something he felt
so deeply that the action was immediate.
He took the challenge and threw himself into the work at
hand. He studied book keeping on his own. He concentrated
fully on the details of the case, and soon he acquired a
deeper knowledge of the situation than anyone else on either
side.
The facts were strongly behind his client. But the legal
battle could be drawn out for months; no one stood to gain
except the lawers. Gandhi was not interested in making a
profit out of legal briefs and empty arguments. He was
determined to serve the best interests of both sides. With
much talking, Gandhi persuaded both sides to submit to
arbitration and settle out of court. Both sides were
satisfied. Gandhi was ecstatic. I had learnt the true
practice of law. I had learnt to find out the better side of
human nature and to enter men's hearts. I realized that the
true function of a lawyer was to unite parties riven
asunder, he writes [4].
Gandhi, without realizing it, had found the secret of
success. He began to look on every difficult opportunity as
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an opportunity of service. In turning his back on personal
profit or prestige in his work, he found he had won the
trust and even love of white and Indian South Africans
alike. More and more people from his own community began to
entrust their legal work to him, and to depend on him
whenever they needed help. In a few years he was a
successful lawyer with an income of about $30,000 a year,
and a dignified, Westernized style of living appropriate to
his station. He went to India and brought his family with
him to South Africa.
4.1 The Most Creative Incident
The moment of decision came for Gandhi in his first year in
South Africa when his work took him inland across the state
of Natal by railway and coach to Pretoria. European settlers
always traveled first class. Indians were expected to travel
third, but Gandhi had reserved a first-class seat. He
settled into the compartment comfortably and traveled alone
until he reached the mountain town of Maritzburg in the
evening. There another passenger, a European, entered the
coach. He took one look at the dark-complexioned man seated
there and left, only to return with railway officials.
"You'll have to leave here," one of them told Gandhi
pointedly. "Go to the third-class car."
"But I have a ticket for this compartment," Gandhi objected.
"That doesn't matter. You must leave or I'll bring the
police to put you out."
"You may," Gandhi agreed heatedly. "But I have every right
to stay here, and I refuse to get out voluntarily."
So the policeman came, and Gandhi was pushed out of the
train and left to spend the night sitting in the deserted,
unlit railway station. His overcoat and luggage had
disappeared with the officials. It was bitter cold. He sat
there alone, shivering in the darkness, struggling furiously
to understand how anyone could find pleasure or satisfaction
in causing suffering to others. It was not his own injury or
humiliation that infuriated him; it was the much deeper
cancer of man's inhumanity to man, the persecution of whole
races because of differences in skin color or belief.
By morning he had decided that to return to India would be
cowardice. He would have to stay; there could be no turning
back. He was compelled to act. The man who had been unable
to talk in court to enhance his own career would find
himself within himself the resources to speak and write and
organize effectively to relieve the distress of others.
Much later, when someone asked him what was the most
creative incidence in his life, Gandhi told the story of
this night in Maritzburg station. He had to undergo many
trials, suffer abuse and even physical attacks, but that
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long night in the Natal mountains he made the decision never
to yield to force and never to use force to win a cause.
The conviction was immediately put to a test. For on this
very trip, he was beaten for the first time in his adult
life. To get from the railroad system of Natal to that of
the Transvaal, young Gandhi had to travel for some distance
from stagecoach. Its conductor, a Boer, would not let Gandhi
sit inside with him and his other passengers, who all
happened to be Europeans that day, but said he must sit next
to the coachman, on the coach box. Gandhi protested but did
as he was told. When the stagecoach stopped at a town, the
conductor ordered Gandhi to sit on the floorboard, so that
he himself could sit on the coach box for a while and have a
smoke. The insult was more than I could bear, Gandhi writes
[4]. In fear and trembling I said to him, "it was you who
seated me here, ...you would have me sit at your feet. I'll
not do so ..." The man came down upon me and began heavily
to box my ears. The conductor heaped curses on Gandhi and
tried to push him onto the footboard. But Gandhi held fast
to his seat, and the other passengers finally took pity on
him and made the conductor leave him alone. After several
other humiliating encounters, during which Gandhi sometimes
invoked and obtained the help of the authorities, he reached
Pretoria.
4.2 Other Influences
Some christians tried to covert him, he gave serious
consideration to their creed, but found that Christ was
God's only son entirely unacceptable. He came to the
conclusion [4]: I do not seek redemption from the
consequences of my sin. I seek to be redeemed from sin
itself, or rather than from the very thought of sin. Until I
have attained that end, I shall be content to be restless.
In his religious explorations, he happened upon Leo
Tolstoy's Christian writings, and was inspired by Tolstoy's
restless search for perfection and universal love. The
thesis of one Tolstoy's work, The Kingdom of God is Within
You - that all government is based on war and violence, and
that one can counter these evils only through passive
resistance - made a deep impression on him. He also started
his first two ashrams in South Africa, one Phoenix and the
other, Tolstoy. Men, Women, and children lived at Tolstoy
Farm in the manner of a joint family and were schooled there
in fearlessness, self-reliance, self-denial, self-sacrifice,
and suffering; in embracing poverty and living in harmony
with other people and with nature - so that they could learn
to practice brahmacharya, satyagraha, and ahimsa, and thus
do battle indefinitely with the corrupt society and the
government.
Gandhi served the Indian community, united it, and organized
the Natal Indian Congress. He conceived, used, and perfected
the tool of satyagraha (nonviolent resistance) in demanding
- 12 -
and protecting the rights of the Indian community of South
Africa, and which [tool] he would later use in fighting the
British for India's independence.
In 1914 Gandhi left South Africa for good, There he had
spent 21 sweet and bitter years in which he had realized his
vocation in life. He came as a shy, tongue-tied, unknown
person, unsure of his identity and vocation. He left a
transformed man; a man sure of his vocation, self-confident,
self-actualized well known, and the future Mahatma.
- 13 -
References
1. E. Easwaran, Gandhi the Man (Nilgiri Press, Petaluma,
CA) 1978.
2. E. Erikson, Gandhi's Truth: On the Origins of Militant
Nonviolence (W. W. Norton & Company, New York, NY)
1969.
3. Louis Fischer, The Life of Mahatma Gandhi (Harper)
1983. First Published in 1950.
4. M. K. Gandhi, An Autobiography OR The Story of my
experiments with truth (Navjivan Publishing House,
Ahmedabad, India) 1987. First Published in 1927.
5. Gandhi: A Pictorial Biography (Newmarket Press) 1983.
6. Ved Mehta, Mahtma Gandhi and His Apostles (The Viking
Press) 1976.
7. Olivia Coolidge, Gandhi (Houghton) 1971.
8. Pyarelal, Mahatma Gandhi: The Early Phase (Navjivan
Publishing House, Ahmedabad, India) 1956.
9. G. Richards, The Philosophy of Gandhi: A study of His
Basic Ideas (Barnes & Noble) 1982.
CONTENTS
1. Introduction........................................ 1
2. A Brief Life-Sketch................................. 1
2.1 Gandhi's Early Life............................ 1
2.2 Gandhi's Campaigns............................. 2
2.3 Freedom and Death.............................. 3
2.4 Gandhi's Beliefs............................... 3
3. The Early Years..................................... 3
3.1 The Joint Family............................... 4
3.2 The Individual................................. 4
3.3 The Mother..................................... 5
3.4 The Father..................................... 6
3.5 The Friend..................................... 6
3.6 A Different Culture............................ 7
4. The Middle Years.................................... 8
4.1 The Most Creative Incident..................... 10
4.2 Other Influences............................... 11
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