Understanding Gandhi: A Mahatma in Making 1869-1914

By Sarva Daman Singh

Neither an ode of adulation, nor an exercise in iconoclasm, this book on Gandhi gives praise where praise is due; and criticizes where criticism is warranted. The author treads in step with Gandhi as he reveals himself in his Experiments with Truth in an honest attempt to understand the Mahatma in the making. Gandhi's veracity is not in question; but his memory, and selection and omission of episodes, inevitably temper the tenor of truth! His equation of Truth with God can only be understood as justice and fair play analogous to sat or ṛta signifying the Cosmic Order. Page after page poses questions in a bid to understand Gandhi as he speaks, writes and acts.
The author relates how Gandhi discovered himself in South Africa; and formulated a new vocabulary of revolt; a new ideology of non-violence and self-suffering to defeat racial injustice and tyranny; to rouse the corrective conscience of his oppressors. Deliberate defiance of unjust laws, self-effacing humility, unflinching acceptance of punishment, the unfading smile and unfailing forgiveness sum up the transformation of an otherwise ordinary mortal into a Mahatma, who identified himself with all downtrodden humanity! Ahiṁsā, satya and satyāgraha became the watchwords of his philosophy in action. The author explores the meanings of these words; and notes that at times Gandhi's ahiṁsā could be devoid of compassion, confined only to self-cleansing, not true to itself.
He learned from all religions without conversion to any; and identified religion with morality, without realizing that morality preceded the rise of religion. As basic morality constituting the core of every religion transcends all doctrinal divisions, Gandhi tirelessly advocated religious tolerance; and Hindu-Muslim unity. He lived and died for peaceful co-existence. But his pursuit of mokṣa (release from reincarnation) was irrelevant to the world's welfare!
Gandhi upheld human equality and indivisibility regardless of race and colour. The author notes his reverence for the Brahmins; and his painful progress from caste consciousness to its final rejection. He draws attention to Gandhi's unwillingness to mount a satyāgraha for the liberation of the untouchables from Brahmanical tyranny. Gandhi also took time to realize the woeful plight of the Africans; and to speak of a future which would grant them their due in the land of their birth.
The author also takes note of Gandhi's great love of the British, and his faith in their destiny to deliver the world into a dawn of freedom and democracy. He points to Gandhi's celebration of the British success against Indians in 1857! It took a while to shake off that subservience in Gandhi's Hind Swaraj.
The book looks closely at Gandhi's relations with his elder brother and friends. The author notes his dictatorial direction of the lives of his wife and sons. His brahmacarya (sexual abstinence) was a capricious imposition on submissive Kasturba; a pathetic denial of the joy of sex mocking mortality and the sorrow of transience. But the book salutes his cruel, uncompromising candour. He practised what he preached. His obsession with sanitation and hygiene unfortunately failed to inspire Indians to follow his example.
As an advocate of right means to right ends excluding all violence for the resolution of human disputes, as an enemy of imperialism and champion of human equality, as a practitioner and preacher of religious goodwill and tolerance, as a respecter of the earth and its gifts, as an upholder of the primacy of man over machine, Gandhi remains a beacon of timeless relevance!

• Language: English
• Publisher: VIJ Books (India) Pty Ltd
• Release date: Aug 1, 2018
• ISBN: 9789386457851

Sarva Daman Singh

PROFESSOR SARVA DAMAN SINGH, B.A.(HONS.), M.A., PH.D. (UNIVERSITY OF LONDON), PH.D. (UNIVERSITY OF QUEENSLAND, AUSTRALIA), F.R.A.S., was born at Angai, in District Mathura of Uttar Pradesh, India; and migrated to Australia in 1974. He won many awards and five gold medals during the course of a distinguished educational career at the universities of Lucknow and London. He has taught at the University of Lucknow; National Academy of Administration, Government of India, Mussoorie; Vikram University, Ujjain; and the University of Queensland, Australia; and held chairs of Indian History, Culture, and Archaeology. He is at present Director of the Institute of Asian Studies, Brisbane. He has traveled widely and lectured at universities and institutions in India, Sri Lanka, U.K., France, Germany, the U.S.A., South Korea, Fiji, New Zealand and Australia. Apart from his contributions to numerous books, his publications include Ancient Indian Warfare with Special Reference to the Vedic Period, E.J. Brill, Leiden, with later editions brought out by Motilal Banarasidas, Delhi; The Archaeology of the Lucknow Region, Paritosh Prakashan, Lucknow; Polyandry in Ancient India, Vikas, and Motilal Banarasidas, Delhi; Culture through the Ages, (B.N. Puri Felicitation Volume), Agam, Delhi; The Art of Pir Tareen-Evocation of Beauty in Life and Nature, published by the Institute of Asian Studies, Brisbane; and Indians Abroad, Hope India Publications and Greenwich Millennium Press Ltd, Gurgaon and London. As Honorary Consul of India in Queensland from 2003 till 2011, he addressed numerous forums, always stressing the indivisibility of humanity and its cultural diversity as a natural expression of its floriferous creativity.

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Introduction

There are countless books on Mahatma Gandhi written by his admirers and detractors; by his followers and foes; by his colleagues and contemporaries caught in the conflict for India’s freedom; by politicians, statesmen, and sentinels of colonial control; by historians and self-appointed arbiters of right and wrong. And there are thousands of essays and articles on his life and work, which is indeed as it should be. But so much of British writing is vitiated by an ineradicable prejudice against the man who came to symbolize the unequivocal rejection of imperial exploitation; and a categorical refutation of its false morality. So much of the Muslim writing fails to rise above the narrowness and intolerance of those who turned a blind eye to the composite unity of Hindu-Muslim India with its enduring ethnic, linguistic and cultural links, in running after the mirage of a Muslim millennium. Happiness, however, never arises out of hatred. Nations do not derive their validity from one religion to the exclusion of others; from philosophies that divide humanity on the basis of dogmatic aversion towards people following faiths other than one’s own.

Fanatical Hindu writers, disavowing the Hindu spirit of tolerance and peaceful coexistence with other faiths, call Gandhi a mad man who was bent on wrecking their world, their immediate present as well as their future. Possessed by hatred, blinded by bigotry, impelled by the suicidal fever of religious rancour, a so-called Hindu saw it fit to murder Gandhi. Gandhi was seventy-nine. Exactly at that age today, I distinctly remember the darkness of despair that engulfed India and the world; the searing grief that smote countless hearts; the tears I shed as a young school-boy; and the sense of disconsolate desolation that gripped me. Sadly, I could not attend his funeral. His memory, though, and what he stood for, forms part of my consciousness and sense of relationship with India and the world.¹

A vast majority of humankind pray every day. We never tire of praying. In that spirit of prayer, indeed, as its extension, we should never tire of studying the lives of great men and women whose work on earth expressed a higher will and purpose; who lived and laboured, suffered and sacrificed for the benefit of the whole world; to relieve its distress; to assuage its anxieties; to right its wrongs. So it is that I make bold to write another book on Gandhi as I see him; to restate and re-emphasize our singular obligation to translate his dream of Hindu–Muslim unity into reality. Despair is an admission of defeat. Inaction is not an option. We must never cease to try.

He lived and died in his pursuit of peaceful coexistence amongst different religions; of basic morality transcending all doctrinal divisions; of human equality and freedom from political servitude; of social and economic justice. He remained, till his last breath, an invincible exemplar of non-violence governing all human behaviour, rejecting the resolution of any disputes by recourse to violence.

Fickle memory of the world’s millions only fitfully recalls his name, forgetting his struggles and willing suffering for freedom, justice and equality, and for an end to hatred, violence and tyranny. Creeping amnesia and easy bellicosity consign his message of non-violence and love for even one’s enemies to a category of inconsequential irrelevance. The world trembles only temporarily in its apathetic repose; takes note, and marches on, with minimal influence on its mode of conduct. Transience rules, unless one chooses to give one’s message the garb of religion; declares oneself a prophet of God; and commands obedience. When that happens, one’s followers demand conformity; and the paraphernalia of religious organization and propaganda assurers the continuity and currency of one’s message, though it stays confined only to one’s converts. It defeats the desire for universality, given other religious persuasions and their own jealous domains, but remains nevertheless able and alive to influence its followers. Religious creeds with their exclusive claims to heaven and happiness tend to divide and seldom unite bickering humanity. But their longevity defies the secular prophets of love and peace, whose words and deeds are easily, but so sadly, always forgotten. So many amongst us sincerely strive to liberate ourselves from the shackles of constrictive religion, but we tend only to remember the prophets of religion!

Hence the recurring need to jog our memories, and remind ourselves. The dream of Gandhi corresponds with the reality of human indivisibility; God’s love for entire creation; and the infinite capacity of humankind to advance towards perfection. His ideals inspire and invite humanity to rise to its full potential, to bring to this earth the kingdom of heaven, to enable the meek, without discrimination, to inherit this planet. He himself spoke and wrote with an indefatigable zeal, for there was so much to do; time was so short; and life was not everlasting. To understand Gandhi, we have to trudge though a hundred volumes of his own collected works including his autobiography; and thousands of others dealing with his life and thought. Monumental biographies by Tendulkar and Pyarelal, besides so many more, add to the abundance of material, from which I hope to glean the essence of Gandhi’s truth.

Gandhi equates truth with God. What is truth? How do we realize it? How do we define it? How do we express it? And what is untruth? So many of our beliefs and convictions are just beliefs sustained by faith, not susceptible of proof. All religion besides morality rests on speculation. One’s faith is one’s truth, the other’s faith an untruth. Hence the destructive inter-religious conflicts. To Richard Dawkins and many like him religion is a lie; dogma is a delusion; God is a figment of the imagination. How does one prove a truth? How does one live a truth? The only way we may constructively construe truth is to identify it with thought, word and deed to mean what they intend to convey and to achieve, to address the ills and suffering of this world and seek to heal them. There can be no absolutism, no inflexibility, no fixity about this truth, just as there can be no rigidity about what is right or wrong in varying circumstances. The only other way we may realize the truth or the reality of our existence and its meaning is to look around and then inwards to comprehend the core of our being and relate it to the world. To define it and reduce it to words is to deny it, to limit it, to distort it. All revelations are subjective and relative, if they are put into words, reduced to articles of faith or formulas for emancipation. The only acceptable idea of truth is that of the unity of all existence including that of humankind, and therefore, our identification with the needs of the world around us. In so far as we help fulfil those needs in a spirit of justice and fair play, we serve the truth of life. That was Gandhi’s Truth as I understand it, shorn of its esoteric content; and that was the truth he saw in all the religions of the world.

In his own words, ‘truth means existence; the existence of that we know and of that we do not know. The sum total of all existence is absolute truth or the truth… The concepts of truth may differ. But all admit and respect truth. That truth I call God.’² ‘.….He, who would sacrifice his life for others, has hardly time to reserve for himself a place in the sun.’³

Gandhi calls his autobiography The story of My Experiments with Truth. What does he mean? Does he want to state the truth or interpret it, dilute it, stretch it, add to it or reduce it, colour it, or view it in varying lights? He certainly tries to be honest and truthful, to the point at times of brutal candour. But in the middle of his exercise, he suddenly exclaims: ‘… I have no diary or documents on which to base the story of my experiments. I write just as the Spirit moves me at the time of writing… I understand more clearly today what I read long ago about the inadequacy of all autobiography as history. I know that I do not set down in this story all that I remember. Who can say how much I must give and how much omit in the interests of truth? And what would be the value in a court of law of the inadequate ex parte evidence being tendered by me of certain events in my life?’⁴ Assailed by self-doubt, he asks if he should ‘stop writing these chapters’,⁵ but then declares: ‘… so long as there is no prohibition from the voice within, I must continue the writing.’⁶

We all know that memory is fickle, failing, limited, unreliable, inadvertently and sometimes deliberately altered, expunged or added to. An autobiography would find it exceedingly hard to be objective, as the self holds centre stage. It is unnecessary and impossible to submerge the self while referring to other actors and events. Subjectivity plays a principal part in the sifting of one’s memory and material; in the imposition of a sequence; and in terms of emphasis. Prejudices persist; and like a teacher or preacher, every writer has a motive and a goal. If we believe that everything an author says is indeed verifiable, we might as well ask him or her to desist from the task. Gandhi is no exception. His veracity is not in question; but his memory and omission and selection of episodes would inevitably temper the tenor of truth.

Gandhi uses the word ‘truth’ where he should often be using the word ‘honesty’, which is what he always seeks to pursue. Truth is always multi-dimensional, multi-faceted; a composite of thought, speech, action, experience, feeling and fact in its many manifestations. One who writes about truth, describes it as he sees it, as he hears it, as he experiences it, in his choice of words, also inevitably subjects it to the limitations and variations of language, influencing its meaning. Conscious or unconscious manipulation is a consequence of covert, clinging, involuntary subjectivity, however much we strive not to succumb to it. Truth is primarily darśana, one’s perception based on one’s experience and understanding, conditioned by one’s intent and capacity to describe it, to reveal it, and one’s choice of words to do so. The only part of our thinking subject to scrutiny is its resolution and expression in language.

We are awe-struck by Gandhi’s capacity to identify himself with common humanity, completely so with the meek and the poor, and to inflict incalculable punishment on himself to atone for the errors and sins of his fellow beings. We admire his supreme solicitude for equity and justice, for common welfare, for peace and goodwill amongst all religions and all humankind. We applaud his implacable opposition to untouchability and social tyranny, and to all species of discrimination based on race, class, colour and gender. And we see his singular capacity to bend any opposition to his will by embarking on his epic life- threatening fasts.

Faith, belief and convictions, however, held the Sanātanī Hindu in their vice-like grip in more way than one, despite his rejection of so many immoral and indefensible, unjust, useless, meaningless and harmful practices. He could not entirely free himself from the thraldom of the Brahmin, and trod very tentatively, carefully, to question his invidious practices, always taking extraordinary care not to challenge his supercilious supremacy. The caste, not the learning of the ordinary Brahmin, made him deferential. He even took up cudgels on their behalf in Maharashtra, when non-Brahmins protested against the degrading and demeaning indignities suffered at their hands.⁷ In a way Gandhi was as subservient to the Brahmins as he was to the British. He rebelled against both, but accommodated both to the farthest limits of forbearance. One could equate his attitude towards the English with his stance towards the Brahmins. Their excesses, their sins, their discrimination and exploitation of the populace, their cruel, inhuman treatment of the down-trodden untouchables, did not move him to challenge them and confront them in order to break the barriers of ugly separatism. He made statements, very strong statements! He identified himself with the untouchables. But he never made bold to lead them in any march to the portals of any temple. Persuasion by self-suffering, not even by full-fledged satyāgraha, excluding any help from other sections of society, was his advice and recipe for change. If mere persuasion was enough, if the expression of moral outrage was enough, if suffering could move the hearts of those feeding fat on credulity and submissive abidance of the Hindu society, untouchability would have disappeared long ago! Voices against the evils of caste and untouchability have rent the skies of India since time immemorial; but the Brahmins have not really been roused from their sleep. Softly, softly, was Gandhi’s advice to the suppressed and oppressed! Suffer more, as if they had not suffered enough! Indeed, it took Gandhi a whole lifetime to liberate himself entirely from the mental prison of class and caste, varṇa and jāti, in Hindu society. We hope to see how he finally found the will to do so.

Gandhi was not born a Mahātmā⁸, Great soul. He became a Mahatma in the eyes of Tagore, and all those who agreed with the poet’s perception. If one looks for the Mahatma from the day Gandhi bursts into public view, one is bound to miss him, or look in vain. To do so is to deny his inner growth and evolution into the maturity of considered thought and action that earned him the title. The years before he was called one were an unremitting extended essay in self-analysis, self-discovery and self-expression in word and deed that revealed him as a Mahatma. It was a painful, protracted process of self- realization, and understanding the true relation of self to life and the world around. Even so, the title did not tickle the holder, who often felt oppressed by its baggage.

Thus we see so much in a long life full of feverish activity aimed at reforming human nature, religious attitudes and societies, empires and their rulers, as well as the ruled. We see his ceaseless struggle for justice and freedom from the tyranny of foreign rule; and for the establishment of regimes based on democracy, where small government and decentralization would empower the people to regulate their own affairs.

No other politician ever received so much attention and acclaim in his own lifetime. Classed with Christ and Buddha, without ever seeking to make an enemy, he made it hard for many like Einstein to imagine ‘that such a one as this, ever in flesh and blood, walked upon this earth.’ There are those, too, who call him a mad man, a crafty crank, an intolerable impostor, a shrewd actor, a clever bania (his caste), a moral masochist.⁹ But a palpable unease clearly colours their criticism.

Did Gandhi know himself? We are amazed by the curious display of both credulity and questioning in his speeches and writings. He was a delightful, if at times a maddening bundle of contradictions. Indeed, every person is so many selves rolled into one. So was Gandhi an amalgam of many selves, which came to the fore in ever changing contexts. He was always alive and evolving in his reaction and response to current and changing situations all around him. His self-professed inconsistency was a reflection of his malleability and capacity to adapt his attitude and stance to situations as they unfolded. Change is synonymous with relevance. Ossified, inelastic attitudes disregard the reality of life in its transition in relation to an untold variety of social, economic and political factors. New situations, new problems invite new solutions; new maladies require new remedies. Change of attitude or policy in Gandhi’s case was always clearly comprehensible in the light of new developments, and justifiable in terms of possibilities, justice and fair play. Gandhi himself made a virtue of his inconsistencies: ‘At the time of writing I never think of what I have said before. My aim is not to be consistent with previous statements on a given question, but to be consistent with truth as it may present itself to me at a given moment. The result has been that I have grown from truth to truth; I have saved my memory an undue strain; and what is more, whenever I have been obliged to compare my writing even of fifty years ago with the latest I have discovered no inconsistency between the two. But friends who observe inconsistency will do well to take the meaning that my latest writing may yield unless, of course, they prefer the old.’¹⁰ But Gandhi’s assertion of an ‘abiding consistency between the two seeming inconsistencies’ is not always true or sustainable.

Even Gandhi’s admirers and followers were often baffled, if not exasperated, by the suddenness of some of his decisions; by the reversal of some of his movements; by the mysterious content of his enigmatic pronouncements. We all know his insistence on right means to the right end, where he would never make a compromise. He has been likened to moral messiahs; to saints and prophets; and compared with philosophers and social reformers. He has been called an individualist, anarchist, socialist, communist, liberal, reactionary, revolutionary, a religious actualist, a nationalist, cosmopolitan and so on. He was all these, and more, as he had the uncanny capacity to reconcile seemingly irreconcilable points of view. Even though his ideas and concepts evolved in the rough and tumble of political and social struggles, in the context of specific problems confronting him, it would be wrong to examine them only in terms of expediency. Satya, Ahiṁsā and Satyāgraha were grounded in spiritual beliefs which inspired them, and forged as instruments of struggle for justice in relation to reality. Rightness of means to an end, as I have said before, was a matter for him of supreme concern; effectiveness was secondary, though he sincerely believed that ahiṁsā would always ultimately deliver.

He fought for human rights in South Africa with his new-fangled armour of Satya, Ahiṁsā and Satyāgraha, to defeat injustice and tyranny. And then, in India, he enlarged the scope of his non-violence and satyāgraha with the boycott of imported goods and textiles and the use of swadeshī, homemade cloth and products, to rouse the masses to struggle for freedom and self-government. He sought to convince India’s imperial masters of the folly and moral bankruptcy of their ways, asking them to rise to their true stature of goodness, and do what honesty, humanity and justice called for. Monetary gain could not undo the uneasy realization at least amongst some Englishmen and women, and there were quite a few, that their policies and exploitative excesses did not exactly correspond with their ideals of love and justice.

How did he seek to overcome violence with non-violence, hatred with love, greed with generosity; to disarm apathy and aversion with appreciation and concern; to defeat prejudice with deference; to thwart separatism with affectionate accommodation? What were the specific tasks that he set for himself and his followers? How did he view humankind? What did he think of religion? How did he view the religions other than his own? What according to him was the function of government? What was the meaning of democracy? What did rights betoken? What was the burden of corresponding duties? What should education be like? What should the state provide? What should people do for themselves? What sort of economy should we sustain? What should be the relationship between man and machine? How should we take care of our health? What should the state do? What can we, and should do for ourselves? How should business be based on truth? How do we make the Hindu and Muslim love one another, live peacefully with one another, without letting the difference of religion poison personal relationships and understanding? How do we teach the followers of different religions that they all share aspects of the Ultimate Truth; and that all scriptures are equally valid for their followers? As Gandhi said, let us have dialogue; let us have understanding; and let us realize that morality in human behaviour is the true essence and application of religion.

We shall attempt to find answers to these questions from Gandhi himself. We know that his philosophy has been studied with sedulous care; and his ideas have been applied to the solution of social and political problems in different parts of the world. How much, if at all, do we still adhere to his message of brotherhood, service and non-violence? Do we just conjure up his name and not the content of his life’s message? How much of his message, how many of his ideas are still relevant? Time changes, circumstances vary; unforeseen developments cry for ever new approaches. Some ideas are timeless in their validity for humanity, while others date with the passage of time. Reality is for ever in a state of flux; and adaptability signified by ever new approaches is the only guarantee of our common progress towards the greatest good of the greatest number. Life is not so much about personal happiness as it is about the happiness of others around us. Happiness is not exclusive; true happiness cannot be. It is always infectious as well as inclusive.

Gandhi’s moral and political thought is inextricably interwoven with his religious beliefs and moral convictions. With his axiomatic acceptance of karma and reincarnation, he did not indulge in any other speculation in relation to the universe and man. He scoffed at the idea of ‘Gandhism’ as a cult, and said: ‘…If Gandhism is another name for sectarianism, it deserves to be destroyed… Let no one say that he is a follower of Gandhi. It is enough that I should be my own follower… You are no followers but fellow students, fellow pilgrims, fellow seekers, fellow workers.’¹¹

He worried about people reducing his statements to a rigid tyranny of literal finality; and tirelessly stressed his fallibility. We want to confront and comprehend his fallibility despite his constant striving to commune with the Great Truth that is God. For, like us all, he too was made of common clay; he too was heir to many human frailties including the compulsions of the flesh, as attested by his lifelong struggle to rise above them.

Sex is the supreme truth of life, the most emphatic, positive, undeniable expression of the will to be and to live, an indefatigable challenge to our mortality. The tug of war goes on for ever. And the joy of sex mocks the pain and suffering of disease and death. As Yudhiṣṭhira observed in the Mahābhārata, we all know we will die; but who cares? That is doubtless the most amazing truth of life as we know it, as we love it! Sadly, the only word Gandhi knew about sex was unclean and impure ‘lust’. He was unflagging in his search for truth. What and which truth? Denial of one does not lead to the discovery of another!

Sex has never been a synonym for sin in India. India’s religions have explored sex as an instrument of ineffable joy and deliverance; as an exercise in the deletion of duality in oneness with the Creator and creation; as a celebration of life through love and belonging. The Hindus worship the Lingaṁ and Yoni in their union as the divine source of being and becoming. Tantrism translates sexual ecstasy into salvation. The exaltation of sex is an honest acceptance of life, its basic manifestation, its joyous expression! Hindu and Buddhist art alike express that truth; and reveal its unashamed fulfilment. The seers (ṛṣis) of ancient India were certainly not averse to approaches for niyoga¹² with the spouses of petitioning husbands.

The idea that sex somehow interferes with or defeats service to others does not carry conviction. The vast majority of the great men and women of the world, including the Incarnations of the Divine in India, have been married people in deep, active physical relationships with their wives and consorts; and in India they are always worshipped together. Vālmīki’s Rāmāyaṇa provides pulsating expressions of Rāma’s pent-up passion for his abducted wife, whom he misses so sorely!¹³ All this is, indeed, as it should be. All kind and compassionate, loving and tender, charitable and merciful emotions arise from the life-force of sex coursing through our veins. Its extinction, or its cruel suppression might also emasculate altruism, which makes us higher beings than other animals. If one is to believe Freud and others, the suppression of sex may not lead to any sublimation, but only to a sense of despair, frustration and futility. Fulfilment produces a sense of quiet contentment; of tranquil repose; love and solicitude for one’s world and its happiness. Gandhi’s fulminations against sex run counter to life’s natural flow; and pose a purposeless challenge to the order of existence. He read only parts of the existing Hindu tradition; chose what he deemed essential; and turned a blind eye to the rest that conflicted with his life-negating panacea. If we restrict or reject the fount of life, we deprive ourselves of so much that is dear, beautiful, and irreplaceable! The prophets had their spouses. They led full lives.

And Gandhi! He imposed sexual abstinence on his wife Kasturba from the age of thirty-six. Did he have her prior consent, and later, permission to tell the world? There is a species of violence of a peremptory will here; the enforcement of a code of conduct that may not attract natural or easily willing acceptance. Violence can express and exercise itself in so many subtle ways. Any fancied or real encroachment on others’ will and others’ desires leading to or compelling not only suppression, but the extinction thereof, may indeed be construed as a dictatorial violence of one’s will over that of others. Even if the prescription and practice yield the most desirable results, do the ends justify the means?

As a husband and father, Gandhi was a dictator. In his role that was larger than life, one could understand him identifying himself with the world around, which was his family. But were his wife and children equal to the expectations and the tasks imposed on them? Did they have a choice? We may make a mistake in judging Gandhi by applying to him our current ideas and values governing marital and family relationships. His was a different world. And he was essentially a child of his Indian world despite his exposure to the West and its ideas. Every person without exception is a child of his or her times. Great human beings transcend their times, and often mould their times with the power of their example. But some of their attitudes and actions can be understood only with reference to the social milieu that shaped their sensibility and their set of values. They were capable of change and striking out in new directions as Gandhi’s life so amply demonstrated; but there were always limits, and the conditioning of the past influencing his behaviour!

Till the very end of her life, Kasturba was not simply Gandhi’s wife, but his property. He completely controlled her. When she went to a temple in Puri that refused entry to untouchables, against his wishes, he was so angry that he became physically ill. During her last illness, he prohibited the administration of penicillin to save or prolong her life. Many years earlier in South Africa, he did not allow the doctor treating her to give her beef tea even when she was dangerously ill; and hovered between life and death. He took the barely alive bundle of her body with him from Durban to Phoenix and treated her with his own potions; and luckily, she survived. Religious fanaticism has so many forms, so many expressions! This was one, with Gandhi gambling with his wife’s life on the altar of his blind faith and dietary interdictions. The denial of beef tea to save her life did not save the life of a single cow. Kasturba’s hung in the balance, until her health was restored by kind Providence.

Are we right to surrender our freedom of action by subjecting ourselves to the tyranny of double-speaking texts! We blindly, habitually, slavishly uphold certain traditions, while dismissively discarding others. In doing so, we exercise the undeniable autonomy of our acceptance of tradition or its denial. But what really matters is the ethical propriety of our choice. If a person’s life can be saved by beef tea or penicillin, how would it be ethical to refuse to have recourse to either? How can one refuse vaccinations against infectious diseases on moral grounds? How can one refuse surgical operations to relieve suffering and prolong life, except in a hide-bound state of mind? To be meaningful and relevant, morality must rise above any arbitrary fixity to correspond with the transient trials of the human predicament. Gandhi himself took medication when required, unaware of its derivative sources; and even underwent surgical operations for piles and appendicitis. Gandhi’s relations with his family, wife and sons will certainly receive our attention in the pages that follow.

We do not worship or admire a brahmacārī. We do not believe, as Gandhi did, that love and sex in any way detract from a person’s capacity, ability and will to participate in social work and satyāgraha, in political activism and engagement. A normal, active physical relationship between a couple does not in any way dry up their concern for the world around, or their devotion to the causes they are fighting for; or seek to serve. It does not make them callous or selfish. It does not promote apathy. It does not reduce their strength and dilute their contribution to any collective effort or public campaign. Quite on the contrary, its denial would lead to a kind of sullenness, aloofness, impatience, and an abrasive, angry outlook on life. Embers of smothered natural appetites would distract and damage one’s evenness of temper, and undisturbed devotion to work. This sort of self-suppression is a painful denial of engagement with the real world around. It will not help. It will decidedly hinder. A study shows that a night of passion in the bedroom can boost people’s performance at work by making their mood five per cent better the following day, despite any loss of sleep. The positive effect lingers for at least 24 hours in both men and women. The chemical dopamine released by the sexual function activates the reward-centres in the brain. Positive emotions add to the capacity to cope with work situations. The ‘hug hormone’ oxytocin released during sex to add to the closeness with one’s partner lasts well into the morning, motivating greater concern for the people around. According to the lead author, Professor Keith Leavitt of Oregon State University, ‘we make jokes about people having a ‘spring in their step’, but it turns out this is actually a real thing’.¹⁴

Gandhi was, as he said, a Hindu; and true to Hinduism, inherited its tolerance; its inclusiveness; its belief that there were many ways to God or Truth; and therefore its acceptance of the best in all religions. He was at once a Vedāntin monist and a seeker of God’s grace: ‘What I want to achieve – what I have been striving and pining to achieve…is self-realization, to see God face to face, to attain Moksha. I live and move and have my being in pursuit of this goal.’¹⁵ The Īśopaniṣad revealed to him the essence of Hinduism as well as the spiritual basis of ‘non-violent socialism’.¹⁶ The Gītā became his ‘dictionary of daily reference’.¹⁷ He was a sincere and serious student of the world’s religions, in which he discerned an unmistakable unity of truth. Jainism and Buddhism deeply informed his thought. Christianity and its compassion touched him. The universalism of theosophy was ‘Hinduism at its best.’¹⁸

Religion for Gandhi was inseparable from politics, in as much as it meant honest ethical action above and beyond divisive discrimination, like Emperor Aśoka’s dhamma expressed in compassion, charity, self-control, truthfulness, good deeds and abstention from violence.¹⁹ Social solicitude and cooperative concern, engagement and ameliorative action was the clear purpose of this Gandhian religion synonymous with basic morality.

But where does morality come from? If we are to believe Frans de Waal, morality is the progenitor of religion, not otherwise. Religion followed as an evolved version of communal concern for peace and order in society.²⁰ De Waal tells us that morality does not come from God, but from our evolutionary past as a social primate. Apes are our closest relatives, and like them, humankind evolved in groups that were small, cooperative and closely knit. Like them, we are always alive and sensitive to each other’s needs, moods and intent. This empathy is the seed-bed of human morality. De Waal draws our attention to two levels of morality: ‘oneon-one’, regulating mutual conduct between two individuals; and ‘community concern’, which is a more abstract inclusive concept that conditions the harmony of an entire group. Chimps and bonobos definitely have the first, as they respect ownership and expect to be treated in terms of their position in the hierarchy. De Waal, though, cites examples of a chimp stepping in to stop a fight between two others, which means that they also have a rudimentary code governing their group harmony. The bonobos, he tells us, present even better examples of moral behaviour; of mutual and communal concern for one another. And in yet another book recently published, he points out that empathy and cooperative behaviour, and aversion to inequality, the moral basis for human society, are not exclusively attributable to humans alone, but are shared by capuchins and other primates, whose social systems rest on reciprocity.²¹

If, then, we inherited morality from our prehistoric forebears, religion would have followed as a corollary canon, spelling out the content of human ethics. Morality arises from individual empathy and concern for the group, which creates a consensus on the shape and character of human conduct, limiting individual liberty with voluntary restraint. Indeed, de Waal has been stressing this for many long years.²²

The basis of peaceful co-existence, this self-control is the resolute refrain of Gandhi’s precept and practice. It is the distilled essence of our collective spiritual evolution. In its universality, indeed, in its illimitability, human morality stands strikingly above sectarian strife, and points the only way to pervasive harmony and understanding. Thus, the religion that he would not, could not separate from politics was pure ethics in its pursuit of satya, ahiṁsā and satyāgraha, truth, non-violence and insistent struggle for truth, signifying justice. A ‘spiritual biography’²³ of a man who saw no dividing line between religion and morality, between religion and politics, between spiritual and material, would belie his composite being and becoming; his life lived in religion; his action actuated by ethics; his politics inseparable from his religion! For him the essence of religion was morality. It is difficult to understand ‘spiritual beings having a human experience.’²⁴

With his all-embracing love and personal example, he sought to bridge the divide between the Hindus and Muslims, between the masses and classes, to encourage and enable them all to draw strength from one another. Gandhi insisted that the politician in him never got past the moral idealist; and the latter took all the great decisions that mattered. Principles were decidedly not for compromise!

Gandhi’s attitude towards the major religions was most respectful. He saw truth in them all and in their scriptures; and upheld people’s faith in their respective religions, negating the necessity for any conversion. He could not however accept any precept or practice that ran counter to morality and justice. ‘…There is no such thing as religion overriding morality. Man, for instance, cannot be untruthful, cruel and incontinent and claim to have God on his side.’²⁵ Thus his faith in the Hindu scriptures was a mixture of acceptance and denial. There were prescriptions and practices advocated in some texts that he refused to accept; and chose to challenge.

Like Emperor Aśoka in the third century B. C., he raised his voice against those who spoke ill of others’ faiths, while praising their own, calling it an exercise in folly charged with grievous consequences. Religions can co-exist despite their differences; and their followers can live in peace in a spirit of respectful tolerance. Adherence to one’s doctrines makes no inroads upon basic human morality that knows no barriers to its practice. Through love and ahiṁsā Gandhi sought to exorcise the demons of hatred and intolerance. Terrorism is a travesty of religion in any shape or form; and Gandhi’s recognition of the validity of various faiths, and promotion of respect and understanding amongst them is the only way out of divisive hatred and blind brutality bedevilling our world.

Though Gandhi called himself a Hindu, his first biographer Rev. J. J. Doke found it hard to give him a label:

‘A few days ago I was told that ‘he is a Buddhist’. Not long since, a Christian newspaper described him as ‘a Christian Mohammedan’, an extraordinary mixture indeed. Others imagine that he worships idols… I question whether any system of religion can absolutely hold him. His views are closely allied to Christianity to be entirely Hindu, and too deeply saturated with Hinduism to be called Christian, while his sympathies are so wide and catholic, that one would imagine he has reached a point where the formulae of sects are meaningless.’²⁶

He read a lot; thought a lot; said a lot; and wrote a lot, always calling himself an ordinary seeker of truth, ever conscious of his limitations; ever ready to admit and apologize for his errors of omission and commission. He was curious and eager to enlarge his horizons, to imbibe wholesome ideas alike from the past and the present; always willing to learn and to accept new ways conducive to the realization of a just and fair society. Fairly early during his stay in South Africa, even before he embarked on his crusade to court justice for the Indians and ameliorate their lot in that land, he wrote and circulated an extremely learned essay, which illustrated the range of his reading, to highlight the achievements of Indians and Indian civilization in thought and literature. He read as much as he could, in and out of jails, including the works of Carlyle, Carpenter, Nordau, Wallace, Emerson, Garrison, Tolstoy, Ruskin and Thoreau. From Tolstoy and Ruskin he learned new lessons, which he then proceeded to translate into living reality on the farms he established in South Africa. He also drew heavily on the ancient tradition of India to establish his āshrams in India aimed at the training of volunteers who would dedicate their lives to the renaissance and reformation of Indian society; who would fight for India’s independence; and who would be exemplars of love and ahiṁsā. He always tried to practise what he deemed to be just and right in the ordering of human relationships, never leaving it simply to theoretical exposition. He learned only later that Tolstoy’s practice fell far short of his precept; and Ruskin never cared to act on his ideas.

Developed in tandem with the hurly-burly of social and political movements, his ideas were expressed in his daily speeches, discussions and writings. What he said and wrote explained his life as it unfolded; as it affected the world around him; and attracts and affects us today. He was an honest yet successful lawyer; a deft draftsman of petitions, constitutions and resolutions; an indefatigable journalist; and ever generous with moral and practical advice to people spread right across the world. He wrote books and thousands of articles on a mind-boggling range of subjects; and became, in the eyes of many, a living image of human goodness and morality. He was less concerned with government than with the moral obligations of citizens. His inveterate optimism came to the fore in his lifelong endeavour to reform and re-order the basic modes of human behaviour.

Always rational in his approach, Gandhi was yet a man of faith, which transcended reason and logic. ‘Logic is a matter of mere intelligence, which cannot apprehend things that are clear as crystal to the heart.’²⁷ The lessons learned from his parents were burnt into his soul; but the man who helped to ground him firmly in the spiritual heritage of India was Raychand Bhai, a friend, philosopher and guide, to whom Gandhi repeatedly turned for advice. It was largely in South Africa that Gandhi’s thoughts evolved and his concepts crystallized; and were tried and tested in his campaigns as new techniques of non-violent non-cooperation; passive resistance; civil disobedience; satyāgraha or moral struggle for truth and justice; boycotts and personal fasts of atonement aimed at bringing about a change of heart in friends and foes alike. Ahiṁsā became his trade-mark, the core of his thought and action; and any considerations of practicality became subject to uncompromising morality.

He had begun his career with great attention to his appearance; and always used dress as a statement and instrument of advancement. He consciously chose clothes to progressively identify himself with the British and the Europeans; with the Pārsīs of India; with the indentured workers of South Africa; with the Gujaratis; and, finally, with the toiling peasants and workers of India. Dress and appearance became a studied, meticulous, calculated mode of action to achieve a desired goal. The ascetic in him subjected himself to so many painful vows. That of non-possession, aparigraha, became universally visible in his scant raiment. I have already referred to his essays in sexual abstinence. The simplicity that surprised, the directness that disarmed, or disturbed the equanimity of his contemporaries, is eloquently described by Lala Lajpat Rai:

‘They suspect him of some deep design. He fears no one and frightens no one… He recognizes no conventions except such as are absolutely necessary not to remove him from the society of men and women. He recognizes no masters and no gurus. He claims no chelas though he has many… He owns no property, keeps no bank account, makes no investments, yet makes no fuss about asking for anything he needs. Such of his countrymen as have drunk deep from the fountains of European history and European politics and who have developed a deep love for European manners and European culture, neither understand nor like him. In their eyes he is a barbarian, visionary and a dreamer. He has probably something of all these qualities because he is nearest to the verities of life and can look at things with plain eyes, without the glasses of civilization and sophistry.’²⁸

Gandhi was resented and spurned by the thoroughly anglicized Jinnah, who gained primacy of the Indian Muslim leadership significantly through the exaggerated attention Gandhi paid him, always calling him Qaid-e-Azam, despite the misgivings of Maulana Azad and others. Both came out of Kathiawar. Descendant of a Hindu convert to Islam, Jinnah sold his soul to his ambition; his convictions to his ego; the interests of India’s Muslims to his megalomania; and the fate of India, the land of his birth and being, to the divisive patronage of the British. The irreligious Jinnah, ironically, became the founder of an intolerant Muslim Pakistan, which was torn apart by its own inner contradictions. The religious Gandhi was hailed as the Father of secular India.

Gandhi’s love of simple life shorn of all ornaments helped him identify himself with the poorest of the poor; but that simplicity was at times marred by a dogmatic rigidity which made it irksome as well as extravagant. Gandhi and his goat in London are an example in point. The simplicity of clothes and of food, if it were to become universal, would sound the death-knell of all sartorial elegance and culinary refinement. The weavers and makers of fine silk and other exquisite textiles and embroidery would go out of jobs. Beautiful carpets and their weavers would disappear from the world. Painters, sculptors, architects and their fine buildings would no longer be in demand; and the pursuit of beauty for its own sake would become an act of misguided intelligence. Simplicity should not be at loggerheads with beauty, with pomp and panoply, which also satisfy a need of the human heart and soul. The craving for magnificence can certainly co-exist with simplicity, which should not degenerate into a dogmatic rigidity of attitudes. Gandhi’s Hind Swaraj highlights his ambivalence and the vivid variance between his statements and practice. If the Western civilization was the work of the devil with nothing to commend it, as he held, he yet owed a great deal to his Western education and the study and experience of Western ideas and political institutions; Western methods of organization; Western abidance with the rule of law; and Western discipline and hygiene. In more ways than one, he came to India via the West, even though he had imbibed indelible ideals from his mother and mentors prior to his departure for England to study law. He read his scriptures in English translation before turning to their study in the original. His ideas of law, equity, justice and fair play owed not a little to his exposure to and study of the British way of life and laws. He could never evolve into the Mahatma we revere without the leaven of the West, its discipline, its organization, its values and secular ideologies. So many of his negative statements about the West were little more than eruptions of hyperbolic excess. On the one hand he decried the British way of life; and on the other, ever so often, he credited them with a great sense of justice and humanity, from which Indians could learn a lot to their advantage.

He denounced railways, but always used them. He denounced modern inventions; but travelled on ships from one continent to another; on motorcars from one place to another. He used the radio and the amplifier; the postal system, the telegraph and the telephone; bifocal spectacles and artificial dentures. He denounced doctors, but used doctors and their medication, as well as surgery, as and when required. He used the press and every available means of communication and propaganda. To change the world and take it back to the utopian Indian past of his imagination, he had no qualms about using its new-fangled instruments to achieve his goal. In fact, he was against the primacy of the machine, which would increase unemployment and progressively consign humankind to the scrapheap of idle existence. There is indeed something to be said for simplicity and simple life, with as little use of machines as possible, with as little travel as necessary, with only as much speed as imperative, with as little use of fuels as unavoidable, with as little destruction of vegetation as absolutely essential, if we have any desire to save our planet. We are pumping ever more greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere, melting ice-caps, destroying eco-systems, and consigning thousands of species to extinction. We contemplate with trepidation a stark bleak future, in which the heat turned up on our planet will send billions to starvation. Billions of barrels of oil are drilled each year. Billions of passenger kilometres are flown. Billions of tons of carbon are injected into the atmosphere. Harvests will fail, as the heat will go up, as water will become increasingly scarce. Gandhi had the prescience to press the need for conservation; limiting our needs and curbing our consumption. Mātā prithivī putro’haṁ prithivyāḥ: ‘The earth is my mother. I am the son of the earth’, says the Atharva Veda. It behoves us, therefore, to heed the health of our mother!

We also notice his prepossession with sanitation and hygiene, and his tireless efforts to rouse his countrymen and women to reform their habits; not to defecate in public; not to leave their faeces exposed to the elements; not to throw their rubbish outside their doors on roads and footpaths; not to clog their drains with refuse. Has anything changed? They loved him. They adored him. But they continue, without any sense of shame or responsibility, to defile India with their dirt. India’s Prime Minister, Narendra Modi is trying very hard to wake Indians up to the need for greater hygiene; but they go on building new temples and places of worship, without caring to keep Mother India clean!

A seeker and practitioner of nature cure, given to constant dietary experiments which at times seriously harmed his health, the vegetarian Gandhi pleaded only for the protection of the cow from the butcher’s block. His disapproval of non-vegetarian food and communal eating is supported neither by history nor human nature. Man was born a carnivore, not above cannibalism dictated by the supreme edict for survival. Progressive conquest of the environment with tools and technological advancement led to the development of agriculture. Observation and discoveries, chance and design helped the diversification of diet with cereals, vegetables and meat. Humans learned to cook in, and on fire; and to season their food with salt and spices. The mixing and heating of raw ingredients to prepare food for dinner is a universal trait of culture unique only to humankind. Cooking, according to Richard Wrangham, Professor of Biological Anthropology at Harvard, enabled our ancestors to develop bigger brains; and facilitated our evolution from advance ape to early human. ‘It gave extra energy, used for evolutionary success; reduced feeding time, freeing men to hunt; lowered weaning time, creating bigger families; allowed brain size to increase; gave us our short-faced, flat-bellied anatomy; enabled the sexual division of labour.’²⁹ And the art of cuisine kept pace with the evolution of cultures and civilizations, always in tune with dietary needs determined by climate. The basic truth of life subsisting on life brooked no denial despite ethical and cultural concepts with their prescriptions of vegetarianism. Life would just not be possible in parts of our world without humans consuming animal or sea food. It may be possible and practicable for a vegetarian in an arable landscape to subsist on fruits and cereals produced by the back-breaking industry of the farmer, who has to use animals to provide tractive power to till the land. And the milk derived from cows and buffaloes and other animals is not really any different from meat.³⁰ We are amused by Gandhi’s attitude towards milk, and his assertion of its quickening effect on human concupiscence; as also his acceptance of goat milk as a convenient way out of one of his many vows.

To reduce one’s diet to the barest essentials, to cut out spices and all seasonings including even salt is a denial of nature, of the need not only to eat but to enjoy it, to recoup one’s physical energy, to retain one’s appetite without which good health and zest for life are not possible. Gluttony is bad; excess is undesirable; but appetising food and the joy of eating wholesome food remain central to human existence, to the enjoyment of normal life. Gandhi’s recipes for food and good health would spell the end of the fine art of cooking, of its variety, of its presentation, and of the hearty satisfaction derived from scrumptious food. And Gandhi’s advice to eat alone, in private,³¹ would signal the end of the banter and bonhomie, socializing and forging of fruitful bonds, conversations and enlightening discussions among diners eating together, enjoying the finesse of cuisine suffused with the chef’s creative pride. The great cooks of the world would commit suicide. A beautiful chunk of life-affirming activity would be dictatorially expunged. A basic natural instinct would be sanctimoniously, unceremoniously discredited. Would that enrich life; add to its quality and purpose; make people more honest and loving; more tolerant and giving; less violent in their daily lives, in their thought, word and deed? Who knows?

Humans produced alcohol and alcoholic beverages as early as the seventh millennium B. C.; and have been imbibing them ever since. Religious prohibitions and social disapproval have proved unavailing. There is always a difference between the use and abuse of any substance. One can consume too much alcohol. One can eat too much food of one kind and another. One may not be able to resist any number of sweets. The fault lies with the individual, not the substance. Gandhi believed in the goodness of a government that governed least; and yet wanted to impose a prohibition on the consumption of alcohol in India. He forgot that soma and surā are as old as the oldest Indian scriptures; and neither gods nor humans ever refrained from alcoholic contentment. Alcohol serves medicinal needs; and, in drinks, serves to allay human anxiety, stress and fatigue; to bring people together; to solve issues and spread good cheer. Excess cannot be controlled by prohibition, but by education and persuasion. Coercive prohibition has never succeeded; will never succeed! Alcohol is mild, compared to the many addictive drugs and substances doing the rounds of our world. Prohibition glamorizes its consumption, pushes up its price, promotes lawlessness and corruption, and leads to the production of substandard illicit liquor resulting in the tragic loss of innocent lives.

Biographies are carved out of recorded and oral history, selective recollections, subjective sifting of details, real and contrived amnesia, likes and dislikes; and religious, socio-political and racial persuasions of the biographers. Those by Tendulkar and Pyarelal are source-books of primary material, personal testimony and informed comment. Mahadev Desai’s diaries and other writings help us understand Gandhi’s thought. Romain Rolland,³² Stanley Jones,³³ and John Holmes,³⁴ raise Gandhi to the level of a saint, with which Mahadev Desai, Tendulkar, Pyarelal and Gandhi’s close associates would readily agree. While Rolland visualized the oneness of Gandhi with the ‘Universal Being’, Holmes called him the ‘Greatest Man since Christ’.

Vincent Sheean,³⁵ Louis Fischer,³⁶ B. R. Nanda,³⁷ and Geoffrey Ashe,³⁸ look at the saint and the politician. Fischer met Gandhi in 1942, and again in 1946. He wrote four books on Gandhi. The Life of Mahatma Gandhi (1950) is deservedly famous for truthfully and sympathetically presenting a picture of Gandhi’s great gifts and extraordinary humanity; his honesty and humility; and his steadfast non-violence highlighting the singular greatness of the human spirit.

Eleanor Morton’s Women Behind Mahatma Gandhi³⁹ tries to size up the great achievements of Gandhi, and to discover how and why he was so loved by the women around him. She writes with understanding, not allowing her admiration to impair her truthful portrayal of the ‘little man’ the world looked upon with mystical awe as a great friend of humankind, as a champion of the outcasts and ‘untouchables’, as a man of God. William Shirer’s Gandhi A Memoir⁴⁰ recounts Gandhi launching the Civil Disobedience Movement, that finally led to India’s freedom. He won Gandhi’s friendship and confidence; held long and intimate conversations with him, which provided a first-hand insight into Gandhi’s greatness, as also his prejudices and peculiarities. His perceptive portrait highlights the magnificence of the Mahatma despite the distractions of his inscrutable obsessions.

Some of the most moving writing on Gandhi is to be found in Freedom at Midnight by Larry Collins and Dominique Lapierre.⁴¹ Searing accounts of the blood-thirsty madness preceding and following India’s partition, the role of Jinnah and his cohorts, and the trials and travails of Gandhi in Noakhali and Delhi, would melt a heart of stone to tears. We owe them a debt of gratitude for providing an authentic picture of India in the throes of vivisection; of unutterable suffering; and of Gandhi’s heroic efforts to stem the tide of cruel insanity, leading to his assassination.

Erik Erikson’s Gandhi’s Truth⁴² is not exactly a biography, but an incisive psycho-analytic insight into Gandhi’s personality and ideas shaping his attitudes and action. He relates Gandhi’s personality to the country’s culture and a specific historical moment; and looks for all the clues to understand the later Gandhi in his very first Indian campaign in Ahmedabad. He discovers that the demands Gandhi made on others and himself were incredibly hard, so much so, that the lives of the followers became part of the leader’s. Erikson’s observation that ‘Indians...live in more centuries at the same time than most other peoples’⁴³ may perhaps be true. The difference, however, that he tries to determine between Western and Indian truthfulness is indeed fanciful. Any attempt to distinguish between Western and Indian ideas of truth often betrays a Western prejudice upholding their concept and practice of absolute, unalloyed truth, as against Indian variations of truth. But duplicity and diplomacy, dissimulation, prevarication, equivocation, spin, are all Western words describing the reality of Western life and practice of malleable truth. There is no difference. Strict, unalterable truth was not unknown to Indians from the days of the Ṛgveda onwards. Sat⁴⁴ and Ṛta⁴⁵ express it; the Upaniṣadic satyameva jayate nānṛtam⁴⁶ reinforces it; Sanskrit literature reiterates it; the Hindi poet Tulasī Dāsa’s line prāṇa jāyen par vacana na jāyī⁴⁷ is a part of India’s common consciousness. Yet, hypocrisy, falsehood and false appearances are as commonplace as in the West. Distinctive description of the bisexuality of Indians and their maternal solicitude for others is also misleading. He talks of India’s mother goddesses, but forgets the mother goddesses of the West dating back to prehistory; the maternal solicitude and bisexuality of Christ; the all-embracing compassion of Mother Mary and baby Christ. The bisexuality of all humankind is a fact certainly not confined to India; there is a female hidden in every man, as there was also in Gandhi, even though he was called Bāpū (father). Indians, of course, emphatically express this truth in the images of Ardhanārīśvara illustrating in the unity of Śiva and Pārvatī the deletion of duality. The Christian church likewise represents the body of Christ as their Mother protecting her flock and providing for the faithful.

Erikson points out that Gandhi’s truth lay in factualness, punctuality and responsibility. He knew no respite. He was a twenty-four hour man. As he himself said: ‘God never occurs to you in person but always in action.’ Erikson also presents an insightful appraisal of Gandhi’s relationship with his wife; and makes a fine attempt to comprehend Gandhi’s sexuality; his obsession with the guilt of tumescence; his brahmacarya and his prepossession with hygiene. He sums Gandhi up as a ‘religious actualist’ with an extraordinary