An Autobiography of My Experiments of Truth
Mahatma Gandhi
Though Gandhi is one of the most influential people of the 20th century, I knew nearly nothing about him before reading his autobiography.
Organized chronologically, the reader follows Gandhi from his childhood in Porbandar, on the West Coast of India, to London, where he studied to become a lawyer, and South Africa, where his social reforms and work for the vulnerable started. Later chapters discuss Gandhi’s work with the Indians on the sub-continent and his actions with the nascent Indian National Congress.
What stands out from the book are Gandhi’s guiding principles rather than his particular causes.
For example, it is impossible to separate Gandhi from his humility, aversion to injustice, simplicity, or quirks.
First, the quirks:
Gandhi was nuts about homemade medicines and remedies. He wouldn’t seem out of place with a crowd of modern-day tincturists and diet weirdos.
To be fair though, at the time, much of what they believed to be sound medical practice was not much more effective.
Gandhi was also a religious man. Before leaving to study in London, Gandhi earnestly promised his mother that he wouldn’t touch alcohol, meat, or women when he went away.
As for women, Gandhi had already been married at 14, a practice common in India in Gandhi’s day.
He writes unfavorably about his experience of child marriage. Here it is possible to see some of his experiments with truth. He recounts how he behaved poorly with his young wife.
That Gandhi doesn’t gloss over his own negative actions is an example of his humility.
It was harder to avoid eating meat and to abstain from alcohol. Abstaining from drinking alcohol was difficult because of the social expectations at the university.
Avoiding meat was difficult because 19th-century England had few purely vegetarian dishes. With England’s climate in certain seasons, there were few healthy alternatives to eating meat dishes. Cooking was an unknown art to the young man, and what’s more, vegetarian restaurants hardly existed in London at the time.
Still, Gandhi held to his promise. It resulted in him falling into the orbit of vegetarians and dietary reformers.
This company offered him some of his first opportunities to organize people. But with group organizing, Gandhi had very mixed results. Though trained as a lawyer, his shyness prevented him from speaking in front of others. To speak in English, a non-native language to him certainly didn’t make it easier.
Gandhi’s shyness would follow him back to India where he was unable to plead court cases out loud.
In England, Gandhi first established his lifelong habits of walking daily, eating simply, extreme frugality, and self-reliance.
Later, in South Africa, Gandhi began agitating for social reform.
At the time, there were many Indian indentured servants in the Natal region. Because of their dark skin color, the ruling whites grouped Indians with the Africans and treated them nearly as poorly. Despite Gandhi’s loyalty to the British Empire, it stung to be treated so atrociously just on account of the color of his skin.
Despite the open racist discrimination, Gandhi took the opportunities of the Boer War and the Zulu rebellion to improve the lot of Indians in South Africa by serving the British Empire loyally. He organized an Indian ambulance corps to carry wounded soldiers out of danger.
Showing that Indians were willing to aid the British, even at the cost of their lives, allowed Gandhi to counter negative stereotypes about Indians and prove that they were brave, selfless, and could withstand physical duress. And it allowed Indians to see themselves in a new light – organized, uniform, and effective.
Working with the diverse Indian population in South Africa also showed Gandhi not to fixate on what separated Indians from one another. While in South Africa, their lot was all the same, no matter what language they spoke, region they came from, or religion they practiced.
Later in life, this pan-Indian perspective would help Gandhi gain followers in his homeland among different castes, regions, and religions.
It was also in South Africa that Gandhi furthered his thoughts about economic self-reliance. He spent some years on a type of commune inspired by the writings of Leo Tolstoy. Everyone at the commune was expected to work and learn useful, practical skills. No labor was considered base or to be looked down upon.
Economic self-reliance would become a cornerstone of Gandhi’s struggle against the British in India, where the poverty was so crippling that the people’s desperation would result in their inability to work together for a common cause.
Gandhi revived the manual cotton spinning industry to disentangle the Poor from dependence upon expensive imported materials. Likewise, Gandhi’s famous salt march would allow Indians to skirt aside the exorbitant taxes that the British sought to levy on their subjects.
I probably wouldn’t recommend An Autobiography of My Experiments of Truth for its neat turns of phrase or eye-popping excitement. However, the historical information and expansive ideas in the book argue for its being read.
Best for those who want to familiarize themselves with civil disobedience and its philosophical underpinnings, students of history, and the generally curious.
Words that keep cropping up that need a little further explanation :
Ahimsa – Non-violence as espoused by various Indian religions.
Satyagraha – Persistent, brave, and forceful Civil Resistance.
Swadeshi – Self-Rule.
Khadi – A hand-spun, natural-fiber cloth. Gandhi encouraged poor villagers to produce their own Khadi since otherwise they would need to buy expensive British cloth.
Books mentioned in the text that seem interesting enough to add to my reading list:
The Kingdom of God is Within You – Leo Tolstoy
Unto This Last – John Ruskin
Letter to a Hindu – Leo Tolstoy
Have you read Gandhi’s autobiography? What about Gandhi’s other writings?