Mahatma Gandhi

The Man who Became One with the Universal Being

Romain Rolland

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781000697155
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: World History
• Index: History

Originally published in 1924, this book explores the life of Mahatma Gandhi. Translated by Catherine D. Groth

Part One

§ 1

SOFT dark eyes, a small frail man, with a thin face and rather large protruding eyes, his head covered with a little white cap, his body clothed in coarse white cloth, barefooted. He lives on rice and fruit, and drinks only water. He sleeps on the floor—sleeps very little, and works incessantly. His body does not seem to count at all. There is nothing striking about him—except his whole expression of "infinite patience and infinite love." W. W. Pearson, who met him in South Africa, instinctively thought of St. Francis of Assisi. There is an almost childlike simplicity about him.¹ His manner is gentle and courteous even when dealing with adversaries,² and he is of immaculate sincerity.³ He is modest and unassuming, to the point of sometimes seeming almost timid, hesitant, in making an assertion. Yet you feel his indomitable spirit. He makes no compromises and never tries to hide a mistake. Nor is he afraid to admit having been in the wrong. Diplomacy is unknown to him; he shuns oratorical effect or, rather, never thinks about it; and he shrinks unconsciously from the great popular demonstrations organized in his honour. Literally "ill with the multitude that adores him,"¹ he distrusts majorities and fears "mobocracy" and the unbridled passions of the populace. He feels at ease only in a minority, and is happiest when, in meditative solitude, he can listen to the "still small voice" within.²

¹ As C. F. Andrews says, He laughs like a child and adores children."

² "Few can resist the charm of his personality. His bitterest enemies become courteous when confronted with his beautiful courtesy" (Joseph J. Doke).

³ "Every departure from truth, no matter how trifling, is intolerable to him" (C. F. Andrews).

¹ "He is not a passionate orator; his manner is calm and serene and he appeals particularly to the intelligence. But his serenity places the subject he discusses in the clearest light. The inflexions of his voice are not varied, but they are intensely sincere. He never makes any gestures with his arms, in fact he rarely even moves a finger. But his luminous words, expressed in terse, concise sentences, carry conviction. He never abandons a subject before he feels that he has made it perfectly clear" (Joseph J. Doke).

² Young India, March 2, 1922. The dates cited in the notes of this volume refer to the date of publication of Gandhi's articles in Young India.

This is the man who has stirred three hundred million people to revolt, who has shaken the foundations of the British Empire, and who has introduced into human politics the strongest religious impetus of the last two thousand years.

§ 2

His real name is Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi. He was born in a little semi-independent state in the north-western part of India, at Porbandar, the "White City" on the sea of Oman, October 2, 1868. He comes of an ardent and active race, which to this day has been split by civil strife; a practical race, commercially keen, which established trade relations all the way from Aden to Zanzibar. Gandhi's father and grandfather were both leaders of the people and met with persecution because of their independent spirit. Both were forced to flee for safety, their lives in peril. Gandhi's family was well-to-do and belonged to a cultivated class of society, but it was not of superior caste. His parents were followers of the Jäin school of Hinduism, which regards ahimsa,¹ the doctrine of non-injury to any form of life, as one of its basic principles. This was the doctrine which Gandhi was to proclaim victoriously throughout the world. The Jäinists believe that the principle of love, not intelligence, is the road which leads to God. The Mahatma's father cared little for wealth and material values, and left scarcely any to his family, having given almost everything away to charity. Gandhi's mother was a very devout woman, a sort of Hindu St. Elisabeth, fasting, giving alms to the poor, and nursing the sick. In Gandhi's family the Ramanyana was read regularly. His first teacher was a Brahman who taught him to memorize the texts of Vishnu.¹ In later years Gandhi expressed regret at not being a better Sanskrit scholar, and one of his grievances against English education in India is that it makes the natives lose the treasures of their own language. Gandhi became, however, a profound student of Hindu scriptures, although he read the Vedas and the Upanishads in translation only.²

¹ A, privative, himsa, to do evil. Hence, ahimsa, principle of not harming aL, y form of life, non-violence. It is one of Hinduism's most ancient precepts, proclaimed by Mahavira, the founder of Jaïnism, by Buddha, as well as by the disciples of Vishnu.

¹ He attended the elementary school of Porbandar till the age of seven and then the public school of Rajkot till ten. After that he went to the high school of Katyavar until, at the age of seventeen, he entered the University of Ahmedabad.

² He described his childhood in a speech at the Pariah Conference, April 13, 1921.

while still a boy he passed through a severe religious crisis. Shocked at the idolatrous form sometimes assumed by Hinduism, he became, or imagined he became, an atheist, and to prove that religion meant nothing to him he and some friends went so far as to eat meat, a frightful sacrilege for a Hindu. And Gandhi nearly perished with disgust and mortification.³ He was engaged at the age of eight and married at the age of twelve.¹ At nineteen he was sent to England to complete his studies at the University of London and at the law school. Before his leaving India, his mother made him take the three vows of Jaïn, which prescribe abstention from wine, meat, and sexual intercourse.

³ Long afterward he told Joseph Doke of the anguish he had suffered after eating meat. He was unable to sleep; he felt like a murderer.

¹ He is not in favour of child marriages, however, and made a campaign against them, on the ground that they weaken the race. In exceptional cases, however, he says that such unions, sealed before the individual's character is moulded, may build up between husband and wife an exceptionally beautiful relationship of sympathy and harmony. Gandhi's own wife is an admirable example of this. Mrs. Gandhi shared all her husband's trials and adversities with unfailing steadfastness of purpose and indomitable courage.

He arrived in London in September, 1888, and after the first few months of uncertainty and deception, during which, as he says, he " wasted a lot of time and money trying to become an Englishman," he buckled down to hard work and led a strictly regulated life. Some friends gave him a copy of the Bible, but the time to understand it had not yet come. But it was during his stay in London that he realized for the first time the beauty of the Bhagavad Gitâ. He was carried away by it. It was the light the exiled Hindu had been seeking, and it gave him back his faith. He realized that for him salvation could lie only in Hinduism.²

² Speech of April 13, 1921.

He returned to India in 1891, a rather sad home-coming, for his mother had just died, and the news of her death had been withheld from him. Soon afterward he began practising law at the Supreme Court of Bombay. He abandoned this career a few years later, having come to look upon it as immoral. But even while practising law he used to make a point of reserving the right to abandon a case if he had reason to believe it unjust.

At this stage of his career he met various people who stirred in him a presentiment as to his future mission in life. He was influenced by two men in particular. One of them was the "Uncrowned King of Bombay," the Parsi Dadabhai, and the other Professor Gokhale. Gokhale was one of the leading statesmen in India and one of the first to introduce educational reforms, while Dadabhai, according to Gandhi, was the real founder of the Indian nationalist movement. Both men combined the highest wisdom and learning with the utmost simplicity and gentleness.¹ It was Dadabhai who, in trying to moderate Gandhi's youthful ardour, gave him, in 1892, his first real lesson in ahimsa by teaching him to apply heroic passivity—if two such words may be linked—to public life by fighting evil, not by evil, but by love, A little later we will discuss this magic word of ahimsa, the sublime message of India to the world.

¹ These two men, precursors, have suffered from the ingratitude and forgetfulness of younger generations. Their political ideal having been surpassed, their efforts in paving the way have been deprecated. Gandhi, however, always realized their contribution to the cause and remained true to them, particularly to Gokhale. for whom he felt a deep and almost religious affection. He frequently speaks of Gokhale and Dadabhai as men whom Young India should venerate. (See Hind Swaraj, Letter to ins Parsees, Young India, March 23, 1921, and the Confession of Faith, July 13, 1021.)

§ 3

Gandhi's activity may be divided into two periods. From 1893 to 1914 its field was South Africa; from 1914 to 1922, India.

That Gandhi could carry on the South African campaign for more than twenty years without awakening any special comment in Europe is a proof of the incredible shortsightedness of our political leaders, historians, thinkers, and believers, for Gandhi's efforts constituted a soul's epopee, unequalled in our times, not only because of the intensity and the constancy of the sacrifice required, but because of the final triumph.

In 1890-91 some 150,000 Indian emigrants were settled in South Africa, most of them having taken up abode in Natal. The white population resented their presence, and the Government encouraged the xenophobia of the whites by a series of oppressive measures designed to prevent the immigration of Asiatics and to oblige those already settled in Africa to leave. Through systematic persecution the life of the Indians in Africa was made intolerable; they were burdened with overwhelming taxes and subjected to the most humiliating police ordinances and outrages of all sorts, ranging from the looting and destruction of shops and property to lynching, all under cover of "white" civilization.

In 1893 Gandhi was called to Pretoria on an important case. He was not familiar with the situation in South Africa, but from the very-first he met with illuminating experiences. Gandhi, a Hindu of high race, who had always been received with the greatest courtesy in England and Europe, and who until then had looked upon the whites as his natural friends, suddenly found himself the butt of the vilest affronts. In Natal, and particularly in Dutch Transvaal, he was thrown out of hotels and trains, insulted, beaten, and kicked. He would have returned to India at once if he had not been bound by contract to remain a year in South Afri...