Gandhi, India, and my 20’s (but mostly Gandhi)

In India, January 26th is Republic Day. It was my third week teaching at Shanti Bhavan, a boarding school in Tamil Nadu for poor rural children, and I had the privilege of witnessing how the school celebrated the holiday. The children marched around the flag in an adorably militaristic fashion and sang the national anthem. The highlight of the day though was a child, no older than four, standing under the flag, impeccably dressed as Mahatma Gandhi

Looking at this child got me wondering — why does India love Gandhi so much? He is on all the money, venerated in every textbook, and idolized throughout the country. He is even honored on Republic Day which commemorates the ratification of the Indian Constitution, something he was not a part of and occurred two years after his death.

I pillaged the Shanti Bhavan library for resources on the man and was miraculously able to find a slim biography on him (the Shanti Bhavan library, though sizable, seems to have been organized by an easily distractible troll with only a vague understanding of the alphabet.) I also procured his autobiography from a fellow volunteer. Though reading these books answered many of my questions about Gandhi’s life, they raised a few about my own.

Gandhi’s strength came through his strict adherence to certain principles. Non-violence (ahisma), non-possession (aparigraha), and celibacy (brahmacharya) guided everything he did and his faithfulness to these principles is what made him so magnetic and well-respected. Gandhi formed these principles in his 20’s and 30’s in South Africa and spent the rest of his life applying them through satyagraha (passive resistance) in India and South Africa. When Gandhi was my age of 25, he was fighting the £3 poll tax on Indians in Natal, South Africa. He already had two children and had been married for twelve years.

The lesson of Gandhi’s life is clear-cut: success comes to those who find their principles and stay true to them. This motif appears in his autobiography The Story of my Experiments with Truth again and again, nearly to the point of tediousness. Looking at my own life though, especially at my time here in India, I find that I have often acted against doctrine. As opposed to confirming and deepening my beliefs, my 20’s has been filled with altering and refining them. My ideals have changed so much that I hold them with much less conviction than I did only a couple years ago. It feels like it would be a disadvantageous to be so resolute.

In fact, there were many times when even Gandhi was hindered by the steadfastness of his principles. For example, at one point in his life, an American insurance agent convinced Gandhi to take out life insurance. Later on, Gandhi felt that it represented a lack of faith in God to protect him. His autobiography says the following:

All the steps I took at this time of trial were taken in the name of God and for His service. I did not know how long I should have to stay in South Africa. I had a fear that I might never be able to get back to India: so I decided to keep my wife and children with me and earn enough to support them. This plan made me deplore the life policy and feel ashamed of having been caught in the net of the insurance agent. If, I said to myself, my brother is really in the position of my father, surely he would not consider it too much of a burden to support my widow, if it came to that? And what reason had I to assume that death would claim me earlier than the others? After all the real protector was neither I nor my brother, but the Almighty. In getting my life insured I had robbed my wife and children of their self-reliance. Why should they not be expected to take care of themselves? What happened to the families of the numberless poor in the world? Why should I not count myself as one of them?

In 1903, Gandhi, a man whose life was always at risk, let his life insurance policy lapse and gave all of his money to his brother in the name of non-possession. Gandhi’s brother, angry and confused, stopped all communication with Gandhi until the end of his life. Through acting on his own principles, Gandhi not only lost his brother but put his family at risk of destitution.

This is hardly the only example of Gandhi putting others at risk for his principles. On multiple occasions, Kasturba, his wife, or one of his children fell very ill. Each time, a doctor suggested a treatment that went against Gandhi’s strict diet, such as chicken broth, brandy, or beef tea (yuck.) Gandhi always refused the doctor’s advice, even as his loved ones were on the verge of death, and administered his own home remedies. Each time, the family member pulled through and his resolve for his principles strengthened. Although modern medicine has discredited brandy and beef tea as remedies, were Gandhi alive today one could imagine him applying similar logic today to vaccinating children.

Kasturba suffered an entire lifetime of hardship under Gandhi’s principles. Gandhi highly valued humbleness, chores, and sanitation, so he made Kasturba clean the chamber pots for all the numerous guests who lived in their house. This was very unusual for an Indian home, especially the home of a prominent lawyer like Gandhi. Toilet cleaning was traditionally a job for Dalits, members of the untouchable caste. Instead, Kasturba had to clean the toilets of Dalits! As a traditional Hindu, this was too much for her to bare. However, after months of arguing and doing it himself, Gandhi eventually convinced her to follow suit. But one day he saw Kasturba unhappily cleaning a toilet and flew into a rage:

Even today I can recall the picture of her chiding me, her eyes red with anger, and pearl drops streaming down her cheeks, as she descended the ladder, pot in hand. But I was a cruelly kind husband. I regarded myself as her teacher, and so harassed her out of my blind love for her. I was far from being satisfied by her merely carrying the pot. I would have her do it cheerfully. So I said, raising my voice: ‘I will not stand this nonsense in my house.’ The words pierced her like an arrow. She shouted back: ‘Keep your house to yourself and let me go.’ I forgot myself, and the spring of compassion dried up in me. I caught her by the hand, dragged the helpless woman to the gate, which was just opposite the ladder, and proceeded to open it with the intention of pushing her out. The tears were running down her cheeks in torrents, and she cried: ‘Have you no sense of shame? Must you so far forget yourself? Where am I to go? I have no parents or relatives here to harbour me….’ I put on a brave face, but was really ashamed and shut the gate. If my wife could not leave me, neither could I leave her. We have had numerous bickerings, but the end has always been peace between us.

Gandhi sacrificed his family’s well-being for his principles. Today, it is difficult to say whether he should be revered or reviled for it. In my own life, I know I would renounce most any principle for the good of my family. But Gandhi’s admirable life makes me wonder — is that a good thing? Should I strive to find a greater good worth detaching from the world for? Or are principles inherently too inflexible and require a lifetime of tweaking?

Maybe I’ll figure it out in my thirties.