The Essential Gandhi (6 page)

 … I had absolutely no reason to suspect my wife’s fidelity but jealousy does not wait for reasons. I must needs be forever on the look-out regarding her movements and therefore she could not go anywhere without my permission. This sowed the seeds of a bitter quarrel between us. The restraint was virtually a sort of imprisonment. And Kasturbai was not the girl to brook any such thing. She made it a point to go out whenever and wherever she liked. More restraint on my part resulted in more liberty being taken by her and in my getting more and more cross. Refusal to speak to one another thus became the order of the day with us, married children. I think it was quite innocent of Kasturbai to have taken those liberties with my restrictions. How could a guileless girl brook any restraints on going to the temple or on going on visits to friends? If I had the right to impose restrictions on her, had not she also similar right? All this is clear to me today. But at the time I had to make good my authority as a husband!

I must say I was passionately fond of her. Even at school I used to think of her and the thought of nightfall and our subsequent meeting was ever haunting me. Separation was unbearable. I used to keep her awake till late in the night with my idle talk.…

 … Along with the cruel custom of child marriages, Hindu society has another custom which to a certain extent diminishes the evils of the former. Parents do not allow young couples to stay long together. The child-wife spends more than half her time at her father’s place. Such was the case with us. That is to say, during the first five years of our married life (from the age of thirteen to eighteen), we could not have lived together longer than an aggregate period of three years. We would hardly have spent six months together when there would be a call to my wife from her parents. Such calls were very unwelcome in those days but they saved us both.…
⁹

[Gandhi himself lost a year at high school through getting married.]

 … I had not any high regard for my ability. I used to be astonished whenever I won prizes and scholarships. But I very jealously guarded my character. The least little blemish drew tears from my eyes. When I merited, or seemed to the teacher to merit, a rebuke, it was unbearable for me. I remember having once received corporal punishment. I did not so much mind the punishment as the fact that it was considered my desert. I wept piteously.…
¹⁰

[The] teacher wanted me to make good the [grade] loss by skipping [one]—a privilege usually allowed to industrious boys.… English became the medium of instruction in most subjects … I found myself completely at sea. Geometry was a new subject in which I was not particularly strong and the English medium made it still more difficult for me. The teacher taught the subject very well but I could not follow him. Often I would lose heart and think of going back.… But this would discredit not only me but also the teacher, because, counting on my industry, he had recommended my promotion. So fear of the double discredit kept me at my post. When, however, with much effort I reached the thirteenth proposition of Euclid, the utter simplicity of the subject was suddenly revealed to me. A subject which required only a pure and simple use of one’s reasoning powers could not be difficult. Ever since that time geometry has been both easy and interesting for me.
¹¹

[Gandhi likewise had trouble with Sanskrit but after the teacher, Mr. Krishnashanker, reminded him that it was the language of Hinduism’s sacred scriptures, the future Mahatma persevered and succeeded.]

 … I never took part in any exercise, cricket or football, before they were made compulsory. My shyness was one of the reasons for this aloofness, which I now see was wrong. I then had the false notion that gymnastics had nothing to do with education. Today I know that physical training should have as much place in the curriculum as mental training.

 … I was none the worse for abstaining from exercise.… I had read in books about the benefits of long walks in the open air, and
having liked the advice I had formed a habit of taking walks which has still remained with me. These walks gave me a fairly hardy constitution.
¹²

[Mohandas envied the bigger, stronger boys. He was frail compared with his older brother, and especially compared with a Moslem friend named Sheik Mehtab, who could run great distances with remarkable speed. Sheik Mehtab was spectacular in the long and high jump as well. These exploits dazzled Gandhi.]

 … This [admiration] was followed by a strong desire to be like him. I could hardly jump or run. Why should not I also be as strong as he?

Moreover, I was a coward. I used to be haunted by the fear of thieves, ghosts and serpents. I did not dare to stir out of doors at night. Darkness was a terror to me. It was almost impossible for me to sleep in the dark.… How could I disclose my fears to my wife, no child but already at the threshold of youth, sleeping by my side? I knew she had more courage than I and I felt ashamed of myself.… My friend knew all these weaknesses of mine. He would tell me that he could hold in his hand live serpents, could defy thieves and did not believe in ghosts. And all this was, of course, the result of eating meat.

[The boys at school used to recite this poem.]

…
“We are a weak people because we do not eat meat” [argued Sheik Mehtab]. “The English are able to rule over us because they are meat-eaters. You know how hardy I am and how great a runner too. It is because I am a meat-eater. Meat-eaters do not have boils or tumors and even if they sometimes happen to have any, these heal quickly. Our teacher and other distinguished people who eat meat are no fools. They know its virtues. You should do likewise. There is nothing like trying. Try, and see what strength it gives.”

All these pleas … were not advanced at a single sitting. They represent the substance of a long and elaborate argument.…

 … I was beaten.…

A day was thereupon fixed for beginning the experiment. It had to be conducted in secret. [The family was strictly vegetarian by religious conviction, and so were almost all inhabitants of the district.] … I was extremely devoted to my parents. I knew that the moment they came to know of my having eaten meat they would be shocked to death. Moreover, my love of truth made me extra cautious.… And having insured secrecy, I persuaded myself that mere hiding the deed from parents was no departure from truth.
¹³

So the day came.… We went in search of a lonely spot by the river and there I saw, for the first time in my life—meat. There was baker’s bread [with yeast] also. I relished neither. The goat’s meat was as tough as leather. I simply could not eat it. I was sick and had to leave off eating.

I had a very bad night afterwards. A horrible nightmare haunted me. 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. But then I would remind myself that meat-eating was a duty and so become more cheerful.

My friend was not a man to give in easily. He now began to cook various delicacies with meat and dress them neatly.…

The bait had its effect. I got over my dislike for bread, forswore my compassion for the goats and became a relisher of meat dishes, if not of meat itself. This went on for about a year.…

[I] knew that if my mother and father came to know of my having become a meat-eater they would be deeply shocked. This knowledge was gnawing at my heart.

Therefore I said to myself: “Though it is essential to eat meat … yet deceiving and lying to one’s father and mother is worse than not eating meat. In their lifetime, therefore, meat-eating must be out of the question. When they are no more and I have found my freedom, I will eat meat openly but until that moment I will abstain from it.”

[By now Gandhi developed an urge to reform Sheik Mehtab. This prolonged the relationship. But the naïve and younger Gandhi was no match for the shrewd, monied wastrel who offered revolt and adventure.]

 … My zeal for reforming him … proved disastrous for me, and all the time I was completely unconscious of the fact.

The same company would have led me into faithlessness to my wife.… [He] once took me to a brothel. He sent me in with the necessary instructions. It was all pre-arranged. The bill had already been paid.… I was almost struck blind and dumb in this den of vice. I sat near the woman on her bed but I was tongue-tied. She naturally lost patience with me and showed me the door with abuses and insults. I then felt as though my manhood had been injured and wished to sink into the ground for shame. But I have ever since given thanks to God for having saved me.…
¹⁴

[About that time—Mohandas must have been fifteen—he pilfered a bit of gold from his older brother. This produced a moral crisis. He had gnawing pangs of conscience and resolved never to steal again.]

 … I also made up my mind to confess it to my father. But I did not dare to speak. Not that I was afraid of my father beating me. No, I do not recall his ever having beaten any of us. I was afraid of the pain that I should cause him. But I felt the risk should be taken, that there could not be a cleansing without a confession.

I decided at last to write out the confession, to submit it to my father and ask his forgiveness. I wrote it on a slip of paper and handed it to him myself. In this note not only did I confess my guilt but I asked adequate punishment for it and closed with a request to him not to punish himself for my offense. I also pledged myself never to steal in the future.

I was trembling as I handed the confession to my father. [He sat up in his sick bed to read it.]

He read it through and pearl-drops trickled down his cheeks, wetting the paper. For a moment he closed his eyes in thought and then tore up the note.… He again lay down. I also cried. I could see my father’s agony.…

Those pearl-drops of love cleansed my heart and washed my sin away. Only he who has experienced such love can know what it is.…

This was for me an object lesson in Ahimsa [Love and Non-Violence]. Then I could read in it nothing more than a father’s love but today I know that it was pure Ahimsa. When such Ahimsa becomes all-embracing it transforms everything it touches. There is no limit to its power.

This sort of sublime forgiveness was not natural to my father. I had thought he would be angry, say hard things and strike his forehead. But he was so wonderfully peaceful and I believe this was due to my clean confession. A clean confession, combined with a promise never to commit the sin again, when offered before one who has the right to receive it, is the purest type of repentance. I know my confession made my father feel absolutely safe about me and increased his affection for me beyond measure.
¹⁵

[Lest he give pain to his father and especially his mother, Mohandas did not tell them that he absented himself from temple.]

[The temple] never appealed to me. I did not like its glitter and pomp.…

 … I happened about this time to come across Manusmriti [Laws of Manu—Hindu religious laws] which was amongst my father’s collection. The story of creation and similar things in it did not impress me very much but on the contrary made me incline somewhat towards atheism.

There was a cousin of mine … for whose intellect I had great regard. To him I turned with my doubts. But he could not resolve them.…

[Contrary to the Hindu precept of non-killing] I also felt it was quite moral to kill serpents, bugs and the like.…

But one thing took deep root in me—the conviction that morality is the basis of things and that truth is the substance of all morality. Truth became my sole objective … and my definition of it also has been ever widening.

A Gujarati [Gandhi’s native language] stanza likewise gripped
my mind and heart. Its precept—return good for evil—became my guiding principle.…
¹⁶

[Gandhi’s anti-religious sentiments quickened his interest in religion and he listened attentively to his father’s frequent discussions with Moslem and Parsi friends on the differences between their faiths and Hinduism.]

[The “shackles of lust” tormented Gandhi. They gave him a feeling of guilt. The feeling grew when sex seemed to clash with the keen sense of duty which developed in him at an early age. One instance of such a conflict impressed itself indelibly.]

The time of which I am now speaking is my sixteenth year. My father … was bed-ridden [with a fistula].… My mother, an old servant of the house and I were his principal attendants. I had the duties of a nurse, which mainly consisted of dressing the wound, giving my father his medicine and compounding drugs whenever they had to be made up at home. Every night I massaged his legs and retired only when he asked me to do so or after he had fallen asleep. I loved to do this service. I do not remember ever having neglected it. All the time at my disposal after the performance of the daily duties was divided between school and attending on my father. I would go out only for an evening walk either when he permitted me or when he was feeling well.

This was also the time when my wife was expecting a baby—a circumstance which … meant a double shame for me. For one thing I did not restrain myself, as I should have done, whilst I was yet a student. And secondly, this carnal lust got the better of what I regarded as my duty to study and of what was even a greater duty, my devotion to my parents.… Every night whilst my hands were busy massaging my father’s legs my mind was hovering about the bedroom—and that too at a time when religion, medical science and common sense alike forbade sexual intercourse. I was always glad to be relieved from my duty and went straight to the bedroom after doing obeisance to my father.

At the same time my father was getting worse every day.… He
despaired of living any longer. He was getting weaker and weaker until at last he had to be asked to perform the necessary functions in bed. But up to the last he refused to do anything of the kind, always insisting on going through the strain of leaving his bed. The Vaishnavite [Orthodox Hindu] rules about external cleanliness are so inexorable.