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PENGUIN BOOKS An Autobiography Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi was born in 1869 at Porbandar in western India. In 1888 he went to London to study law, qualifying in 1891, where he encountered liberal and Christian ideas, and the teachings of Tolstoy. Returning to India, he practised law there until 1893 when he left for South Africa. The Transvaal government’s discriminatory policy led him to campaign for the rights of the Indian community using the method of passive resistance, which he called Satyagraha – truth force. Gandhi returned to India in 1915 and in 1925 he became President of the Indian National Congress. His first major clash with the British government came in 1919 over the Rowlatt Acts. He introduced the hartal, a strike during which the people devoted themselves to prayer and fasting. When this resulted in violence he left politics for a time and travelled throughout India to teach his main principles: Hindu–Muslim unity, the abolition of untouchability, and the promotion of handspinning. He wore a homespun cotton dhoti and shawl, which won the people’s hearts, and he became known as Mahatma – the great soul. Gandhi was imprisoned many times, which, with his hunger strikes, badly affected his health. In 1934 he resigned as leader of the Congress, although he remained a powerful influence, and he became leader again for a short time in 1940–41. Gandhi continued to campaign against partition, until he realized its inevitability. However, on Independence Day, 15 August 1947, he refused to celebrate and spent the day fasting and in prayer. In 1948 in Delhi he began a fast to the death for peace between the two warring communities. But this had aroused hostility amongst the militant section of the Hindus and on 30 January 1948, one of them shot Gandhi dead. Gandhi’s life of non-violence was perhaps the most remarkable life of the twentieth century, lived as it was during the most violent era in human history, and his influence has spread across the globe – from Martin Luther King to Nelson Mandela to Aung San Suu Kyi. All his life he held to two fundamental principles, Ahimsa, non-violence, and Satya, truth. He said: ‘My uniform experience has convinced me that there is no other God than Truth. And if every page of these chapters does not proclaim to the reader that the only means for the realization of Truth is Ahimsa, I shall deem all my labour … to have been in vain’. Sunil Khilnani is Professor of Politics at Birkbeck College, University of London. His publications include Arguing Revolution: The Intellectual Left in Postwar France (1993), The Idea of India (Penguin, 1998) and (with Sudipta Kaviraj) Civil Society: History and Possibilities (2001), and he is currently writing a biography of Jawaharlal Nehru. M. K. GANDHI An Autobiography OR THE STORY OF MY EXPERIMENTS WITH TRUTH Translated from the original Gujarati by MAHADEV DESAI With an Introduction by Sunil Khilnani PENGUIN BOOKS Published by the Penguin Group Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England Penguin Putnam Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA Penguin Books Australia Ltd, 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia Penguin Books Canada Ltd, 10 Alcorn Avenue, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4V 3B2 Penguin Books India (P) Ltd, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi – 110 017, India Penguin Books (NZ) Ltd, Cnr Rosedale and Airborne Roads, Albany, Auckland, New Zealand Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank 2196, South Africa Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England www.penguin.com First published in Gujarati and in English by the Navajivan Publishing House in two volumes; Volume 1, 1927, Volume 2, 1929 First published in Great Britain by Penguin Books 1982 Reprinted with a new Introduction in Penguin Classics 2001 12 Copyright 1927 and 1929 by The Navajivan Trust Introduction copyright © Sunil Khilnani 2001 All rights reserved Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser CONTENTS Introduction by Sunil Khilani Translator’s Preface (MAHADEV DESAI) Author’s Introduction PART I 1 Birth and Parentage 2 Childhood 3 Child Marriage 4 Playing the Husband 5 At the High School 6 A Tragedy 7 A Tragedy (CONTINUED) 8 Stealing and Atonement 9 My Father’s Death and My Double Shame 10 Glimpses of Religion 11 Preparation for England 12 Outcaste 13 In London at Last 14 My Choice 15 Playing the English Gentleman 16 Changes 17 Experiments in Dietetics 18 Shyness My Shield 19 The Canker of Untruth 20 Acquaintance with Religions 21 22 Narayan Hemchandra 23 The Great Exhibition 24 ‘Called’ – But Then? 25 My Helplessness PART II 1 Raychandbhai 2 How I Began Life 3 The First Case 4 The First Shock 5 Preparing for South Africa 6 Arrival in Natal 7 Some Experiences 8 On the Way to Pretoria 9 More Hardships 10 First Day in Pretoria 11 Christian Contacts 12 Seeking Touch with Indians 13 What It Is To Be a ‘Coolie’ 14 Preparation for the Case 15 Religious Ferment 16 Man Proposes, God Disposes 17 Settled in Natal 18 Colour Bar 19 Natal Indian Congress 20 Balasundaram 21 The £3 Tax 22 Comparative Study of Religions 23 As a Householder 24 Homeward 25 In India 26 Two Passions 27 The Bombay Meeting 28 Poona and Madras 29 ‘Return Soon’ PART III 1 Rumblings of the Storm 2 The Storm 3 The Test 4 The Calm after the Storm 5 Education of Children 6 Spirit of Service 7 Brahmacharya – I 8 Brahmacharya – II 9 Simple Life 10 The Boer War 11 Sanitary Reform and Famine Relief 12 Return to India 13 In India Again 14 Clerk and Bearer 15 In the Congress 16 Lord Curzon’s Durbar 17 A Month with Gokhale – I 18 A Month with Gokhale – II 19 A Month with Gokhale – III 20 In Benares 21 Settled in Bombay? 22 Faith on its Trial 23 To South Africa Again PART IV 1 Love’s Labour’s Lost? 2 Autocrats from Asia 3 Pocketed the Insult 4 Quickened Spirit of Sacrifice 5 Result of Introspection 6 A Sacrifice to Vegetarianism 7 Experiments in Earth and Water Treatment 8 A Warning 9 A Tussle with Power 10 A Sacred Recollection and Penance 11 Intimate European Contacts 12 European Contacts (CONTINUED) 13 Indian Opinion 14 Coolie Locations or Ghettoes? 15 The Black Plague – I 16 The Black Plague – II 17 Location in Flames 18 The Magic Spell of a Book 19 The Phoenix Settlement 20 The First Night 21 Polak Takes the Plunge 22 Whom God Protects 23 A Peep into the Household 24 The Zulu ‘Rebellion’ 25 Heart Searchings 26 The Birth of Satyagraha 27 More Experiments in Dietetics 28 Kasturbai’s Courage 29 Domestic Satyagraha 30 Towards Self-restraint 31 Fasting 32 As Schoolmaster 33 Literary Training 34 Training of the Spirit 35 Tares among the Wheat 36 Fasting as Penance 37 To Meet Gokhale 38 My Part in the War 39 A Spiritual Dilemma 40 Miniature Satyagraha 41 Gokhale’s Charity 42 Treatment of Pleurisy 43 Homeward 44 Some Reminiscences of the Bar