The Story Of My Experiments With Truth: An Autobiography of Mahatma Gandhi

by Mahatma Gandhi

Nishkulanand sings: ‘Renunciation of objects, without the renunciation of desires, is shortlived, however hard you may try.’

A reformer cannot afford to have close intimacy with him whom he seeks to reform.

I stopped taking the sweets and condiments I had got from home. The mind having taken a different turn, the fondness for condiments wore away, and I now relished the boiled pinch which in Richmond tasted insipid, cooked with out condiments. Many such experiments taught me that the real seat of taste was not the tongue but the mind.

But the New Testament produced a different impression, especially the Sermon on the Mount which went straight to my heart. I compared it with the Gita. The verses, ‘But I say unto you, that ye resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also. And if any man take away thy coat let him have thy cloke too,’ delighted me beyond measure and put me in mind of Shamal Bhatt’s ‘For a bowl of water, give a goodly meal’, etc.

Infinite striving after perfection is one’s right. It is its own reward. The rest is in the hands of God.

It has always been a mystery to me how men can feel themselves honoured by the humiliation of their fellow-beings.

‘Supposing the whites carry out their threats, how will you stand by your principle of non-violence ?’ To which I replied: ‘I hope God will give me the courage and the sense to forgive them and to refrain from bringing them to law. I have no anger against them. I am only sorry for their ignorance and their narrowness. I know that they sincerely believe that what they are doing today is right and proper. I have no reason therefore to be angry with them.’

it has become my firm conviction that it is not good to run public institutions on permanent funds. A permanent fund carried in itself the seed of the moral fall of the institution. A public institution means an institution conducted with the approval, and from the funds, of the public. When such an institution ceases to have public support, it forfeits its right to exist. Institutions maintained on permanent funds are often found to ignore public opinion, and are frequently responsible for acts contrary to it.

We labour under a sort of superstition that the child has nothing to learn during the first five years of its life. On the contrary, the fact is that the child never learns in after life what it does in its first five years.

I believed then, and I believe even now, that, no matter what amount of work one has, one should always find some time for exercise, just as one does for one’s meals. It is my humble opinion that, far from taking away from one’s capacity for work, it adds to it.

To my mind, the life of a lamb is no less precious than that of a human being. I should be unwilling to take the life of a lamb for the sake of the human body. I hold that, the more helpless a creature, the more entitled it is to protection by men from the cruelty of man.

Man and his deed are two distinct things. Whereas a good deed should call forth approbation and a wicked deed disapprobation, the doer of the deed, whether good or wicked, always deserves respect or pity as the case may be. ‘Hate the sin and not the sinner’ is a precept which, though easy enough to understand, is rarely practised, and that is why the poison of hatred spreads in the world.

I had seen that, even where the end might be political, but where the cause was nonpolitical, one damaged it by giving it a political aspect and helped it by keeping it within its nonpolitical limit. The Champaran struggle was a proof of the fact that disinterested service of the people in any sphere ultimately helps the country politically.

When the fear of jail disappears, repression puts heart into the people.

To safeguard democracy the people must have a keen sense of independence, self-respect and their oneness, and should insist upon choosing as their representatives only such persons as are good and true.