Gandhi's Pilgrimage

New Zealand Listener, Volume 21, Issue 544, 25 November 1949, Page 14

Gandhi's Pilgrimage

THE STORY OF MY EXPERIMENTS WITH TRUTH, by M. K. Gandhi; Phoenix Press. English price, 21/-.

(Reviewed by

R. M.

Burdon

renounce expedience in favour of principle are probably as searce in our day as in any other. Being unusual, they are invariably misunderstood. Being misunderstood, they are maligned and persecuted till they either become harmats who steadfastly

less through failure or popular through the success of the causes they advocate. As a_ very young officer in the Indian Army I well remember with what feeling Mahatma Gandhi was regarded by the European community of Northern India in 1919. To them his behaviour seemed the essence of hypocrisy. While strictly enjoining his followers to refrain from | violence, he in courses which never failed to’ bring about violence. An, Afghan army was already prepar-

ing to march down the Khyber when dangerous riots broke out all over Northern India, Faced with foreign invasion as well as civil insur‘rection, the Government of India sternly suppressed the riots, while Gandhi fasted, and admitted to having made a "Himalayan miscalculation." In official circles honesty and simplicity so ingenuous are apt to be mistaken for diabolical cunning. Born in 1869, Gandhi went to England in 1888 to study law, though forbidden to do so by the members of his caste who maintained that their religion forbade travelling abroad. In pursuit of his legal profession he visited South Africa and later took up the cause of indentured Indian labourers. In South Africa Indians were despised by Europeans and he conceived the idea that this was a judgment upon his fellow countrymen for the manner in which they treated their own untouchables. Though in sympathy with the" Boer cause, his loyalty to Britain induced him to assist in raising an Indian Ambulance Corps for service in the Boer War. When in England during the Great War he again offered his services for ambulance work, and assisted in recruiting after his return to India-activities which reduced him to a. state of mental dilemma, as he had long since professed belief in ahimsa or non-violence. After the Armistice he became a world famous figure and remained embroiled in politics till the day of his death. His autobiography ends with the year 1921. In Europe, asceticism for its own sake has long since been relegated to bygone days of medieval sainthood, and to an

occidental, Gandhi’s obsession with diet, his searchings after means of self-denial, his vow of sexual abstinence, appear as mere essays in futility. For they were not carried out as a means of self-dis-cipline-that a European might have understood and approved — but to achieve self-realisation, "to see God face to face.’ His radicalism was not solely political; exemplified by his partiality for quack medical treatments, it extended to every aspect of his life, domestic and social. Reared under the

shadow of the caste system, he grew up to challenge the insanitary habits and unhygienic customs of his own people as boldly as he protested against every indignity or disability inflicted on them by a ruling race. It was not to be expected that Gandhi as an author would deviate from the principles of a lifetime by striving to please rather than to inform or instruct. His book (which must of course be judged as a translation) gives one the impression of hav-

ing been written in a hurry so that he might get on with work more important. Not only has he a habit of casually referring back to someone or something mentioned only once on a previous page, and thereby placing an undue strain upon the reader's memory, but he plunges into discussion on questions such as that of the Rowlatt Act with no preliminary explanation. Grace of style, maybe, is too trivial a thing to be seriously considered by a seeker after truth, and there are qualities in -this autobiography that may compensate for facility of expression. "Of all writings," says Nietzsche, "I love only those which the writer writeth with his blood."