Gandhi - Gandhi the man: how one man changed himself to change the world

Kasturbai Gandhi, age 32, 1902

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 at night with my idle talk.

How could I disclose my fears to my wife, no child, but already at the threshold of youth, sleeping by my side? I knew that she had more courage than I, and I felt ashamed of myself. She knew no fear of serpents and ghosts. She could go out anywhere in the dark.

Gandhi graduated from high school with a mediocre average and went doggedly on to college. He had some vague ambition to become a doctor, but it was never to be realized. He failed in every class. Each subject seemed impossible to follow, and he felt acutely out of place wherever he turned. After five months of consistent failure he withdrew from school and came back home. He had not the slightest idea of where to turn.

An uncle came to his rescue. Gandhi, he suggested, should go to London to study law. It took only three years to become a barrister, and a London degree in British India seemed certain to bring success. Reluctantly, for they were very close, his mother gave her consent. The expenses came to more than anyone had guessed; at last Kasturbai had to sell her jewelry to buy the ticket, and Gandhis older brother gave his promise to pay the rest.

Gandhi had made a few previous trips by bullock cart to towns a few miles away. Like any eighteen-year-old, he expected the sea voyage to England to be full of excitement and adventure. Instead he found it haunted by loneliness. Shy and self-conscious, afraid to make himself look foolish with his schoolbook English, he kept to himself on board the ship and lingered for hours at the railings watching the sea. At mealtimes he stayed in his cabin and lived on sweets his mother had packed away. He had selected a white flannel suit to wear when he landed, but was agonized to find himself the only man in London dressed in white.

His first few months in England were a nightmare. Everything around him was different; everything he said or did was out of place. Manners, clothes, expressions, the meaning of the slightest gesture all these had to be learned, often through error and ridicule. He could not shake off his homesickness. Never had he been so alone.

For weeks Gandhi was on the verge of turning back and taking the next boat home. But his pride would not allow it. Something deeper within him was determined to stick it out.

I would continuously think of my home and country. My mothers love always haunted me. At night the tears would stream down my cheeks, and home memories of all sorts made sleep out of the question. It was impossible to share my misery with anyone. And even if I could have done so, where was the use? I knew of nothing that would soothe me. Everything was strange....

At last an Indian acquaintance who knew his way around London took pity on him. Youre not here to learn law, he scolded. Youre here to learn the English way of life. What are you doing holed up by yourself in this hotel? Gandhi saw the point. The English had ruled his country for over two hundred years; to almost every Indian, no matter what his allegiance, they were the symbol of humanitys greatest achievements in civilization and physical power. Even by coming to England he was tacitly acknowledging their superiority. Meekly he followed his friends advice and found a room with an English family.

It was Gandhis first experiment in mimicking lifestyles. Whenever something appealed to him, even as a boy, his first impulse had always been to try it out for himself. Now he decided to become an English gentleman. He engaged tutors in French and proper speaking, and bought expensive tailored suits and a silk top hat. He taught himself how to tie a necktie, and learned to admire himself before a mirror while he struggled to discipline his hair with an English brush. He even invested in violin lessons and tried to learn the fox-trot.

But the role of the gentleman failed to meet his needs. Far from giving him greater security, it only made him more self-conscious, more acutely aware of what others might think of how he looked and acted. Moreover, it was an expensive way of life, and since his brother was supporting him, he felt uneasy about spending his money so lavishly. The gap he sensed between his inner and outward selves was widening into a chasm.

After about three months Gandhi awoke abruptly from these dreams of grandeur. How could changing the way he dressed make him anything more than what he already was? To change his life he had to change his way of thinking, and that was something that went deeper than any differences in custom or culture. Better to be truthful to oneself than to try to act like someone else. If my character made a gentleman of me, he wrote, so much the better. Otherwise I should forgo the ambition. He began to experiment with a simpler way of life.