Mahatma Gandhi, his own story

Front matter

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Preface

THE MATERIALOF THIS AUTOBIOGRAPHY, which Mahatma Gandhi has called “The Story of My Experiments with Truth,” was first dictated by him in his own mother-tongue to one of his fellow political prisoners during a long imprisonment in the years 1922-24. It was afterwards continued in a serial form, as a feature of his Gujarati paper, called “Navajivan,” and translated into English by his intimate friends, Mahadev Desai and Piyarelal Nair, receiving at the same time his own careful revision. Miss Slade, who is known in Mr. Gandhi’s Ashram as Mirabehn, also assisted in shaping its final English form. The whole series of short chapters has now been published by the Navajivan Press at Ahmedabad in two large volumes, containing over twelve hundred octavo pages. These chapters have also been printed serially in America in Dr. John Haynes Holmes’ paper, “Unity.”

Another book of equal importance has been used, wherein Mahatma Gandhi describes personally his own experiences in South Africa. The volume is called “Satyagraha (Soul-force) in South Africa,” and the translation has been made by Valji Govindji Desai. This book has never been printed in America. Its Indian publisher 1s Mr. S. Ganesan, Triplicane, Madras, India. In using freely all these documents and making abbreviations, I would wish very warmly to express my admiration for the manner in which the spirit of the author has been kept by the translators.

When we turn to the three volumes and try to gain the clue to Mahatma Gandhi?s estimate of human conduct, it will be found to centre in three cardinal virtues, recurrent

MAHATIMA?>\GAN DH D=—FOLS (70) Wii ee in all his writings. These are Truth, Loving-kindness, and Inner Purity." The first pair of these form together the Eternal Quest of the soul and denote its infinite yearning to pass through this mortal existence without transgressing more, than can be possibly avoided the ultimate spiritual realities. The full music of life demands the harmony of Truth and Love. But so difficult is the music to master, and so complete is the renunciation required, that success can only be attained through a body and soul kept clean from all sensual passion. Therefore the constant refrain of Inner Purity runs through all his writings, wherein at one time Love is the dominant note, and at another time Truth. He believes intensely that only the pure in heart can see God; and he gives a very concrete and plain-spoken definition of what that Purity means. In his own person, it has implied the abandonment of the married life for one of entire abstinence from all sexual relations. How far he would demand this from others in their search for God will be revealed in his own words.

In one part of his Autobiography, Mahatma Gandhi declares that he has continually sought the guidance of the Spirit in all that he has written. He has felt assured, he tells us, that this guidance has been granted in due measure. It 1s this sincere attempt, so searchingly keen, to lay bare before God and man the hidden secrets of his inner life, and to bring out into the light anything evil along with what is good, that seems to me to make these writings so vitally authentic.

Two points need to be made clear to the reader before the present abridged volume is taken in hand.

(1). The most prolonged and intricate of all his passive

* Satya, Ahimsa, Brahmacharya.

PREPAC E resistance struggles, undertaken in the Transvaal, has been reluctantly omitted from this book. The complete narrative could not easily be condensed, and therefore after much hesitation I have left it out with a view to later . publication. The sequence of the life-story is not, however, seriously broken because I have given at some length the picture of the Natal passive resistance which was the crown of his moral achievement in South Africa.

(2). Diet restriction, combined with fasting, was one of the avenues along which Mr. Gandhi tried to approach reality in human affairs. A great deal has been written by him about this. Since, however, his description of these things would have taken up too much space, I have been unable to reproduce it. Yet here again it has been a regret to me to make this omission, because his experiments tend to correct the idea that his outlook on life is altogether unscientific. They show what a daring explorer he has been, and how his mind in its own peculiar way is of that scientific order, which proceeds from hypothesis to rigid examination of facts in order to sift out Truth.

The need for the present edition of the Autobiography has long been recognised both in Europe and America. Dr. Holmes had at first intended to fulfil this labor of love. His insight into Mr. Gandhi’s character made him peculiarly fitted for such a task. But he was summoned away from America to Palestine, at a critical moment, and it happened that at the same time my own duties called me to the West. It was therefore decided that I should be responsible. Dr. Holmes, on his part, undertook to write the Introduction; and his appreciation will be read with the deepest interest by all who recognise that he was the very first to make the name of Gandhi known and loved in America. What Romain Rolland has done in Europe, he himself has accomplished in the New World.

In preparing this edition, the main difficulty throughout, as I have already suggested, has been the large amount of material as contrasted with the stringent lmitation of space. Many times over, what was first selected has been put on one side in order to insert some other portion which could not possibly be omitted. Even after what seemed a final selection had been made, the work had to be begun all over again. Yet a certain experience was gained as I went on, and at last I have a reasonable hope that the narrative will carry the reader along with it. What I have aimed at throughout is to make the book easily intelligible in the West without sacrificing any of its peculiarly Eastern setting. It is my sincere hope that those who read it will study along with it the former volume entitled “Mahatma Gandhi’s Ideas.”

I would specially thank the Indian publishers, M. M. Bhatta and S. Ganesan, and also the translators, Mahadev Desai, Piyarelal Nair and Valji Desai, for the use they have allowed me to make of their work. Above all I am indebted to Mahatma Gandhi himself whose full permission was granted to me to abbreviate his own writings. Along with him I would wish to devote any profits which may come from this book (as well as from the former volume) to the Pearson Memorial Hospital at Santiniketan. This hospital has been built in memory of our mutual friend, Willie Pearson, who died by a railway accident in Italy at the end of September, 1923. Ten years earlier, in 1913, he had gone out with me to Natal to help Mr. Gandhi in his passive resistance struggle, and the bond of love thus formed has remained unbroken by death.

TO

PREFACE

My affectionate gratitude is due to the Indian residents in British Guiana, Trinidad and Dutch Guiana, for the inspiration which they gave me while carrying through this work during the months that I recently spent among them as their guest. It was out of the scanty leisure snatched from a protracted enquiry in those lands that the book had to be prepared. Yet no environment could have given me more encouragement than daily intercourse with warm-hearted Indian companions in those distant countries. Therefore, I have ventured to dedicate this volume to them. It is an equal joy to me to record with deep affection the kindness of many friends in this New World. Along with those I have already mentioned in my former volume I would add the names of Mr. George Foster Peabody, Miss Anna Bogue and Mrs. James, Dr. Rufus Jones, Miss Cooley and Miss House, Dr. Sunderland, Lawrence Tombs, Frank Moore, Hari Govil, Murray Brooks, Nonie Gregg, E. C. Carter, S. D. Joshi and D. J. Fleming. I would wish also to thank in this same connection the Rt. Rev. the Bishop of Guiana and Mrs. Beatrice Gregg of Trinidad for their exceeding kindness.

My warmest thanks are due to the staff of the Phelps- Stokes Foundation and its Chairman; the staff and students of Hampton Institute, Virginia; and Penn School, St. Helena’s Island, where I have been able to finish this volume. The work of editing it was a far longer and more difficult task than I had anticipated and without constant acts of unselfish kindness on the part of these and other friends too numerous to mention it would have been impossible for me to complete it in the midst of a very arduous programme of duties.

May I venture to add how very deeply grateful I have I

MAHATMA GAN DH =H ISO WoNeiee nee been to the people of the United States and Canada among whom I had come with some trepidation for the first time. I had heard of their great material wealth and had expected to be repelled by its hardening influences upon the soul. Wherever I have seen this deterioration I have spoken plainly in warning about it. But I have found a wealth of affection that has surprised me by its generosity and simplicity, and I go away with a very grateful heart.

Since this book was compiled and edited the Indian situation has become very grave indeed. A deadlock appears to have been reached. Mahatma Gandhi has again been imprisoned. Yet it is well-nigh universally admitted that his influence remains one of the paramount factors in Indian affairs. Therefore a study of his character, which has documentary authority behind it, is a necessity, if the best minds in India and Great Britain are not to drift still further apart. While in my former book his thoughts and ideas were presented, in this volume the aim has been to set forward briefly in a readable form for Western readers his own life-story.

in a similar manner and with the same object in view I have already published Tagore’s “Letters to a Friend”; and it is my sincere hope, if health permits, to complete the picture of Tagore in another volume just as this present book completes the picture of Gandhi. For it is my firm conviction that through the eyes of these two men the West may learn at last to appreciate the East.

C. F. ANDREWS.

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