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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 November 2008
The Gandhi the world knows was the Mahatma, the ‘great soul’ who led India's drive for independence from British domination, the prophet of non-violent revolution, and the practitioner of civil disobedience. The Gandhi the world does not know was the spindling lad from Kathiawad, so determined to see England that he defied his sub-caste's chief and cheerfully accepted outcasteing as the price of making the polluting voyage to an impure land. The Gandhi the world has forgotten was the shy young lawyer who sang ‘God save our gracious Queen’ as fervently as any other subject of Her Majesty Queen Victoria—even after suffering the bitterest insults and beatings in South Africa because of his brown skin and his loyalty to his Indian heritage. Mahatmas are made, not born, and the making of this Mahatma was a long and often painful process. We can add to our understanding of that process by piecing together hundreds of bits of information about the first eighteen years of Gandhi's life—information from his own writings and from the Indian environment which shaped his evolution from infancy to young manhood.
1 For details of Karamchand Gandhi's career and Gandhi's childhood, see Devanesen's, Chandran D. S. forthcoming book, The Making of the Mahatma: An Interpretive Study of M. K. Gandhi's First Forty Years, Calcutta, etc.: Orient Longmans, 1969. I am grateful to Dr Devanesen for permitting me to consult his book in manuscript.Google Scholar
2 Gandhi, Prabhudas, My Childhood with Gandhiji, Navajivan Publishing House, Ahmedabad, 1957, p. 24.Google Scholar
3 Gandhi, M. K., An Autobiography, or The Story of My Experiments with Truth, tr. Desai, Mahadev, 2nd ed., Navajivan Publishing House: Ahmedabad, 1940, p. 49.Google Scholar
4 Devanesen, , op. cit., Chap. 2.Google Scholar
5 Report of the Irish Presbyterian Mission in Gujarat and Kattiawar for 1888. Printed at the Irish Presbyterian Mission Press: Surat, 1889, p. 13.Google Scholar
6 Gandhi, , Autobiography, p. 49.Google Scholar
7 Missionary Herald of the Presbyterian Church in Ireland: Belfast, 1 May 1888, p. 128.Google Scholar
8 Report of the Irish Presbyterian Mission in Gujarat and Kattiawar for 1888, p. 14.Google Scholar
9 Missionary Herald, July–August, 1888, p. 183.Google Scholar
10 Gandhi, , Autobiography, pp. 52–3.Google Scholar
11 ibid., p. 54.
12 Gandhi, M. K., The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, Government of India: Delhi, 1958, I, 54.Google Scholar
13 Gandhi, , Autobiography, p. 53.Google Scholar
14 These and other details of Gandhi's entire school career are taken from Upadhyaya, J. M., ed. and comp., Mahatma Gandhi as a Student, Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, Government of India: Delhi, 1965.Google Scholar
15 Gandhi, , Autobiography, pp. 29, 40–1.Google Scholar
16 Gandhi, , Autobiography, pp. 29–30.Google Scholar
17 Gandhi, Autobiography, facing p.49.Google Scholar
18 Upadhyaya, Gandhi as a Student, pp. 60–72.Google Scholar
19 Upadhyaya, Gandhi as a Student, pp. 40, 48.Google Scholar
20 Gandhi, Autobiography, pp.27–8.Google Scholar
21 Upadhyaya, Gandhi as a Student, p. 57.Google Scholar
22 Gandhi, , Autobiography, p.52.Google Scholar
23 Gandhi, Collected Works, I, pp. 53–4.Google Scholar
24 Thomas, Babington Macaulay, ‘Warren Hastings’, in his Critical and Historical Essays Contributed to the Edinburgh Review, new ed., London, 1866, vol. III, pp. 289–90.Google Scholar
24 Thomas, Babington Macaulay, ‘Warren Hastings’, in his Critical and Historical Essays Contributed to the Edinburgh Review, new ed., London, 1866, vol. III, p. 292.Google Scholar
26 Gandhi, , Collected Works, I, 61.Google Scholar
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