Reading Gandhi in Our Time

Reading Gandhi can be both exasperating and exhilarating. And elevating. You often feel exhausted with his fads about health like his staunch avowal of a pure and simple life, which meant, for instance, a tyranny of food without spices in his ashrams. He had a resistance to medicines and tried out on his son Manilal for nearly one-and-a-half months a ‘water therapy’ which he had read about or ‘invented’. It is a relief to learn that Manilal finally recovered. One is enraged when, in the absence of toilet facilities in the house in South Africa, he forces Kasturba to carry their guests’ urine to dispose off ‘with a smile on her face’ as a mark of true seva; one feels angry at his having deprived his children of formal education and the effect it had on one of his sons, Harilal, who went through a series of travails – at his righteous justification despite his regrets. There would be umpteen such instances that leave one confused and unsettled.