A READING OF "MY EXPERIMENTS WITH TRUTH" (PART 1/N)

I will be honest here in a pretending manner. I have read this book two times already since childhood. The reason why I was drawn to Gandhi was because of hatred. My family has an ideological hatred with this guy. The first book I ever read was "Why I Killed Gandhi" by Nathuram Godse and it is a celebrated book in my household till now. I really hated him but also intrigued how can a person like him (in hate) fool an entire population? Then I read this book in 10th standard. I did not understand the book for the first time. I found it similar to morality textbooks we read in RSS schools. I was disturbed by the level of confessions in there. After some time, my grandfather burned that book scolding me why I brought this book in the first place. 

My second reading of that book was in my graduation when I took that book to understand the mindset of the man after I read about his conflicts with Ambedkar. I was in Hugh influence of Ambedkar at that time and that reading was also a contemptuous reading. In a nutshell, I never got a chance to read the man without pre-judging him for what his deeds were. 

Reading a person's autobiography should be very intricate. It is sort of like doing a chemistry experiment. First you cleanse your ideological pallet to at least remove your prejudices. Second, you do not accept what he writes on face value. You think, try to find out where he comes from. What might have led him to do or believe in a particular thing? Even if he mentions a reason of why he did a particular thing, you do not accept it. How does he know why he did something? Nobody knows that completely. Third, you look for what he has not written, but has revealed in such a manner that you can deduce it. Reading someone might, thus, lead to a better understanding of him than his understanding about himself. 

So, I have decided to again read the man without pre-hate. Till now I have read the introduction. Let us put down my observations. 

1. In the introduction, he seems very reluctant on writing his biography. His autobiography is also not a proper one, but one where he describes his experiments with spirituality. One thing is sure. He has avoided a lot to write it. He could not find time in Yervada jail to write because he made a schedule for study there. 

2. He accepted the idea that autobiography is a western idea. It is peculiar of Gandhi. He creates this divide all the time and wants to create an Indic way of looking at things. Also, he views himself as someone who rejects the earlier views of himself. 

3. He felt a need to write it nevertheless because he wanted to make the world aware of his spiritual quests and experiments as well along with his political ones. Unlike the latter, the former was unknown to west. 

4. Interestingly enough, he wants to generalize spiritual politics in some sense. He says the essence of religion is morality. He does not understand religion as such. He has an external view of religion. You cannot and should not say that the essence of religion is morality. Why I believe this has two grounds. First, it gives a ground for the evil to play. The communal forces then try to enforce their version of morality and many times, in that contest, they win. Second, if you are a serious student of Hinduism or for that matter even Islam, you will understand religion was never about morality. It gives a version of complete ontological reality, a sort of complete map to the universe and your role in it. Thus, it teaches you, as an outcome, to decide what is moral according to you. Religion in this sense, is meta-moral, that is, more than morality sermons, rather it is cultivating a sense of acting in a big film, moral or not, you decide. 

5. He calls west, "the civilized world". The underquotes has an undertone of irony and taunt. he does not believe that the west is civilized at all. This was also apparent from his book, "Hind Swaraj". 

6. I have added only those observations that I have found worth mentioning. Once, he mentions in the introduction an example of the story of Vasistha and Vishvamitra. He does not mention the whole story but let us dive into that. This might be philosophically interesting. 

The story of Vasistha and Vishwamitra is that, Vashista, himself a Bramaharshi, a kind of title one gets in Hinduism when one is enlightened to a certain extent. He used to call Vishwamitra only Rajashri, or a saint of the kingdom, a lower title than Bramaharshi. Vishwamitra performed a harsh Tapasya by virtue of which, Brahma, the creator himself, came to him. Vishwamitra asked for the title of bramaharshi. Brahma said, only if Vashista calls you a brahmaharshi. He goes to Vashista. Vashista keeps saying rajaharshi. This pisses Vishwamitra off. He killed all cows of Vashista. Then, Brahma come again and says, how can you be Brahmaharshi when you can't control anger and get pissed off so easily. The learning being that the spiritual person should be humbler than dust. I believe, here we, me and Bapu are in complete sync. Just, the humbleness should not be goal oriented, that is, to get enlightenment in return but genuine conviction. 

Interestingly enough, this story is not known by many people. His reading of Ramayana and other scriptures is very thorough, a sort of like Brahmans. Giving example like this also shows two things. His fascination with enlightenment and peace. Second, about his fascination with learned men. Also, humbleness as a virtue is not the actual teaching of the story. The real teaching should be meta-humbleness. That is, it is not just be humble. It is the very reason you cannot attain wisdom is because you already think you deserve it. You don't. Even if you achieve something, even worldly, the world does not owe anything to you. So, no need for arrogant tantrums. Calm your tits. Sorry for the vulgarity but this is the precise teaching and hence must be said in the above language. 

            I will come up with blogs giving my observations about this book, this man and Hinduism. I sign off.