E-Book - Mahatma Gandhi

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & Timessugar. In addition he performed hard labour—digging the earth with a shovel—which blistered his hands. The blisters opened and caused pain.Once the warden wanted two men to clean the latrines- Gandhi volunteered.He had brought this suffering on himself and, by hi3 agitation, on others. Wouldit not be better to pay the fine and stay at home?'Such thoughts', Gandhi asserted, 'make one really a coward.' Besides, jail hasits good sides: only one warden whereas in the free life there are many; noworry about food; work keeps the body healthy; no 'vicious habits'; 'theprisoner's soul is thus free' and he has time to pray to God. The real road tohappiness', Gandhi proclaimed, 'lies in going to jail and undergoing sufferingsand privations there in the interest of one's country and religion'.This account of life and reflections in jail ends with a quotation from Thoreau'sfamous essay on 'Civil Disobedience' which Gandhi had borrowed from theprison library. 'I saw' Thoreau wrote, 'that if there was a wall of stone betweenme and my townsmen, there was a still more difficult one to climb or breakthrough before they could get to be as free as I was. I did not feel for amoment confined, and the walls seemed a great waste of stone and mortar ...'As they could not reach me', Thoreau continued, 'they had resolved to punishmy body ... I saw that the state was half¬witted, that it was timid as a lonewoman with her silver spoons, and that it did not know its friends from its foes,and I lost all my remaining respect for it and pitied it.'Gandhi cherished this excerpt from Thoreau. He studied the entire essay.It has often been said that Gandhi took the idea of Satyagraha from Thoreau.Gandhi denied this in a letter, dated September 10, 1935, and addressed to Mr.P. Kodanda of the Servants of India Society; Gandhi wrote, 'The statement thatI had derived my idea of Civil Disobedience from the writings of Thoreau iswrong. The resistance to authority in South Africa was well advanced before Igot the essay of Thoreau on Civil Disobedience. But the movement was thenknown as passive resistance. As it was incomplete I had coined the wordSatyagraha for the Gujarati readers. When I saw the title of Thoreau's greatwww.mkgandhi.org Page 100