E-Book - Mahatma Gandhi

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & Timeswrite an epitaph over my ashes: 'Well deserved, thou fool." But for the timebeing, my error, if it be one, must sustain me.' This was a personal fast; 'thisfast has nothing to do with the public'. It is said 'I am public property... So beit. But I must be taken with all my faults. I am a searcher after truth. Myexperiments I hold to be infinitely more important than the best-equippedHimalayan expeditions.' He was trying to scale the spiritual heights; he thoughtfasts conduced to mental ascendancy over the body.Gandhi's fast brought him a tide of requests for his views on fasting; even inIndia his frequent abstentions from food were unusual. He gave his response ina Young India article. With apologies to my medical friends', it read, Taut outof the fullness of my own experience and that of fellow-cranks, I say withouthesitation, Fast (1) if you are constipated, (2) you are anaemic, (3) if you arefeverish, (4) if you have indigestion, (5) if you have a headache, (6) if you arerheumatic, (7) if you are gouty, (8) if you are fretting and foaming, (9) if youare depressed, (10) if you are overjoyed and you will avoid medicalprescriptions and patent medicines.' His patent medical prescription foreverything was fasting. 'Eat only when you are hungry', he added, 'and whenyou have laboured for your food.'His highest weight after being discharged from prison in February 1924, hewrote in the same article, was 112 pounds. He was down to 103 pounds whenhe started the fast. In the seven days he lost nine pounds but regained itquickly. Physically, he said, he lost nothing either from this fast or from thetwenty-one-day fast in 1924.Water during fasts nauseated him without a pinch of salt or bicarbonate of sodaor a few drops of citrus juice. He never suffered any pangs of hunger during thefast; in fact, 'I broke it half an hour later than I need have. He spun every dayand attended the daily prayer meetings. The first three days of the fast, hewrote, 'I worked practically from four in the morning till eight in the evening,'doing articles, answering letters, giving interviews. On the fourth day, his headached. He accordingly abandoned work for a day; on the seventh day 'I was ableto write with steady hand my article on the fast.'www.mkgandhi.org Page 264