Gandhi

Gandhi was born in 1869, at Porbandar, a coastal city northwest of Bombay in the Kathiawar peninsula. Because of this city's location by the Arabian Sea, it has been a place of international contacts, but the roots of Gandhi's Hindu family were essentially regional. In caste he belonged to the Bania division of the third ranking Vaisyas who are traditionally traders and farmers. His father and grandfather had risen to become first ministers of minute princely states indirectly controlled by British imperialism, thereby giving him a political inheritance favorable to small-scale government which persisted in his later thought.

Within his family circle Gandhi was the youngest of his father's six children by four marriages. As a boy he admired the practicality of his father and his mother's piety. Religious influences made a deep imprint on him. His parents adhered to north Indian Vaishnavism, a sect enriched by the traditions of Ramananda who in the fourteenth century emphasized humility and the transient nature of caste. Generally speaking, Vaishnavites believe in a personal and merciful God; revere Vishnu, the second member of the Hindu triad; strive for salvation through devotion and good works; and insist on periodic fasts and strict vegetarianism. Gandhi absorbed many of these ideas, though not in a doctrinal or institutional sense, as shown by his early turning from Vaishnavite temple worship.

Other religious philosophies touched him during his childhood, but especially Jainism. This is a reform group external to orthodox Hinduism and composed mainly of urban trading classes. Jains search for ultimate truth beyond the senses and take a vow of noninjury to avoid harm to all living things, including micro-organisms. This pledge of personal nonviolence is ahimsa, found also in Buddhism and in Hinduism as a virtue of the holy man who renounces the world. Under different influences Gandhi later reinterpreted and expanded this principle to include temporal and collective as well as spiritual and individual matters.

In keeping with Hindu custom Gandhi married early, in his case when he was thirteen and still in school. This experience was an unsettling one for him and may have contributed to his later endorsement of sexual abstinence and his efforts to improve the welfare of Indian women. His wife, Kasturbai, a near illiterate, remained patient and dutiful throughout her life. He was shy at home and in school where he took no part in sports or other competitive activities. However, he was not passive in all areas; he objected to the use of English in secondary grades, broke Vaishnavite rules against eating meat, and questioned the existence of God.

For a brief period Gandhi attended a unit of the University of Bombay, but found the college difficult and returned home. He considered becoming a doctor until relatives urged him to study law in England because they were shocked about a Vaishnavite touching the dead and ambitious for his future. Although Gandhi accepted their advice, his decision to go abroad led to difficulties with the council of his subcaste which believed foreign contact would subvert his faith. When he persisted in his decision, he was excommunicated. To allay his mother's fears he took a vow from a Jain monk to shun meat, women and alcohol. Supported by the ambitions of others and by timely financial aid, Gandhi, then seventeen, sailed for the West in September 1888. He stayed there two and a half years.

For a short time after arrival in England, where he went immediately to London, Gandhi tried to become an accomplished British gentleman; much to his own later amusement he dressed fashionably and took lessons in French, elocution, dancing and the violin. Despite a few temptations, he kept his vow of abstinence. To keep his dietary pledge he sought and found a vegetarian restaurant; in its wider ramifications this discovery was probably his most important London experience.