Varied works of French writer Romain Rolland include Jean Christophe (1904-1912), a series of satirical novels; he won the Nobel Prize of 1915 for literature.
The committee awarded him "as a tribute to the lofty idealism of his literary production and to the sympathy and love of truth with which he has described different types of human beings."

Chapter 1

Dark, tranquil eyes. A small frail man, a thin face with large protruding ears. His head covered with a little white cap, his body clothed in coarse white cloth, barefooted. He lives on rice and fruit and drinks only water. He sleeps on the floor—sleeps very little, and works incessantly. His body does not seem to count at all. There is nothing striking about him, at first, except his expression of “great patience and great love.” W. W. Pearson, who met him in South Africa in 1918, instinctively thought of St. Francis of Assisi. There is an almost childlike simplicity about him. His manner is gentle and courteous even when dealing with adversaries, and he is of immaculate sincerity. He is modest and unassuming, to the point of sometimes seeming almost timid, hesitant, in making an assertion. Yet you feel his indomitable spirit. He makes no compromises and never tries to hide a mistake. Nor is he afraid to admit having been in the wrong. Diplomacy is unknown to him; he shuns oratorical effect or, rather, never thinks about it; and he shrinks unconsciously from the great popular demonstrations organized in his honor. Literally “ill with the multitude that adores him,” he distrusts majorities and fears “mobocracy” and the unbridled passions of the populace. He feels at ease only in a minority, and is happiest when, in meditative solitude, he can listen to the “still small voice” within.

This is the man who has stirred three hundred million people to revolt, who has shaken the foundations of the British Empire, and who has introduced into human politics the strongest religious impetus of the last two thousand years.

Chapter 2

His real name is Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi. He was born in a little semi-independent state in the northwestern part of India, at Porbandar, the “White City” on the sea of Oman, October 2, 1868. He comes of an ardent and active race, which to this day has been split by civil strife; a practical race, commercially keen, which established trade relations all the way from Aden to Zanzibar. Gandhi’s father and grandfather were both leaders of the people and met with persecution because of their independent spirit. Both were forced to flee for safety, their lives in peril. Gandhi’s family was well-to-do and belonged to a cultivated class of society, but it was not of superior caste. His parents were followers of the Jaïn school of Hinduism, which regards ahimsa, the doctrine of non-injury to any form of life, as one of its basic principles. This was the doctrine which Gandhi was to proclaim victoriously throughout the world. The Jaïnists believe that the principle of love, not intelligence, is the road which leads to God. The Mahatma’s father cared little for wealth and material values, and left scarcely any to his family, having given almost everything away to charity. Gandhi’s mother was a very devout woman, a sort of Hindu St. Elisabeth, fasting, giving alms to the poor, and nursing the sick. In Gandhi’s family the Ramayana was read regularly. His first teacher was a Brahman who taught him to memorize the texts of Vishnu. In later years Gandhi expressed regret at not being a better Sanskrit scholar, and one of his grievances against English education in India is that it makes the natives lose the treasures of their own language. Gandhi became, however, a profound student of Hindu scriptures, although he read the Vedas and the Upanishads in translation only.

While still a boy he passed through a severe religious crisis. Shocked at the idolatrous form sometimes assumed by Hinduism, he became, or imagined he became, an atheist, and to prove that religion meant nothing to him he and some friends went so far as to eat meat, a frightful sacrilege for a Hindu. And Gandhi nearly perished with disgust and mortification. He was engaged at the age of eight and married at the age of twelve. At nineteen he was sent to England to complete his studies at the University of London and at the law school. Before his leaving India, his mother made him take the three vows of Jaïn, which prescribe abstention from wine, meat, and sexual intercourse.

He arrived in London in September, 1888, and after the first few months of uncertainty and deception, during which, as he says, he “wasted a lot of time and money trying to become an Englishman,” he buckled down to hard work and led a strictly regulated life. Some friends gave him a copy of the Bible, but the time to understand it had not yet come. But it was during his stay in London that he realized for the first time the beauty of the Bhagavad Gitâ. He was carried away by it. It was the light the exiled Hindu had been seeking, and it gave him back his faith. He realized that for him salvation could lie only in Hinduism.

He returned to India in 1891, a rather sad home-coming, for his mother had just died, and the news of her death had been withheld from him. Soon afterward he began practicing law at the Supreme Court of Bombay. He abandoned this career a few years later, having come to look upon it as immoral. But even while practicing law he used to make a point of reserving the right to abandon a case if he had reason to believe it unjust.

At this stage of his career he met various people who stirred in him a presentiment as to his future mission in life. He was influenced by two men in particular. One of them was the “Uncrowned King of Bombay,” the Parsi Dadabhai, and the other Professor Gokhale. Gokhale was one of the leading statesmen in India and one of the first to introduce educational reforms, while Dadabhai, according to Gandhi, was the real founder of the Indian nationalist movement. Both men combined the highest wisdom and learning with the utmost simplicity and gentleness. It was Dadabhai who, in trying to moderate Gandhi’s youthful ardor, gave him, in 1892, his first real lesson in ahimsa by teaching him to apply heroic passivity—if two such words may be linked—to public life by fighting evil, not by evil, but by love. A little later we will discuss this magic word of ahimsa, the sublime message of India to the world.

Chapter 3

Gandhi’s activity may be divided into two periods. From 1898 to 1914 its field was South Africa; from 1914 to 1922, India.

That Gandhi could carry on the South-African campaign for more than twenty years without awakening any special comment in Europe is a proof of the incredible short-sightedness of our political leaders, historians, thinkers, and believers, for Gandhi’s efforts constituted a soul’s epopee, unequaled in our times, not only because of the intensity and the constancy of the sacrifice required, but because of the final triumph.

In 1890-91 some 150,000 Indian emigrants were settled in South Africa, most of them having taken up abode in Natal. The white population resented their presence, and the Government encouraged the xenophobia of the whites by a series of oppressive measures designed to prevent the immigration of Asiatics and to oblige those already settled in Africa to leave. Through systematic persecution the life of the Indians in Africa was made intolerable; they were burdened with overwhelming taxes and subjected to the most humiliating police ordinances and outrages of all sorts, ranging from the looting and destruction of shops and property to lynching, all under cover of “white” civilization.

In 1893 Gandhi was called to Pretoria on an important case. He was not familiar with the situation in South Africa, but from the very first he met with illuminating experiences. Gandhi, a Hindu of high race, who had always been received with the greatest courtesy in England and Europe, and who until then had looked upon the whites as his natural friends, suddenly found himself the butt of the vilest affronts. In Natal, and particularly in Dutch Transvaal, he was thrown out of hotels and trains, insulted, beaten, and kicked. He would have returned to India at once if he had not been bound by contract to remain a year in South Africa. During these twelve months he learned the art of self-control, but all the time he longed for his contract to expire, so that he might return to India. But when at last he was about to leave, he learned that the South-African Government was planning to pass a bill depriving the Indians of the franchise. The Indians in Africa were helpless, unable to defend themselves; they were completely unorganized and demoralized. They had no leader, no one to guide them. Gandhi felt that it was his duty to defend them. He realized it would be wrong to leave. The cause of the disinherited Indians became his. He gave himself up to it, and remained in Africa.

Then began an epic struggle between spirit on one side and governmental power and brute force on the other. Gandhi was a lawyer at the time, and his first step was to prove the illegality of the Asiatic Exclusion Act from the point of view of law, and he won his case despite the most virulent opposition. In this connection he had huge petitions signed; he organized the Indian Congress at Natal, and formed an association for Indian education. A little later he founded a paper, “Indian Opinion,” published in English and three Indian languages. Finally, in order to work more efficaciously for his compatriots in Africa, he decided to become one of them. He had a lucrative clientele in Johannesburg (Gokhale says Gandhi was making at that time about five or six thousand pounds a year). He gave it up to espouse poverty, like St. Francis. He abandoned all ties in order to live the life of the persecuted Indians, to share their trials. And he ennobled them thereby, for he taught them the doctrine of non-resistance. In 1904 he founded at Phoenix, near Durban, an agricultural colony along Tolstoian lines. He called upon his compatriots, gave them land, and made them take the solemn oath of poverty. He took upon himself the humblest tasks.

For years the silent colony resisted the Government. It withdrew from the cities, gradually paralyzing the industrial life of the country, carrying on a sort of religious strike against which violence—all violence—was powerless, just as the violence of imperial Rome was powerless against the faith of the first Christians. Yet very few of these early Christians would have carried the doctrine of love and forgiveness so far as to help their persecutors when in danger, as Gandhi did. Whenever the South-African state was in serious difficulties Gandhi suspended the non-participation of the Indian population in public services and offered his assistance. In 1899, during the Boer War, he organized an Indian Red Cross, which was twice cited for bravery under fire. When the plague broke out in Johannesburg in 1904, Gandhi organized a hospital. In 1908 the natives in Natal revolted. Gandhi organized and served at the head of a corps of brancardiers, and the Government of Natal tendered him public thanks.

But these disinterested services did not disarm the hatred of the whites. Gandhi was frequently arrested and imprisoned, and shortly after official thanks had been proffered for his services during the war he was sentenced to imprisonment and hard labor, after being beaten by the mob and left behind as dead. But no abuse, no persecution, could make Gandhi renounce his ideal. On the contrary, his faith in it grew stronger for his trials. His only reply to the violence meted out to him in South Africa was the famous little book, “Hind Swaraj,” published in 1908. This pamphlet on Indian home rule is the gospel of heroic love.

For twenty years the struggle lasted, reaching its bitterest phase from 1907 to 1914. Although the most intelligent and broad-minded Englishmen in Africa were opposed to it, in 1906 the South-African Government hastily passed a new Asiatic law. This led Gandhi to organize non-resistance on a large scale.

In September, 1906, a huge demonstration took place at Johannesburg, and the assembled Indians solemnly took the oath of passive resistance. The Chinese in Africa joined the Hindus; and Asiatics of all races, religions, and castes, rich and poor alike, brought the same enthusiasm and abnegation to the cause. The Asiatics were thrown into prison by the thousand, and as the jails were not large enough, they were hurled into the mine-pits. But it was as if the prisons fascinated these people whom General Smuts, their persecutor, called “conscientious objectors.” Three times Gandhi was thrown into jail, while others died as martyrs. The movement grew. In 1918 it spread from the Transvaal to Natal. Huge strikes and monster meetings, masses of Hindus marching across Transvaal, alarmed and excited public opinion in Africa and Asia. All India was stirred to indignation, and the viceroy, Lord Hardinge, driven by public opinion, finally lodged a protest against the Government of South Africa.

The indomitable tenacity and the magic of the “Great Soul” operated and won out: force had to bow down before heroic gentleness. The man most bitterly opposed to the Indians, General Smuts, who in 1909 had said he would never erase from the statutes a measure prejudicial to the Indians, confessed, five years later, in 1914, that he was glad to do away with it. An imperial commission backed Gandhi up on almost every point. In 1914 an act abolished the three-pound poll-tax, while Natal was opened to all Indians desirous of settling there as free workers. After twenty years of sacrifice non-resistance was triumphant.

Chapter 4

When Gandhi returned to India he had the prestige of a leader.

Since the beginning of the century the movement for Indian independence had been steadily gaining ground, Thirty years before, a few broadminded Englishmen, among whom were A. O. Hume and Sir William Wedderburn, had organized a National Indian Congress. Victorian Liberals, they had given the Congress a loyalist stamp and had tried to consolidate India’s claims with the demands of England’s sovereignty. In the meantime, however, Japan’s victory over Russia had awakened the pride of Asiatic peoples, and Indian patriots resented Lord Curzon’s provocative attitude. An extremist party was formed in the heart of the Congress, and its more aggressive nationalism corresponded to a general sentiment throughout the country. Until the war of 1914, however, the old constitutional part remained under the leadership of G. K. Gokhale, who was a great Indian patriot, although he believed in loyalty to England.

Although the Indian Congress, reflecting general sentiment, was in favor of home rule, or Swaraj, the various members disagreed as to the form this home rule should take. Some members believed in cooperation with England; others wanted to drive the English out of India. Some advocated the dominion system, as in Canada, while others asserted that India should aspire to become an independent nation like Japan. Gandhi proposed a solution. It was religious rather than political, but at bottom it was more radical than any of the others. The principles are to be found in his “Hind Swaraj.” But as this solution was based on conditions in South Africa, Gandhi realized it would have to be modified to suit conditions in India. He also realized that while his stay in South Africa had made him unfamiliar with conditions in India, it had proved what an irresistible weapon ahimsa, non-violence, could be. And he determined, therefore, to study conditions in India in order to adapt the weapon of ahimsa to them.

At this time Gandhi felt no antagonism for England. On the contrary, when the war broke out in 1914, he went to London to organize an Indian ambulance corps. As he explained in a letter written in 1921, he honestly believed himself a citizen of the empire. He refers to his attitude again and again, as in his letter addressed to “Every Englishman in India,” published in 1920. No Englishman, he says, served the Government more faithfully than he during twenty-nine years of public life. He risked his life four times for England, and until 1919 he sincerely believed in cooperating with the Government. But now he can do so no longer.

Gandhi was not the only one to experience this change of feeling. In 1914 all India had been carried away by the hypocritical idealism of the so-called “war for justice.” In asking for India’s support the English Government had held out the most brilliant hopes. The granting of home rule, which the people longed for, was said to depend on India’s attitude in the war. In August, 1917, the clever Indian secretary, E. S. Montagu, promised India a government responsible to the people. A consultation took place, and in July, 1918, the viceroy, Lord Chelmsford, and Mr. Montagu signed an official report recommending constitutional reform in India. The Allied armies were in a most precarious position in the early days of 1918. On April 2 Lloyd George had sent an appeal to the people of India, while the war conference, sitting at Delhi in the end of the same month, had hinted that the hour of India’s independence was near. And India had replied as one man while Gandhi promised England his loyal backing. India contributed 985,000 men and made tremendous sacrifices. And she waited confidently for the promised reward.

The awakening was terrible. Danger was over in the end of 1918, and gone was the memory of services rendered. After the signing of the armistice the Government saw no reason for feigning any longer. Instead of granting the promised liberties, it suspended whatever freedom already existed. The Rowlatt bills, proposed at the Imperial Legislative Council at Delhi, expressed an insulting distrust of the country which had given so many proofs of its loyalty. These bills aimed to establish definitively the provisions of the Defense Act imposed on India dining the war, and made secret police services, censorship, and all the tyrannical annoyances of a real state of siege into a permanent reality. There was one burst of indignation all over India. The revolt began. Gandhi led it.

Hitherto Gandhi had been interested in social reforms only, devoting himself particularly to the conditions of agricultural workers. At Kaira, in the Gujarat, and at Champaran, in Behar, he had almost unnoticeably and with success tried out the formidable weapon which he was soon to use in national struggles. This weapon was the will of active passionate non-resistance. We will study it later under the name of Satyagraha, which Gandhi has given it.

Until 1919, however, Gandhi did not participate actively in the Indian nationalist movement. Having been united in 1916 by Mrs. Annie Besant, the most advanced elements soon outdistanced her and rallied under the leadership of the great Hindu, Lokamanya Bal Gangadhar Tilak, a man of extraordinary energy, uniting, as in a triple sheaf of iron, a great mind, a strong will, and a high character. His intelligence was perhaps even keener than Gandhi’s, or, rather, it was more solidly nourished on old Asiatic culture. He was an erudite, a mathematician, who had sacrificed all personal ambitions to serve his country. Like Gandhi, he sought no personal recognition and longed only for the triumph of his ideal in order to be able to retire from the political field and go back to his scientific work. As long as he lived he was the undisputed leader of India. Who can say what would have happened if he had not met with an untimely death in 1920? If Tilak had lived, Gandhi, who revered Tilak’s genius, while differing radically from him in regard to methods and policies, would no doubt have remained religious leader of the movement. How magnificently the people of India could have marched on under such a double leadership! They would have been irresistible, for Tilak was a master of action, just as Gandhi is a master of spiritual power. But fate decided otherwise. It is, perhaps, to be regretted, not only for Tilak’s sake, but for India’s and even for Gandhi’s. The rôle of minority leader, of leader of the moral élite, would have been more in accordance with Gandhi’s inmost desires and nature. He would have been happy to let Tilak rule the majority, for Gandhi never had any faith in majorities. But Tilak had. Tilak, a born mathematician and master of action, believed in numbers. He was democratic instinctively. He was resolutely a politician, who left religious considerations aside. He claimed that politics were not for sadhus (saints, pious men). This austere scientist would have sacrificed truth to patriotism. And this scrupulously honest and upright man, whose personal life was one of spotless purity, did not hesitate to say that in politics everything is justified. It might be said that Tilak’s conception of politics and that of the dictators of Moscow have something in common. Not so with Gandhi’s ideal. Tilak’s and Gandhi’s discussions brought out their different points of view. Between men as sincere as they there is bound to be irreconcilable opposition, since their methods are based on their convictions, which are in fundamental opposition. Each man respected and revered the other. But Gandhi felt that if it came to the point he would always set truth first before liberty and even before his country, whereas Tilak set his country above everything. Gandhi feels that no matter how great his love for his country may be, his faith in his ideal, in religion as expressed in Truth, is greater still.

As he says on August 11,1920:

I am wedded to India because I believe absolutely that she has a mission for the world... My religion has no geographical limits. I have a living faith in it which will transcend even my love for India herself.

These noble words give the key to the struggle which we now will describe. They prove that the Apostle of India is the Apostle of the World, and that he is one of us. The battle the Mahatma began fighting four years ago is our battle.

Chapter 5

It should be noted that when Gandhi stepped into the political field as leader of the opposition to the Rowlatt bills, he was moved only by a desire to spare the country from violence. The revolt was bound to come; he knew there was no possibility of avoiding it. The point, therefore, was to turn it into non-violent channels.

To understand Gandhi’s activity, it should be realized that his doctrine is like a huge edifice composed of two different floors or grades. Below is the solid groundwork, the basic foundation of religion. On this vast and unshakable foundation is based the political and social campaign. It is not the ideal continuation of the invisible foundation, but it is the best structure possible under present conditions. It is adapted to conditions.

In other words, Gandhi is religious by nature, and his doctrine is essentially religious. He is a political leader by necessity, because other leaders disappear, and the force of circumstances obliges him to pilot the ship through the storm and give practical political expression to his doctrine. These developments are interesting, but the essential part of the edifice is the crypt, which is deep and well built and meant to uphold a very different cathedral from the structure rapidly rising above it. The crypt alone is durable. The rest is temporary and only designed to serve during the transition years, until the plans for a cathedral worthy of the groundwork can be worked out. An understanding of the principles on which the vast subterranean crypt is based is essential, therefore, for here Gandhi’s thought finds its real expression. It is into the depths of this crypt that he descends every day to seek inspiration and strength to carry on the work above.

Gandhi believes in the religion of his people, in Hinduism. But he is not a scholar, attached to the punctilious interpretation of texts, nor is he a blind believer accepting unquestioningly all the traditions of his religion. His religion must satisfy his reason and correspond to the dictates of his conscience.

I would not make a fetish of religion and condone evil in its sacred name.
My belief in the Hindu scripture does not require me to accept every word and every verse as divinely inspired. I decline to be bound by any interpretation however learned it may be if it is repugnant to reason or moral sense.

Nor does he look upon Hinduism as the only religion, and this is a very important point.

I do not believe in the exclusive divinity of the Vedas. I believe the Bible, the Koran and the Zend-Avesta to be as divinely inspired as the Vedas... Hinduism is not a missionary religion. In it there is room for the worship of all the prophets in the world... Hinduism tells everyone to worship God according to his own faith or Dharma and so it lives in peace with all religions.

He sees the errors and vices that have crept into religion through the centuries, and he brands them, but he adds:

I can no more describe my feeling for Hinduism than for my own wife. She moves me as no other woman in the world can. Not that she has no faults; I dare say, she has many more than I see myself. But the feeling of an indissoluble bond is there. Even so I feel about Hinduism with all its faults and limitations. Nothing elates me so much as the music of the Gitâ or the Ramayana by Tulasidas, the only two books in Hinduism I may be said to know. I know that vice is going on to-day in all the great Hindu shrines but I love them in spite of their failings. I am a reformer through and through. But my zeal never takes me to the rejection of any of the essential things of Hinduism.

What are the essential things in which Gandhi believes? In an article written October 6,1921, Gandhi defines his conception of Hinduism:

1. He believes, he says, in the “Vedas, the Upanishads, the Puranas and all that goes by the name of Hindu scriptures.” He believes, therefore, in Avataras and rebirth.

2. He believes in the Varnashrama Dharma or the “Discipline of the Castes,” in a sense which he considers “strictly Vedic,” but which may not correspond to the present “popular and crude sense.”

3. He believes in the “protection of the cow in a much larger sense than the popular.”

4. He does not “disbelieve in idol worship.”

Every Occidental who reads Gandhi’s “Credo” and stops at these lines is apt to feel that they reveal a mentality so different from ours and so far removed in time and space as to make comparison with our ideals impossible, owing to the lack of a common measure. But if he will read on, he will find, a few lines below, the following words, which express a doctrine more familiar to us:

I believe implicitly in the Hindu aphorism that no one truly knows the Shastras who has not attained perfection in Innocence [Ahimsa], Truth [Satya], and Self-Control [Brahma-Charya] and who has not renounced all acquisition or possession of wealth.

Here the words of the Hindu join those of the Gospel. And Gandhi was aware of their similarity. To an English clergyman who asked him in 1920 which books had influenced him most, Gandhi replied, “The New Testament.”

The last words of Gandhi’s “Ethical Religion” are a quotation from the New Testament, and he claims that the revelation of passive resistance came to him after reading the Sermon on the Mount in 1893. When the clergyman asked him, in surprise, if he had not found the same message in Hindu scriptures, Gandhi replied that while he has found inspiration and guidance in the Bhagavad Gitâ, which he reveres and admires, the secret of passive resistance was made clear to him through the New Testament. A great joy welled up in him, he says, when the revelation came to him, and again when the Gitâ confirmed this revelation. Gandhi also says that Tolstoi’s ideal, that the kingdom of God is within us, helped him mold his own faith into a real doctrine.

It should not be forgotten that this Asiatic believer has translated Ruskin and Plato and quotes Thoreau, admires Mazzini, reads Edward Carpenter, and that he is, in short, familiar with the best that Europe and America have produced.

There is no reason why a Westerner should not understand Gandhi’s doctrine as well as Gandhi understands those of our great men, provided the Westerner will take the trouble to study Gandhi a little deeply. It is true that the mere words of Gandhi’s creed may surprise him, and that two paragraphs, in fact, if read superficially, may seem so different from our mentality as to form an almost insurmountable barrier between the religious ideals of Asia and Europe. One of these paragraphs refers to cow-protection and the other to the caste system. As for Gandhi’s reference to idol-worship, it requires no special study. Gandhi explains his attitude when he says that he has no veneration for idols but believes idol-worship to be part of human nature. He considers it inherent to the frailty of the human mind, because we all “hanker after symbolism” and must needs materialize our faith in order really to understand it. When Gandhi says he does not disbelieve in idol-worship, he means no more than what we countenance in all our ritualistic churches of the West.

“Cow-protection,” says Gandhi, is the central fact of Hinduism. He looks upon it as one of the “most wonderful phenomena of human evolution.” Why? Because the cow, to him, is taken as the symbol of the entire “sub-human world.” Cow-protection means that man concludes a pact of alliance with his dumb brethren; it signifies fraternity between man and beast. According to Gandhi’s beautiful expression, by learning to respect, revere, an animal, man is “taken beyond his species and is enjoined to realize his identity with all that lives.”

If the cow was selected in preference to other creatures it was because in India the cow was the best companion, the giver of plenty. Not only did she give the milk but she made agriculture possible. And Gandhi sees in “this gentle animal” a “poem of pity.”

But there is nothing idolatrous about Gandhi’s cow-worship, and no one condemns more harshly than he the fetishism of many so-called believers, who observe the letter of “cow-worship” without exercising a spirit of compassion “for the dumb creatures of God.” Whoever understands the spirit of compassion and fellow-feeling that Gandhi would have men feel for their dumb brethren,—and who would have understood this better than the poverello Assisi?—is not surprised that Gandhi lays such stress on cow-protection in his creed. From this point of view he is quite justified in saying that cow-protection is the “gift of Hinduism to the world.” To the precept of the gospel, “Love thy neighbor as thyself,” Gandhi adds, “And every living being is thy neighbor.”

Gandhi’s belief in the caste system is almost more difficult for a European or Western mind to understand—it seems more foreign, almost, than the idea of the fellowship of all living beings. I should perhaps say “European or Western mind of to-day,” for while we still believe in a certain equality, Heaven knows how we will feel in the future, when we become thoroughly imbued with the consequences of the evolution, democratic in name only, which we are undergoing! I do not imagine that at our present stage of development my explanation of Gandhi’s views will make them seem acceptable as regards the caste system; nor am I anxious to have them seem so. But I would like to make it clear that Gandhi’s conception of the caste system is different from what we usually mean by that term, since he does not base it on pride or vain notions of social superiority, but on duties.

I am inclined to think [he says] that the law of heredity is an eternal law, and that any attempt to alter it must lead to utter confusion... Varnashrama or the caste system, is inherent in human nature. Hinduism has simply reduced it to a science.

Gandhi believes in four classes or castes. The Brahmans, the intellectual and spiritual class; the military and governmental class; the Vaishyas, the commercial, industrial class; and the Shudras, manual workers and laborers. This classification does not imply any superiority or inferiority. It simply stands for different vocations. “These classes define duties, they confer no privileges.”

It is against the genius of Hinduism to arrogate to oneself a higher status or assign others to a lower. All are born to serve God’s creation, the Brahman with his knowledge, the Kshatriya with his power of protection, the Vaishya with his commercial ability, the Shudra with his bodily labor.

This does not mean that a Brahman is absolved from bodily labor but it does mean that he is predominantly a man of knowledge and fittest by training and heredity to impart it to others. There is nothing again to prevent a Shudra from acquiring all the knowledge he wishes. Only he will best serve with his body and need not envy others their special qualities for service. A Brahman who claims superiority by right of knowledge falls and has no knowledge. Varnashrama is self-restraint and conservation of economy and energy...

Gandhi’s caste system is based, therefore, on “abnegation and not on privileges.” It should not be forgotten, moreover, that according to Hinduism reincarnation reestablishes a general equilibrium, as in the course of successive existences a Brahman becomes a Shudra, and vice versa.
The caste system, which deals with different classes of equal rank, bears no relation whatsoever to the attitude of Hindus to the “untouchables,” or pariahs. We will study later on Gandhi’s passionate appeals for the pariahs. His campaign in favor of the “suppressed classes” is one of the most appealing phases of his apostleship. Gandhi regards the pariah system as a blot on Hinduism; it is a vile deformation of the real doctrine, and he suffers intolerably by it.

I would rather be torn to pieces than disown my brothers of the suppressed classes... I do not want to be reborn, but if I have to be reborn, I should be “untouchable” so that I may share their sorrows, sufferings and the affronts leveled at them in order that I may endeavor to free them from their miserable condition.

And he adopts a little “untouchable” girl and speaks with emotion of this charming little imp of seven who rules the household with her gay prattle.