The Essential Gandhi by Mahatma Gandhi Read Free Book Online Page A

and had to leave off eating.
    I had a very bad night afterwards. A horrible nightmare haunted me. Every time I dropped off to sleep it would seem as though a live goat were bleating inside me and I would jump up full of remorse. But then I would remind myself that meat-eating was a duty and so become more cheerful.
    My friend was not a man to give in easily. He now began to cook various delicacies with meat and dress them neatly.…
    The bait had its effect. I got over my dislike for bread, forswore my compassion for the goats and became a relisher of meat dishes, if not of meat itself. This went on for about a year.…
    [I] knew that if my mother and father came to know of my having become a meat-eater they would be deeply shocked. This knowledge was gnawing at my heart.
    Therefore I said to myself: “Though it is essential to eat meat … yet deceiving and lying to one’s father and mother is worse than not eating meat. In their lifetime, therefore, meat-eating must be out of the question. When they are no more and I have found my freedom, I will eat meat openly but until that moment I will abstain from it.”
    [By now Gandhi developed an urge to reform Sheik Mehtab. This prolonged the relationship. But the naïve and younger Gandhi was no match for the shrewd, monied wastrel who offered revolt and adventure.]
     … My zeal for reforming him … proved disastrous for me, and all the time I was completely unconscious of the fact.
    The same company would have led me into faithlessness to my wife.… [He] once took me to a brothel. He sent me in with the necessary instructions. It was all pre-arranged. The bill had already been paid.… I was almost struck blind and dumb in this den of vice. I sat near the woman on her bed but I was tongue-tied. She naturally lost patience with me and showed me the door with abuses and insults. I then felt as though my manhood had been injured and wished to sink into the ground for shame. But I have ever since given thanks to God for having saved me.… 14
    [About that time—Mohandas must have been fifteen—he pilfered a bit of gold from his older brother. This produced a moral crisis. He had gnawing pangs of conscience and resolved never to steal again.]
     … I also made up my mind to confess it to my father. But I did not dare to speak. Not that I was afraid of my father beating me. No, I do not recall his ever having beaten any of us. I was afraid of the pain that I should cause him. But I felt the risk should be taken, that there could not be a cleansing without a confession.
    I decided at last to write out the confession, to submit it to my father and ask his forgiveness. I wrote it on a slip of paper and handed it to him myself. In this note not only did I confess my guilt but I asked adequate punishment for it and closed with a request to him not to punish himself for my offense. I also pledged myself never to steal in the future.
    I was trembling as I handed the confession to my father. [He sat up in his sick bed to read it.]
    He read it through and pearl-drops trickled down his cheeks, wetting the paper. For a moment he closed his eyes in thought and then tore up the note.… He again lay down. I also cried. I could see my father’s agony.…
    Those pearl-drops of love cleansed my heart and washed my sin away. Only he who has experienced such love can know what it is.…
    This was for me an object lesson in Ahimsa [Love and Non-Violence]. Then I could read in it nothing more than a father’s love but today I know that it was pure Ahimsa. When such Ahimsa becomes all-embracing it transforms everything it touches. There is no limit to its power.
    This sort of sublime forgiveness was not natural to my father. I had thought he would be angry, say hard things and strike his forehead. But he was so wonderfully peaceful and I believe this was due to my clean confession. A clean confession, combined with a promise never to commit the sin again, when offered before one who has