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

the right to receive it, is the purest type of repentance. I know my confession made my father feel absolutely safe about me and increased his affection for me beyond measure. 15
    [Lest he give pain to his father and especially his mother, Mohandas did not tell them that he absented himself from temple.]
    [The temple] never appealed to me. I did not like its glitter and pomp.…
     … I happened about this time to come across Manusmriti [Laws of Manu—Hindu religious laws] which was amongst my father’s collection. The story of creation and similar things in it did not impress me very much but on the contrary made me incline somewhat towards atheism.
    There was a cousin of mine … for whose intellect I had great regard. To him I turned with my doubts. But he could not resolve them.…
    [Contrary to the Hindu precept of non-killing] I also felt it was quite moral to kill serpents, bugs and the like.…
    But one thing took deep root in me—the conviction that morality is the basis of things and that truth is the substance of all morality. Truth became my sole objective … and my definition of it also has been ever widening.
    A Gujarati [Gandhi’s native language] stanza likewise grippedmy mind and heart. Its precept—return good for evil—became my guiding principle.… 16
    [Gandhi’s anti-religious sentiments quickened his interest in religion and he listened attentively to his father’s frequent discussions with Moslem and Parsi friends on the differences between their faiths and Hinduism.]
    [The “shackles of lust” tormented Gandhi. They gave him a feeling of guilt. The feeling grew when sex seemed to clash with the keen sense of duty which developed in him at an early age. One instance of such a conflict impressed itself indelibly.]
    The time of which I am now speaking is my sixteenth year. My father … was bed-ridden [with a fistula].… My mother, an old servant of the house and I were his principal attendants. I had the duties of a nurse, which mainly consisted of dressing the wound, giving my father his medicine and compounding drugs whenever they had to be made up at home. Every night I massaged his legs and retired only when he asked me to do so or after he had fallen asleep. I loved to do this service. I do not remember ever having neglected it. All the time at my disposal after the performance of the daily duties was divided between school and attending on my father. I would go out only for an evening walk either when he permitted me or when he was feeling well.
    This was also the time when my wife was expecting a baby—a circumstance which … meant a double shame for me. For one thing I did not restrain myself, as I should have done, whilst I was yet a student. And secondly, this carnal lust got the better of what I regarded as my duty to study and of what was even a greater duty, my devotion to my parents.… Every night whilst my hands were busy massaging my father’s legs my mind was hovering about the bedroom—and that too at a time when religion, medical science and common sense alike forbade sexual intercourse. I was always glad to be relieved from my duty and went straight to the bedroom after doing obeisance to my father.
    At the same time my father was getting worse every day.… Hedespaired of living any longer. He was getting weaker and weaker until at last he had to be asked to perform the necessary functions in bed. But up to the last he refused to do anything of the kind, always insisting on going through the strain of leaving his bed. The Vaishnavite [Orthodox Hindu] rules about external cleanliness are so inexorable.
    The dreadful night came.…
    It was ten-thirty or eleven P.M . I was giving the massage. My uncle offered to relieve me. I was glad and went straight to the bedroom. My wife, poor thing, was fast asleep. But how could she sleep when I was there? I woke her up. In five or six minutes, however, the servant knocked at the door. I started with alarm. “Get