His religious quest received great impetus after his
arrival in South Africa.
His Quaker friends in
Pretoria failed to convert him to Christianity, but they quickened his appetite
for religious studies. He
was fascinated by Tolstoy's writings on Christianity, read the Qu'ran in
translation, and delved into Hindu scriptures and philosophy. The study of
comparative religion, talks with scholars, and his own reading of theological
works brought him to the conclusion that all religions were true and yet every
one of them was imperfect because they were "interpreted with poor
intellects, sometimes with poor hearts, and more often misinterpreted."
Rajchandra, a brilliant young philosopher who became
Gandhi's spiritual mentor, convinced him of "the subtlety and
profundity" of Hindu religion. It was the Bhagavadgita, which Gandhi had
first read in London, that became his "spiritual dictionary" and
exercised probably the greatest single influence on his life. Two Sanskrit
words in the Gita particularly fascinated him.
One was non-possession, which implied that man had
to jettison the material goods that cramped the life of the spirit and to shake
off the bonds of money and property.
The other was equability, which enjoined him to
remain unruffled by pain or pleasure, victory or defeat, and to work without
hope of success or fear of failure.
These were not merely counsels of perfection.
In the civil case that had brought him to South
Africa in 1893, he had persuaded the antagonists to settle their differences
out of court.The true function of a lawyer seemed to him "to unite parties
driven under mistrust."
He soon regarded his clients not as purchasers of
his services but as friends, they consulted him not only on legal issues but on
such matters as the best way of weaning a baby or balancing the family budget.
When an associate protested that clients came even
on Sundays, Gandhiji replied: "A man in distress
cannot have Sunday rest."
Gandhi's legal earnings reached a peak figure of
5,000 a year, but he had little interest in moneymaking, and his savings were
often sunk in his public activities. In Durban and later in Johannesburg, he
kept an open table; his house was a virtual hostel for younger colleagues and
political coworkers.
This was something of an ordeal for his wife,
without whose extraordinary patience, endurance, and self-effacement Gandhi
could hardly have devoted himself to public causes.
As he broke through the conventional bonds of family
and property, their life tended to shade into a community life.
Gandhi felt an irresistible attraction to a life of
simplicity, manual labor, and austerity. In 1904, after reading John
Ruskin's Unto This Last, a critique of capitalism, he set up a farm at Phoenix
near Durban where he and his friends could literally live by the sweat of their
brow. Six years later another colony
grew up under Gandhi's fostering care near Johannesburg. It was named Tolstoy Farm, after
the name of Tolstoy, whom Gandhi admired and corresponded with. Those two
settlements were the precursors of the more famous ashrams in India, at Sabarmati,
and at Sevagram at Vardha.
South Africa had not only prompted Gandhi to evolve
a novel technique for political action but also transformed him into a leader
of men by freeing him from bonds that make cowards of most men.
"Persons in power," Gilbert Murray
prophetically wrote about Gandhi in the
Hibbert Journal in 1918, "should be very careful how they deal with a man
who cares nothing for sensual pleasure, nothing for riches, nothing for comfort
or praise, or promotion, but is simply determined to do what he believes to be
right. He is a dangerous and uncomfortable enemy, because his body which you
can always conquer gives you so little purchase upon his soul."
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