WHY DOES GANDHI CALL HIS EXPERIENCES EXPERIMENTS? Chandra Shekhar Dubey

          WHY DOES GANDHI CALL IT AN EXPERIMENT...?

Gandhi wrote in introduction to this book that one of his friends called Anand Swami once asked him ,what led him to set on this adventure, while writing autobiography is more akin to the Westerners.Sharing his apprehensions, he further asked “Supposing you reject tomorrow the things you hold as principles today ,is it not likely that men who shape their conduct on the authority of your word ,spoken or written, maybe misled?”Gandhi was influenced by this experience as he grew with life.He called his experience not truth but 'experiments with truth' because the validity,empirical results would remain a subject to revision and above all there is no single way to see the truth though it is monotheistic in nature.Even the Upanishads say that truth is one but scholars interpret it in many ways.Therefore Gandhi decided to speak of his experiments    only.His experiments in personal, political, religious and spiritual fields narrated in this book took a shape of an autobiography.He clarified that these would be a series of my lived experiences.Gandhi calls it THE STORY OF MY EXPERIMENTS WITH TRUTH.These include experiments with non-violence ,celibacy,other Gandhian tools of political experiments and other principles of conduct considered to be distinct from truth.To Gandhi truth was not only truthfulness of words but truthfulness in thought and action also,and not only   the relative truth of our conception but Eternal Truth that connects us to one who is supreme and Absolute.Thus Gandhi loved to call his accounts experiments with truth and not only   my autobiography.

Gandhi’s experiments in South Africa was designed to show that the concept of Satyagraha was derived not from moral theory or doctrine,but from the experience and practice.The narrative is driven by the conflict between ,on the one hand,Gandhi and his Satyagrahis ,and on the other, South African government.Mixing military and religious metaphors,Gandhi portrayed himself at once as a general directing a campaign and as a leading disciples on a pilgrimage.The narrative shifts swiftly between scenes describing high politics and Gandhi’s imprisonment in Johannesburg,Gandhi’s experiments in South Africa exemplified his the most distinctive formal trait as a writer.He dramatized the events with utmost economy of words thus lending a theatrical significance to his narrative.Take for instance,the extraordinary economy with which he describes the event that was to acquire a mythic status ,the turning point in Gandhi’s life,the event that set him on his path .

“I was pushed out of the train by a police constable at Maritzburg ,and the trains having left,was sitting in the waiting room ,shivering in the bitter cold,I did not know where my luggage was ,nor did I dare to inquire of anybody ,lest I might be insulted and assaulted once again.Sleep was not out of  the question.Doubt took  possession of my mind .Late at night I came to  the conclusion that to run back to India was cowardly .I must reach Pretoria ,without minding insults or even assaults.Pretoria was my goal.”

Thus was Gandhi launched on his Satyagraha campaign ,and on his political destiny.South Africa ,Gandhi concluded ,was “where I had realized my vocation in life.” With this now clear ,he left South Africa for India in 1914.The subsequent years: 1915,1917, 1920,1922,1930-1936 ,1942 went down in the history of  India as significant landmarks during which Gandhi made many experiments in the political, social, and spiritual fields. Gandhi’s legendary “Great Trial” published in YOUNG INDIA made  Britishers  restless as it became a nationalist lore. Gandhi made it clear that in indicating himself, he did so according to his own ethical principles of non-violence and not the  statutes  of the British laws-which in his words were no less than a “subtle but effective system  of terrorism and an organized display of terrorism and an organized     display of force.” The dramatization of his own life , its transformation into a permanent performance ,was Gandhi’s greatest literary achievement. Gandhi’s life is itself a great narrative parabola , driven by an unfailing internal momentum. A young hero is exiled from his home in Western India to London and then to South Africa: through the injustice and humiliation he suffers there at the hands of his rulers ,he learns spiritual and physical fortitude :he returns to pursue a quest to free his homeland of alien rule :he inspires his people to superman feats ,and leads them to liberty but at the moment of triumph he is consumed ,as his people gain their  freedom. With artful alertness ,Gandhi allowed the details of this life to be constantly witnessed and recorded befitting for a barrister whose language ,manners, and theatrical sense of confrontation were all shaped by his encounter with the British laws.

 The story of 'My Experiments With Truth’ was delivered in the form of a sequence of parables ,a modern recension of the Budhist Jataka  tradition.It could be read as a historical and political quest for freedom and nationhood,as well as spiritual mission of purification and salvation .Individual drama was masterfully blended with historical epic. He insisted that ‘I write as the spirit moves me at the time of writing...’It was not accuracy but truth that he was after: and the standard that he implied set not by memoirs or his history writing ,but by science .Gandhi described himself in the book as scientist ‘and one of the tropes that he evoked , is that of  experiment. The experimental theme recurs ; Gandhi writes of ‘experiments’ in the field of politics, experiments in the field of spiritualism, experiments on his body and experiments on in dietetics and principal and current experiments. The weekly installments of his life-stories were as laboratory reports., dissection of lived experiences. Gandhi wrote ‘I claim for them nothing more does than the scientist who, though  he conducts his experiments with the utmost accuracy ,forethought and minuteness ,never claims and finally about his  conclusions, but keeps an open mind regarding them.’’

These experiences were called experiments because Gandhi experimented these in human laboratory ie society .The results were validated by the masses and objectivity was amazingly appealing to collective shared consciousness.And it stood the litmus test of time.

Chandra Shekhar Dubey.