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 Mahatma Gandhi was unquestionably a great man, both in personal force and in political effect. He moulded the character of the struggle for freedom in India, and impressed his own ideals upon the new governing class that came into power when the English went home. There is, at the present day, a general awakening throughout Asia, but the spirit and policy of India, thanks largely to Gandhi, remains very different from that of any other Asiatic country.
Gandhi, like some other great men, developed slowly: Quite extraordinary psychological acumen would have been necessary to discern his future in the shy youth who studied law, first in India and then in England. His autobiography contains a picture of him as he was in his early days in England, and there is nothing in it to suggest the future loincloth; on the contrary, his costume is faultlessly correct and would pass inspection by the "Tailor and Cutter" without any criticism.
Some of the characteristics that he displayed throughout his life were already in evidence at this time. He had a wide and unsectarian interest in religion, and listened to Christian teaching without hostility, though without acceptance. He had already that scrupulous honesty which later distinguished him. He had been married, as was the custom of this country, while still a schoolboy, but when he came to England he left his wife in India and was not generally known by his English friends to be married. He believed, rightly or wrongly, that a certain young lady was becoming interested in him, and he therefore wrote a long letter to her chaperone explaining his matrimonial position.
 He had been brought up to be a vegetarian on religious grounds, but his brother, who wanted to become "modern," induced him on a few occasions to taste meat. He found it made him ill, and he disliked the deceiving of his parents that was involved. He therefore reverted to strict vegetarianism before his journey to England. All through his life he attached an importance to questions of diet which it is a little difficult for most modern Europeans to understand. But although in England he observed as far as he could the customs in which he had been brought up, he did not become in any degree a rebel, and did not apparently encounter the kind of treatment by which rebels are created.
After a year or so in India, he went on professional legal business to South Africa, and it was there that events soon pushed him into the career which made him famous. He landed at Durban and had to travel to Pretoria. The incidents of this journey are treated vividly and precisely in his autobiography. He took a first-class ticket at Durban, and apparently the railway authorities had no objection to selling it to him. But after he had been in the train for some time, a railway official insisted that however much he might have a first-class ticket, he must travel in a third-class carriage. Gandhi refused to yield voluntarily, so he was pushed out of the train, which went on without him. He sat throughout the night in the station waiting-room, shivering with cold, because his overcoat was in the luggage of which the railway company had taken charge, and he would not ask of them the favour of being allowed to get it out.
 "I began to think of my duty," he writes in his autobiography. "Should I fight for my rights or go back to India; or should I go on to Pretoria without minding the insults, and return to India after finishing the case? It would be cowardice to run back to India without fulfilling my obligation. The hardship to which I was subjected was only superficial. It was only a symptom of the deep disease of colour prejudice. I should try, if possible, to root out the disease and suffer hardship in the process. Redress for wrongs I should seek only to the extent that would be necessary for the removal of the colour prejudice. So I decided to take the next available train to Pretoria."
A part of his journey had to be done by stage-coach, as there was at that time no railway from the Natal frontier to Johannesburg. He had a ticket for the journey by coach of which the validity was not questioned, but as he was a "coloured man," the conductor of the coach considered that he could not be allowed to travel inside. For a time he was allowed to sit next to the driver while the conductor sat inside, but presently the conductor decided that he wanted to smoke, and ordered Gandhi to sit on the floor of the roof. Gandhi describes the incident: "So he took a piece of dirty sackcloth from the driver, spread it on the footboard, and addressing me, said, `Sammy, you sit on this. I want to sit near the driver.' The insult was more than I could bear. In fear and trembling, I said to him, `It was you who seated me here, though I should have been accommodated inside. That insult I put up with. Now that you want to sit outside and smoke, you would have me sit at your feet. I refuse to do so, but I am prepared to sit inside.' As I was struggling through these sentences the man came for me and began heavily to box my ears. He seized me by the arm and tried to drag me down. I clung to the brass rails of the coach-box and was determined to keep my hold even at the risk of breaking my wrist-bones. The passengers were witnessing the scene - the man swearing at me, dragging and belabouring me, and I remaining still. He was strong and I was weak."
 It is difficult to guess how this scene would have ended but for the intervention of some of the passengers, who apparently had some inkling of humanity. Thanks to them, Gandhi was allowed to remain where he was, and a Hottentot, who had been sitting on the other side of the driver, was made to vacate his seat for the conductor. The feelings of Hottentots about this incident remain for a future page of history. He had some further adventures on the journey, but of a less dramatic sort. No good hotel would give him lodging, and it was only with some difficulty that he procured a first-class ticket from Johannesburg to Pretoria. This he did by writing a long letter to the station master, and then appearing at the station so faultlessly dressed that the station master observed, "I see you are a gentleman." If he had met Gandhi in later life, clad in his loincloth, he would not have been able to say this.
At this time, as Gandhi's reflections show, although he was outraged by the colour prejudice that he encountered, he had no conception of general human equality. He was aware of himself as an educated man, a man whose family in their own country had a certain social prominence. He was rendered indignant by the fact that all Hindus in South Africa were called "coolies," however little they might work with their hand. He had not yet thought of Negroes as having the same right to equality as he was claiming for himself, and at first he was not particularly interested in the wrongs of Indian indentured labourers. It was only step by step, through a number of years, that his outlook on human affairs developed to the point where the untouchables became his main preoccupation. I think, however, that the indignities which he suffered on this first journey in South Africa were what first awakened him to the intolerable humiliation to which classes and nations which are deemed "inferior" are subjected by the insolence of their "masters". I should therefore judge that it was this journey which was the turning point in Gandhi's life.
 Gandhi's successes throughout his career depended upon a combination of deep religious conviction and astute political insight. He was immovable when he was certain that one of his many moral principles was involved. He was flexible whenever there was negotiation within the limits of his principles. When his followers got out of hand and practised violence that he could not countenance, he would punish himself by a fast. And as his devoted adherents imagined him becoming daily more emaciated and risking death on account of their misbehaviour, they inevitably repented and, like naughty children, promised not to do it again. His motive in all this was religious, but the effect was to reveal his power upon the whole movement that he had created. Who could venture to disobey a revered and beloved leader who would inflict upon himself suffering, and perhaps death, in expiation of the sins of others? It was a perfect technique, but it was perfect because in his own mind it was not a technique, but obedience to the dictates of duty.
Gandhi's moral sense had various aspects that are strange to most modern Europeans. Matters of diet had an importance to him which is a little puzzling. In the midst of events of the most enormous importance, it would occur to him that he ought not to eat salt or pulse, and he would feel about this with the same earnestness that he felt about the fate of India. For example, he took a vow against milk, but once, when he was very ill, the doctor said he would die unless he took milk. His wife pointed out to him that the word he had used in his vow applied only to the milk of the cow or the buffalo, and did not include the milk of the goat. It was therefore permissible for him to drink goat's milk. He was aware that his death would be a loss to India, and on this ground he allowed himself to accept his wife's argument, although it appeared to him somewhat sophistical. His own account of this matter is as follows: "The will to live proved stronger than the devotion to truth, and for once the votary of truth compromised his sacred ideals by his eagerness to take up the Satyagraha fight. The memory of this occasion even now rankles in my breast, and fills me with remorse and I am constantly thinking how to give up goat's milk. But I cannot yet free myself from that subject of my temptations, the desire to serve which still holds me."
 Many modern Europeans will have difficulty in understanding his motives for the vow of complete chastity in marriage which he made at a time when he was trying to help the Zulus who were being persecuted for what the Government chose to call a "rebellion". He felt so he tells us, that he could not be wholehearted in his work, or have all the strength of endurance that it demanded, unless he gave up the joys of family life. This attitude was common in the early Church but now, to a European, feels somewhat strange. Probably for him the decision was a right one. He did and endured things which it is very difficult to do and endure. In spite of bad health, he continuously risked his life by fasts and other hardships. It may be that no less absolute devotion would have enabled him to achieve the great measure of success which he did finally achieve. As to this no one except himself could be the judge. However that may be, it is impossible to understand him psychologically so long as we think of him in purely modern terms. To build him up psychologically from European ingredients we must make a combination of early Christian saint with mediaeval ecclesiastics, adding to both, however, something of the sweetness of St. Francis.
For India, which is not a modern country, his character and his religion were what was needed. A more modern-minded man, for example, could not have been nearly so successful in the campaign on behalf of the untouchables. But while his memory deserves to be revered, it would be a mistake to hope that India will continue to have the outlook that to him seemed best. India, like other nations, has to find her place in the modern world, not in the dreams of a bygone age.
An Exposition on "The Spirit of Gandhi"
Towards a partyless Gandhian Republic
The Meaning of Non Violence
Bertrand Russell
(Excerpts from Atlantic Monthly, Boston)
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