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Hello, I have been reading Gandhi's writings and some bios of him for years and I am still singularly fascinated with how such a person came to be. I am now obsessed with understanding the personal transformation that was required. I was hoping there would be a few people here who might know more about the culture he grew up in than me and would help me with a few questions. I am a modern westerner and have little understanding of the cultural environment that he grew up in.

My first question relates to just six words that appear in Chapter VIII (On My Way to Pretoria) of Part II of his autobiography. He writes, some years after the incident, his thoughts that night after being physically tossed from the train and suffering other abuses:

"The hardship to which I was subjected was superficial - only a symptom of the deep disease of colour prejudice. I should try, if possible, to root out the disease and suffer hardships in the process."

I have little problem understanding him up to this point. And then I get to those last six words - "...and suffer hardships in the process" - I stop every time and can no longer think of anything else. To my mind, this is the essence of what I think of when I think of this man and yet it would seem to come from nowhere.

So my question, finally, is this: Is the idea of personally experiencing suffering, in the process of achieving resolution of the main problem, as a necessary and desirable outcome a common attitude among people of his time and geography? Or was this an attitude which was unique to this man? That is, was this thinking something that other Hindus in Gujarat in the 1890's might have had? Whether the answer is yes or no, I would like to understand the origins of that thinking.

Thank you in advance for your kind help.

I believe such a notion is common among many cultures. You may see many catholics in Phillipines undergo the wilful sufferings on Good Friday. Some references in Bible also hints how King David cleansed himself of a sin by putting himself to sufferings. Muslims believe a month long restriction on food is a religious duty. Some sects of Hunduism believe self inflicted suffering is part of penance- even today.

However, I believe, with the above sentence, Gandhi had only meant that he is READY to suffer in the process rather than he WANTS to suffer.

"...suffer hardships in the process" or the full of it is "...to root out the disease and suffer hardships in the process" , that is the essence of Gandhi's idea, "Nonvionlence" :

As I have known, the nonviolence is a main thought in Hunduism, also, but Gandhi was different from other Hindunism, by bringing up the idea, to support his administration and his polical idea :

So that made Gandhi became the most powerful leader of India, in his time :

May be in the same time of Gandhi, it had some people think like him, but anyway, Gandhi was different because he didn't stop himself in the process of thinking, but he went further to the process of doing in real, too.

So I believe that the Gandhi's attitude was unique, because it's so strong idea, which went further than anyone in his time.

P.s. I am not native English, and I am not Hindunism, so this is just my best try to explain my idea.

:D
Suka

viva@ i think mahatma is saying that he may have thrown out of the train that night due to colour prejudice,but the root cause hidden deeply in human conscience is intolerance to things which are different from us,it may be of thoughts,colour,religion,language,race etc..that is why he propagated the doctrine of tolerance..here he chose not to retaliate,whereas tried to transform the person in front through peace..a tale from the lifestory of lord Budhha also indicates towards this direction where angulimaal-the notorious dacoit was transformed by budhha...this is also evident and reassereted in one of his very famous statement,"an eye for an eye,will make whole world blind"..here comes his formula of non-violence...he was very much influenced by Srimadbhagvadgeeta,his mother was a religious lady and he heard several mythological stories of truth and sacrifices which were part of cultural truth of the society...

I think Gandhi means that he will try to root out the disease and he knows that will certainly involve suffering hardships. He implies that he knows that it will not be easy and that the sufferings to come do not scare him. In India, with such a large number of people, no idea is unique to one person. Gandhi was unique in the sense that no one else had the combination of ideas he had, the leadership quality he had. He was someone everyone related to and agreed with about one idea or another.

It means that Gandhi got the knowledge about that subject at that incident. as per psychology also it is possible that the learning happens all of sudden.

We can see from his writings that Gandhi was greatly influenced by the teachings of Christ and reading a lot, like books of 'Tolstoy' who has analysed religion and the meaning of life at length, etc. Moreover, he himself hailed from a very religious family. The thought about suffering was developed in himself as part of the culture and also by the circumstances and his learning from his own experience. His quest was to find truth in his own way. Renunciation and suffering was his way of reaching self realization.

As Kevin rightly pointed out, Mahathma was greatly influenced by the teachings of Christ and books by Tolstoy. But while mentinoning how Gandhi formed his ideas, most people would claim it is just a continuation of Hindu culture, and all his ideas can be seen in upanishads and vedas. “I have nothing new to teach the world. Truth and nonviolence are as old as the hills,� these words my misguide anyone reading Mahatma as he is saying it is just a continuation of Indian philosophy. If you really interested to know what shaped Gandhiyan ideas, you have to go not only to the philosophic tradition of India, not just Christianity, but even American Transcendalists like Hery David Toreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson. Gandhi's Civil Disobedience movement has much relations with Thoreau's essay Civil Disobedience. I would say, his staunch faith in humanity, staunch faith in Ahimsa as propagated by ancient mystics coupled with his readings on Tolstoy, Thoreau and his own experience in South Africa made his the man what we know now.

Sarath, nice one you are absolutely correct. Gandhiji learn everything by his own experience and and slowly slowly he started being simple, his only aim was moulding his life as simple as possible, for that he choose the way of truth, and then he used non-violence against the injustice.That night in which he was thrown out of train was the night, give rise to idea of fighting against injustice and following the path of truth,idea of non-violence came, when he started having trust on the white people. He was knowing that no one would hit the group of peaceful people opposing the injustice with discipline without breaking law. he aim to follow law, respect law, love the white one, but to oppose the injustice to south the people.

NO DOUBT THAT MAHATMA GANDHI IS ONE OF A KIND OF PERSONALITY
HE IS A GEM OF MANKIND

ACCORDING TO ME , GANDHI LEARNED IT ALL THROUGHOUT HIS LIFE
HIS FATHER WAS A SICK MAN AND GANDHI NURSED HIM.... HE WITNESSED THE SUFFERING OF HIS OWN FATHER...
HIS MOTHER USED TO FAST A LOT ...
HE WITNESSED THE SUFFERING OF HIS MOTHER BY NOT TAKING ANY FOOD...
THESE KIND OF INSTANCES WAS FILLED IN HIS LIFE WHICH SHOULD HAVE A GREAT IMPACT ON HIM....


HE CASHED IN THE MOMENT VERY WELL
HE TOOK THE INITIATIVE IN MANY THINGS
HE TOOK THE PROTEST AND STRUGGLE IN AN INNOVATIVE WAY WHICH WAS SO EFFECTIVE AND EMPHASIZED EVEN HIS ENEMIES TO OBEY AND FOLLOW HIM...

suffering as a penance was used by gandhi.he used it to refine his thinking albeit by means of physical means by fasting and cleaning others lavoratories. the idea is hardship would remove the bias both in him and that enrooted in the culture.