Mohandas Gandhi: Early Life and Background

Our background frames who we become. We draw on early experiences and when you look back in retrospect, you can see where seeds were planted around who you are to become.

Gandhi’s early life, where he lived, the family he was born into and marriage were very formative for the seeking of truth.

When I speak to children about being formed, I use plastercine, I say each word leaves an impression, I ask the children to press their finger into the plastercine, a soft touch is loving a hard touch is negative. I then have the children pass the plastercine around and choose negative or positive impressions. Sometimes it comes back without too many deep indentations, I then explain when we say kind words we enhance the plastercine mould, we shape it positively. If it comes back disfigured I explain that life can distort the plastercine by negativity and cruelty. It is a good way to explain the power of words and how we mould each other.

Gandhi was formed by his life experience, as are you. The difference sometimes can be how we interpret our experience, we can look at it as disadvantage, or we can embrace it to decide we want something better. The latter is where the power is.

To Gandhi….

Source: Wikipedia

Early life and background

A young Gandhi, c. 1876

Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi[3] was born on 2 October 1869 in Porbandar, a coastal town which was then part of the Bombay Presidency, British India. His father, Karamchand Gandhi (1822–1885), who belonged to the Hindu Modh community, served as the diwan (a high official) of Porbander state, a small princely state in the Kathiawar Agency of British India.[4] His grandfather was Uttamchand Gandhi, fondly called Utta Gandhi. His mother, Putlibai, who came from the Hindu Pranami Vaishnava community, was Karamchand’s fourth wife, the first three wives having apparently died in childbirth.[5] Growing up with a devout mother and the Jain traditions of the region, the young Mohandas absorbed early the influences that would play an important role in his adult life; these included compassion for sentient beings, vegetarianism, fasting for self-purification, and mutual tolerance among individuals of different creeds.[6]

The Indian classics, especially the stories of Shravana and Maharaja Harishchandra, had a great impact on Gandhi in his childhood. Gandhi, in his autobiography, admits that it left an indelible impression on his mind. He writes: “It haunted me and I must have acted Harishchandra to myself times without number.” Gandhi’s early self-identification with Truth and Love as supreme values is traceable to these epic characters.[7][8]

In May 1883, the 13-year old Mohandas was married to 14-year old Kasturbai Makhanji (her first name was usually shortened to “Kasturba”, and affectionately to “Ba”) in an arranged child marriage, according to the custom of the region.[9] Recalling the day of their marriage he once said, “As we didn’t know much about marriage, for us it meant only wearing new clothes, eating sweets and playing with relatives.” However, as was also the custom of the region, the adolescent bride was to spend much time at her parents’ house, and away from her husband.[10] In 1885, when Gandhi was 15, the couple’s first child was born, but survived only a few days, and Gandhi’s father, Karamchand Gandhi, had died earlier that year.[11] Mohandas and Kasturba had four more children, all sons: Harilal, born in 1888; Manilal, born in 1892; Ramdas, born in 1897; and Devdas, born in 1900. At his middle school in Porbandar and high school in Rajkot, Gandhi remained an average student. He passed the matriculation exam for Samaldas College at Bhavnagar, Gujarat with some difficulty. While there, he was unhappy, in part because his family wanted him to become a barrister.

On 4 September 1888, Gandhi travelled to London, England, to study law at University College London and to train as a barrister. His time in London, the Imperial capital, was influenced by a vow he had made to his mother in the presence of the Jain monk Becharji, upon leaving India, to observe the Hindu precepts of abstinence from meat, alcohol, and promiscuity.[12] Although Gandhi experimented with adopting “English” customs—taking dancing lessons for example—he could not stomach the bland vegetarian food offered by his landlady and he was always hungry until he found one of London’s few vegetarian restaurants. Influenced by Salt’s book, he joined the Vegetarian Society, was elected to its executive committee,[12] and started a local Bayswater chapter.[5] Some of the vegetarians he met were members of the Theosophical Society, which had been founded in 1875 to further universal brotherhood, and which was devoted to the study of Buddhist and Hindu literature. They encouraged Gandhi to join them in reading the Bhagavad Gita both in translation as well as in the original.[12] Not having shown a particular interest in religion before, he became interested in religious thought and began to read both Hindu as well as Christian scriptures.[5][12]

Gandhi was called to the bar on 10 June 1891 and left London for India on 12 June 1891,[5] where he learned that his mother had died while he was in London, his family having kept the news from him.[12] His attempts at establishing a law practice in Bombay failed and, later, after applying and being turned down for a part-time job as a high school teacher, he ended up returning to Rajkot to make a modest living drafting petitions for litigants, a business he was forced to close when he ran foul of a British officer. In his autobiography he refers to this incident as an unsuccessful attempt to lobby on behalf of his older brother.[5][12] It was in this climate that, in April 1893, he accepted a year-long contract from Dada Abdulla & Co., an Indian firm, to a post in the Colony of Natal, South Africa, then part of the British Empire.[5]