Gandhi made his appearance in my life when I was around 15 and saw the 1982 David Attenborough movie starring Ben Kingsley in the titular role. There are a handful of movies that I like because they contain deep philosophical truths, Groundhog's Day on finding the authentic self, Don Juan De Marco on our frame of reference, the Matrix on perception of reality, Fight Club on consumerism, but Gandhi and non-violence was perhaps the single movie that most altered my worldview. While I thought the world was unfair, I didn't yet have a coherent understanding of why or what to do about it. Learning about Gandhi's struggle against racism and colonialism, particularly non-violence as a political method struck me quite forcefully, and profoundly shaped my journey over the following decade to some level of political maturity. I had always sought to know more about him, so it was lovely when I was gifted Rediscovering Gandhi, which was at the time a new biography of him.

Albert Einstein said of Gandhi: "Generations to come will scarcely believe that such a one as this walked the earth in flesh and blood". If this is true, it is because people will learn about the image of Gandhi rather than the real man. Perhaps one of the main things I found in reading this book was learning about the man of flesh and blood. If Gandhi is something of a saint he was a complex and flawed one. Like his idol Tolstoy with whom he shared some correspondence, the purity of his ideals was not always matched by the purity of his actions. Some might baulk at inspecting Gandhi's life too much and think that his life is better left serving as an ideal. For my part, learning that our heroes were flawed, and maybe even had some of the same struggles we do in life, teaches us that we too can be part of great things. There are few saints and heroes, there are just all of us here together, trying to collectively push our world to a better place. This was Gandhi's life's work, and I think we should all take on that struggle, however flawed we might think we are.

The complexity of Gandhi is best expressed in the sections in the book where he is downright annoying and stubborn with people, including his own family. That stubbornness though is one of the sources of his greatness, that sets him apart from so many others in his absolute conviction to live according to his ideals. Gandhi refused to take the easy option, he didn't just move to second class or step off of the sidewalk when asked. A more relaxed and perhaps sensible person wouldn't starve himself and think he could stop violence across a country of millions of people. A person less certain of himself wouldn't have put himself in harm's way so often. His ideals for himself and his country were perhaps unattainable, even counterproductive, but they were born out of his sincere will to do what was right.

Although the stereotypical image of Gandhi has him dressed in a single piece of cloth (a khadi lungi) he came from a relatively well-off family who were able to send him to England to study law. I lived in London myself for a while, and I would often think about the fact that like so many other notable historical figures Gandhi had probably wandered the same streets I was wandering, indeed there was a prominent statue of him in a local park. Understandably because of the constraints of the medium, there are a number of things absent from the movie of his life and one of the more notable is Gandhi's passionate vegetarianism. He was raised vegetarian as part of his family's Hinduism, and despite some experiments with eating meat as a boy, he returned to it largely due to the influence of his mother. Having now taken a conscious vow to be vegetarian rather than just doing so because it was how he was raised, he started to embrace deeper reasons for doing so, especially the treatment of animals. He became part of the London Vegetarian Society and although his diet was initially lacking in London, eventually he managed to find some of the vegetarian restaurants in London. It seems his time in England was relatively happy, and it created his belief in the basic civilising nature of the empire and the shared Aryan root of both the European and Indian cultures. After graduating he returned home to India but his shyness seems to have hampered his practice of law, so when he had an opportunity to take a position in South Africa he was happy to do so in hope of a new beginning. 

It was in South Africa that the Gandhi we recognise today, including his way of dressing, took form. Initially, on going to South Africa he dressed as a London-educated lawyer would be expected to dress, however, he soon realised that it was the colour of his skin over any other attribute that governed many people's judgement of him. The treatment of himself and the Indian community by white South Africans radically changed Gandhi's perceptions of colonialism and race, and he realised the necessity of becoming involved in politics and political struggle. He eschewed the European way of dress and began to wear the lungi, later made out of homespun khadi, which we think about him wearing today, as a way of identifying with the mass of Indian people whom he wanted to represent. One major oversight, that some say he mollified later in his life, was the plight of the native Africans. Whilst he acknowledged the appropriation of their land, he still saw them as lesser than the other racial groupings in South Africa, and his struggle was for Indians to gain greater equality with whites, rather than more general racial equality.

His struggles for Indian equality were widely publicised in India, and when he accepted an invitation to return home he was something of a celebrity. A crowd greeted his boat and he announced his intention was to take up the anti-colonial struggle here in the country of his birth. His first great task was to acquaint himself with the complexity of India, which at the time included Bangladesh and Pakistan, and he travelled across India to meet people and understand the cultural and political zeitgeist. He joined and within a few years became the leader of the Indian National Congress, the main organisation struggling for Indian political rights. He used his experience in South Africa and his expanding ideas about non-violent resistance to agitate on behalf of the farmers and workers who made up the majority of the Indian population. His writing appeared regularly in Indian newspapers, and he created his own newspaper with a large focus on advocating for the untouchable caste who he called Harijan, or "God's children" (though this term has fallen out of favour and today Dalit is preferred).

The Indian National Congress became the primary political organ advocating for home rule, and under Gandhi's influence it did so largely under the vision for it he had written in his book Hindu Swaraj. As a political leader, he instituted tactics of non-cooperation, believing that a tiny minority of Europeans could only rule India with the complicity of the Indians themselves. He wanted Indians to create an authenticate Indian nation by economically and politically isolating the British. I believe this insight speaks to a common flaw in many movements, concentrating too much on altering the behaviour of those who oppress them, rather than realising their own freedom to create their world anew.

34 years after Gandhi stepped off the boat from South Africa, the British would grant Independence to India. Much blood was spilt in the partition of the country into two nations of India and East and West Pakistan, bloodshed that continued right up until East Pakistan broke away to become the modern nation of Bangladesh. Gandhi saw this as the great failure of his life, and it is possible this man who so stubbornly believed in the truth of his way, wasn't the right person to wield such power in a time where political compromise was needed. His legacy in India itself is hotly contested, many believe it was other, often violent, resistance fighters who were the true heroes of India's independence, as I first discovered at a party with some Indian friends in my University days. Certainly Gandhi's holistic vision for how Indians should live and believe has not come to pass. Some argue that the idea of Indian self-reliance so powerfully symbolised in the spinning wheel in the centre of the Indian flag, has held back the economic progression of India in a modern interconnected world. Then there are personal questions, about his treatment of family, about his habit of sharing his bed with young women, about his deep religiosity.

Still, the idea of non-violence and non-cooperation he has come to represent are a jewel for the ages. The billions of people who follow mystic thinkers could do worse than to reorient themselves towards Gandhian principles, of a universal religion, vegetarianism, minimalism, and equality. I have left out so much from this brief outline of his life, people need to read a biography of him, if not this one then another. He also wrote three autobiographies as well which could be of interest, but to get a full sense of the man a biography is often a more comprehensive, nuanced tool.

I must return however to where I started with Gandhi's influence on my life. Being a young man in a world where compassion is often dismissed as foolishness and even cowardice, it was revelatory to learn about this man who stood for non-violence to the point of great physical danger. He saw the cognitive dissonance at the heart of the British Empire's view of itself, something with which he would profoundly influence people such as Martin Luther King and Nelson Mandella. In revealing the violence and repression inherent in the ruling structure, he undermined its moral legitimacy to govern, not only among the Indian people but among the English and their ruling classes. In a world where we dismiss people as purely self-interested, we would do well to heed the example Gandhi set showing that people can be motivated to do great things by high ideals. In overcoming the British Empire's long occupation of his homeland, he changed the world through his gift of an example of non-violent struggle.

Gandhi is one of the great sages of history who succeeded against vast odds. In a world so full of unearned fame and celebrity, here is someone who deserves such elevation. Educating ourselves about his life and ideas is an essential tool in understanding political change and our own moral place in the world.

"I can see in the midst of death, life persists, in the midst of untruth, truth persists, in the midst of darkness, light persists." - Mohandas K. Gandhi