An Autobiography: The Story of My Experiments with Truth
- Language:
- English
- Status:
- Complete work
- Authorship:
- Written by the author
- Condition of the text:
- No scanning noise detected (automatic measure over the whole text, not checked by hand)
- Extent:
- ~180,000 words · 848 passages
Cite this work
- APAMahatma Gandhi. (n.d.). An Autobiography: The Story of My Experiments with Truth. Digital reproduction: SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/mahatma-gandhi/an-autobiography-the-story-of-my-experiments-with-truth
- MLAMahatma Gandhi. An Autobiography: The Story of My Experiments with Truth. Digital reproduction, SigPhi, https://sigphiai.com/en/works/mahatma-gandhi/an-autobiography-the-story-of-my-experiments-with-truth.
- ChicagoMahatma Gandhi. An Autobiography: The Story of My Experiments with Truth. Digital reproduction, SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/mahatma-gandhi/an-autobiography-the-story-of-my-experiments-with-truth.
Reference to the edition that SigPhi reproduces: SigPhi is its digital reproduction, not its publisher. The edition's year is not in the metadata (hence "n.d."), and the translator appears only when recorded.
What it is about
Gandhi's account of his life down to the 1920s: childhood, the studies in London, the South African years, and the forming of what he would later call satyagraha.
Context and history
He wrote it in Gujarati and it appeared in instalments in his own weekly between 1925 and 1929; the English is a translation by his secretary Mahadev Desai, revised by Gandhi himself. The title is not modesty: he insists that he is not writing an autobiography but the story of some experiments, and that what he reports are attempts of his own, not prescriptions. It stops before the episodes that made him famous everywhere, which surprises readers who come looking for them.
Editorial context, not a citable source: unlike the passages of the work itself, these statements cannot be checked against the corpus.
The outstanding impression my mother has left on my memory is that of saintliness. She was deeply religious. She would not think of taking her meals without her daily prayers. Going to Haveli — the Vaishnava temple — was one of her daily duties. As far as my memory can go back, I do not remember her having ever missed the Chaturmas 1. She would take the hardest vows and keep them without flinching. Illness was no excuse for relaxing them. I can recall her once falling ill when she was observing the Chandrayana 2 vow, but the illness was not allowed to interrupt the observance. To keep two or three consecutive fasts was nothing to her. Living on one meal a day during Chaturmas was a habit with her. Not content with that she fasted every alternate day during one Chaturmas, During another Chaturmas she vowed not to have food without seeing the sun. We children on those days would stand, staring at the sky, waiting to announce the appearance of the sun to our mother. Everyone knows that at the height of the rainy season the sun often does not condescend to show his face. And I remember days when, at his sudden appearance, we would rush and announce it to her. She would run out to see with her own eyes, but by that time the fugitive sun would be gone, thus depriving her of her meal. “That does not matter,” she would say cheerfully, “God did not want me to eat today.” And then she would return to her round of duties, My mother had strong commonsense. She was well informed about all matters of State, and ladies of the court thought highly of her intelligence. Often I would accompany her, exercising the privilege of childhood, and I still remember many lively discussions she had with the widowed mother of the Thakore Saheb. Of these parents I was born at Porbandar, otherwise known as Sudamapuri, on the 2nd October, 1869. I passed my childhood in Porbandar. I recollect having been put to school. It was with some difficulty that I got through the multiplication tables.…