Making Of The Mahatma

Gandhi owes his intellect to a number of books and personalities

- Nirmal Jovial

Putlibai made her son Mohandas take three vows before he went to England: that he would not eat flesh, would not drink alcohol and would look upon other women as his mother or sister. On reaching England, he painstakingly “abstained from meat in the interests of truth and of the vow”. But at the same time, he wished that someday every Indian would become a meat-eater; he was a believer in the “scientific” superiority of the meat-diet back then. He looked forward to the day when he could eat meat freely and openly and enlist others in that cause.

In his initial days in London, Gandhi wandered in search of vegetarian restaurants and finally found one in Farringdon Street. While entering the restaurant, he noticed books on sale under a glass window near the door and bought, for a shilling, A Plea for Vegetarianism by Henry S. Salt. The book had a profound influence on him, dispelling his doubts about vegetarianism.

Salt was the son of a colonel in the Royal Bengal Artillery. He was a member of the London Vegetarian Society and a regular contributor in the society’s journal. He wrote nearly 40 books, including biographies of the poet P.B. Shelley and the American philosopher Henry David Thoreau. Thoreau’s essay on civil disobedience made a deep impression on Gandhi. He was formulating his ideas of passive resistance in South Africa when a friend sent him the essay in 1907. Later he read more about Thoreau in Salt’s biography. The ‘Salt March’ to Dandi and Gandhi’s civil disobedience movement owed much to Thoreau.