…”A man who is swayed by passions,” Gandhi says, “may have good enough intentions, may be truthful in word, but he will never find the Truth. …A reformer cannot afford to have close intimacy with him whom he seeks to reform….
…Gandhi equated the freeing of oneself from passion, from libidinal ties, with self purification. Thus, he continues, “to attain the perfect purity one has to become absolutely passion-free in thought, speech and actions; to rise above the opposing currents of love and hatred, attachment and repulsion. I know that I have not in me as yet that triple purity, in spite of constant ceaseless striving for it. That is why the world’s praise fails to move me, indeed it very often stings me. To conquer the subtle passions to me to be harder far than the physical conquest of the world by the force of arms. Ever since my return to India I have had experience of the dormant passions lying hidden with in me.”
—1982: Ben Kingsley as Gandhi and Martin Sheen as a newspaper reporter in a scene from Richard Attenborough’s biographical film, ‘Gandhi’. (Photo by Keystone/Getty Images)—
Toward this end, Gandhi invoked the practice of self-control, of denial of impulse and desire, in short, of ascetism. Thus, when he went to London to study law, he vowed to abstain from meat, women, and wine. At thirty-six he embraced continence, swearing never again to have sexual relations, even with his own wife.
Thus self-control and deial of libidinal attachments would have remained only interesting character traits in a quaint little Indian lawyer had Gandhi not used them to free india from outside control. An old book, Gandhi’s truth, by Erikson, asserted that after long preparation and trials, and nearing the age of fifty, Gandhi stepped onto the stage of world history during a textile strike in Ahmedabad in 1918 by transmuting the ascetic practice of fasting inrto a political act.
Read More:—http://mahatmagandhi-philately.blogspot.ca/2012/09/gandhi-movie-still-post-card.html—
Gandhi himself wrote at the time:
“I felt that it was a sacred moment for me, my faith was on the anvil, and I had no hesitation to rising and declaring to the men that a breach of their vow so solemnly taken was unendurable by me and that I would not take any food until they had the 35 per cent increase given or until they had fallen. A meeting that was up to now unlike the former meetings totally unresponsive, woke up as if by magic”
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