Becoming Gandhi book review: My experiments in living by the Mahatma's principles

Author Perry Garfinkel, and Mahatma Gandhi in August 1942. (Photo of Mahatma Gandhi by Kanu Gandhi via Wikimedia Commons)

“Could anyone living a rich and full life in the 21st century adhere to the principles Mahatma Gandhi set forth in his writings and in life?” asks American author Perry Garfinkel in his new book Becoming Gandhi (Simon & Schuster, 2023). This is a serious question for him, not to be tossed about as part of dinner table conversation but to serve as a moral compass.

In order to write this book, he took himself on an inner and outer journey that involved discovering whether he could practise six principles that Gandhi emphasized – truth, nonviolence, vegetarianism, simplicity, faith, and celibacy. It is a pleasurable read because it is lofty in aspiration but grounded in reality. Garfinkel’s ability to look at his own choices with a critical and compassionate gaze, and his self-deprecatory humour, add depth to it.

Simon & Schuster; 288 pages; Rs 699.

He recalls a decadent night of alcohol, dancing and sex in Cartagena, Colombia, after which he woke up “feeling empty, sad and unfulfilled”. He had hit rock bottom, and needed a moral anchor to hold on to. Gandhi became that anchor. He was not unknown to Garfinkel. Both Martin Luther King Jr. and Barack Obama have spoken about Gandhi’s influence on them. Garfinkel has also been a frequent visitor to India. After his introduction to the country in 1973 “as a hippie on the trail of guru”, he has been returning as a journalist on commissioned assignments, as a consultant to a hotel group, and as a ghostwriter of books.

The intention to follow the principles that Gandhi lived by took him to several places associated with Gandhi’s life, including Delhi, Porbandar, Rajkot, Dandi, Mumbai, London, Johannesburg, and Durban. He visited museums and memorials, and met people from different walks of life – sociology, history, activism, politics, and heritage conservation. He ended up learning new things, and discovered that his hero was not flawless as he had imagined. Garfinkel’s willingness to temper his adulation, and look at the same person as a mahatma and as a human being is noteworthy. He does not defend Gandhi or explain away the controversial decisions that he made but continues to follow in the man’s footsteps because he was an “experimenter”, and Garfinkel can identify with that. Also, Garfinkel was in need of a role model.

He writes, “I planned to dedicate one full year to this project. It expanded to some 18 months of strict adherence to all of the principles.” In this book, Garfinkel reflects on how we lie both to hurt people and to protect the feelings of others, but the worst lies are the ones that we often tell ourselves. He confesses to having lied about his age, height and weight to feel better about himself. He writes about trying to eliminate violence from his life by reducing his use of swear words. This made him feel pious and gentler but also “a little less manly”.

Garfinkel’s sincere attempt to understand his own habits, patterns and attitudes is remarkable. Mulling over Gandhi’s commitment to simplicity made Garfinkel look at his “acquisitional behaviour” and call “a moratorium” on buying things that he did not need. He also tried his hand at spinning yarn from cotton. He writes, with earnestness, “I honest thought that by going through the act, the repetitions, I would get into the flow of spinning in the same way Gandhi did, and my muscles would memorize and simulate his own love of spinning”.

Abstaining from sex was not difficult for Garfinkel because he was not romantically or sexually involved with anyone while he was on this quest but he struggled with “sexual fantasies of the mind”. He deleted dating apps, and stopped watching pornography because he realized that “sex happens as much in the head as in the loins”. In his heart, he apologized to all the women whose hearts he had broken in the past. The aim here was to cut off emotional ties with people that he had been sexually intimate with. This process unburdened him of guilt.

There was some slacking, and that too is part of the book. Garfinkel wanted to stick to a vegetarian diet but he made exceptions on certain occasions. The book has a description of a lavish feast by chef-restaurateur Rahul Akerkar that Garfinkel did not want to say no to. That said, he minimized the consumption of eggs and dairy products and found this helpful for the health conditions that he had been troubled by. In this book, Garfinkel also reflects on the times he regretted being a glutton because eating all the irresistible food made him sick later.

While exploring Gandhi’s commitment to faith, Garfinkel thought it would be a good idea to reach out to spiritual leaders from different traditions and listen to their insights. He met heads of a Catholic church, a Jewish temple, a Buddhist centre, a Lutheran church, a Unitarian Universalist centre and a Baptist centre. Apart from writing about this experience, he also describes his relationship to being spiritual but not religious. He calls himself a “Hind-Bu-Jew”. He was raised as Jewish, and he turned to Hinduism and Buddhism when he was disillusioned with Judaism. What he finds attractive in Gandhi’s spiritual practice is the sense of being open to learning from different faiths while being grounded in one’s own.

This book is worth reading because it is not yet another biography of Gandhi. It is an attempt to assess if his moral convictions resonate for oneself in contemporary times.