Vox Meditantis

As I prepared for this impossible conversation, I confronted a singular question: how do you interview a conscience? Mahatma Gandhi is less a man now than a monument, frozen in the pristine white of history. Yet, digging through his letters and speeches, I found someone far more complex – a self-described “erring mortal” plagued by doubts, family fractures, and a sharp, often self-deprecating wit. This dialogue is constructed meticulously from the historical record, yet it remains an act of imagination. My aim was not to polish the statue, but to find the pulse of the man who sat at the spinning wheel, still challenging us to confront our own truths.

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Mr Gandhi, we’re speaking today – 30th January 2026 – exactly 78 years after your death. What would you say to those who gather each year to remember you on this day?

I would ask them not to remember me at all. What use is there in remembering an old man who made many mistakes? If they must gather, let them gather to remember the principles – truth, nonviolence, fearlessness. These do not die. But I? I was only attempting, experimenting. If people worship my name whilst ignoring my message, then I have failed entirely, and their gatherings are simply… ritual without substance.

You’re being rather hard on yourself. You famously said “Be the change you wish to see in the world.” Looking back, what change are you most proud of embodying?

First, I must correct you – I never said those exact words. People have a habit of putting sentences in my mouth that sound more poetic than what I actually said. What I wrote was much longer and less quotable. But to your question… pride is a dangerous thing, you see. The moment I feel proud, I have already lost the battle with my own ego.

If I must answer, then perhaps… the change from cowardice to courage in myself. I was terribly afraid as a young man. Could not speak in public without my voice failing. Tongue-tied, awkward, ridiculous. In London, I stood up to give a speech and sat down again having said only “I thank you, gentlemen” before my memory failed me completely. But I learned that courage is not the absence of fear – it is acting despite the fear. If I embodied anything, I hope it was that transformation.

Your concept of satyagraha – truth-force – revolutionised political resistance. Can you explain how holding fast to truth can be more powerful than violence?

Violence is a confession of weakness, you see. When a man uses force, he admits that he has no better argument. He admits that truth is not on his side, so he must compel through fear and pain.

Satyagraha reverses this entirely. When you hold fast to truth – and I mean truth, not simply what you wish to be true – you need not force anyone. Truth has its own power. It appeals to that which is best in your opponent. Even the British, even those who imprisoned me, beat me, humiliated me – they knew, deep within, that what we were asking for was just. The empire was built on injustice, and they knew it.

Violence breeds violence. It creates cycles that continue for generations. But suffering voluntarily, accepting punishment for a just cause without retaliation – this breaks the cycle. It transforms the situation. The opponent must confront his own conscience. That is the force of truth – satyagraha.

In your 1909 work Hind Swaraj, you criticised modern civilisation quite harshly, calling it a disease. Nearly 120 years later, with smartphones, artificial intelligence, and global connectivity, would you still maintain that view?

Oh yes. More than ever.

Even with all the benefits technology has brought?

What benefits? I do not deny that machinery can do things faster. But has it made people happier? More truthful? More kind? Has your artificial intelligence made people more wise, or only more distracted?

Modern civilisation measures itself by what it can produce, by speed, by convenience. But it has lost the ability to ask why we are producing these things, whether we should produce them. You have machines that can speak to someone on the other side of the world instantly – marvellous! But have you noticed that people sitting in the same room no longer speak to each other? They are looking at these… devices.

I am not against technology itself. I am against the mentality that believes technology will solve moral problems. A telephone does not make a liar truthful. The problem is in the heart of man, not in the absence of machinery.

You wrote that “there is sufficiency in the world for man’s need but not for man’s greed.” How do you distinguish between legitimate needs and excessive wants?

A very good question. And a very difficult one.

I would say this: a need is something that, if absent, prevents you from living with dignity and serving others. Food, shelter, clothing, basic education – these are needs. Everything beyond this must be examined very carefully.

The test I apply is this: First, does this thing make me more capable of serving others, or does it serve only myself? Second, could everyone in the world have this thing, or does my having it depend on others not having it? Third, does it simplify my life or complicate it?

Greed appears when we accumulate beyond our needs, when we take pleasure in possession itself rather than in use. The rich man with ten houses whilst others have none – this is greed. It is a form of violence, actually, because he deprives others of their right to live.

That brings me to something I’m curious about. What do you complain about the most?

Oh! What a question! I suppose I should say “nothing,” that a good satyagrahi should accept all things with equanimity. But that would be dishonest, wouldn’t it?

I complain most about… people who say they believe in something but do not live it. Hypocrisy, yes, but more than that – the gap between words and action. In my own movement, I would see people who spoke beautifully about nonviolence but who treated their wives with cruelty. Or who advocated for the poor whilst living in luxury themselves.

I also complained – perhaps too much – about my own body. It never cooperated with my ambitions. Always falling ill, always weak. My doctors said I complained about everything they prescribed. I wanted to cure myself through diet and natural methods, and they wanted to give me medicines. We argued constantly.

And what about your family? Your son Harilal wrote quite bitterly about feeling neglected…

Yes. Yes, he did. I complained about my sons not living up to my ideals. But the truth – which I was slow to see – was that they were right to complain about me.

I tried to make my sons into copies of my principles. I denied Harilal the education he wanted. I imposed my vows of poverty and celibacy on my family without… without truly asking whether this was fair. I was, as I have written, “a cruelly kind husband.” I thought I was teaching them detachment, but I was only teaching them that their father valued his principles more than their happiness.

This is one of my greatest failures. I could love humanity, but I struggled to love my own son as he was, not as I wished him to be. If I complain about anything now, it is about my own blindness to this when there was still time to repair it.

That’s a profound admission. Let me ask you about your daily practices. Your routine was remarkably disciplined – rising at 4 AM, spinning, walking 18 kilometres per day. How did these physical practices connect to your spiritual and political goals?

Ah, now you are touching on something essential!

You cannot separate body, mind, and spirit – they are one. If I allow my body to become lazy, my mind becomes lazy. If I do not discipline my physical appetites, how can I discipline my thoughts or my actions?

The walking – 18 kilometres, yes, sometimes more – this was not exercise in your modern sense. It was meditation in motion. As I walked, I thought, I prayed, I planned. My feet moving in rhythm allowed my mind to work through problems. I once calculated that in my lifetime I walked enough to circle the earth twice.

And the spinning! The charkha! People thought this was only symbolic, only about making cloth to avoid buying British textiles. But it was much more. When you spin, you cannot think about five things at once. You must be present. The wheel demands your attention. It connects hand and mind. It produces something useful. It requires no machine, no factory, no exploitation of workers.

It was democracy made visible – anyone could spin, rich or poor, educated or illiterate. And in that simple act, we declared our independence.

You called spinning “a cure-all” and described it in “terms of the highest poetry.” That seems like quite a claim for making thread.

You think I exaggerate? Perhaps I do. But consider – when India became dependent on British cloth, we lost our self-sufficiency. Millions of weavers lost their livelihood. We sent our cotton to Manchester, and they sent it back as expensive cloth. We became beggars in our own land.

The spinning wheel represented reversal of this. It was economic independence, yes. But also psychological independence. When you make your own cloth, you are not at the mercy of others. You are not a consumer – you are a creator. This changes your entire relationship with the world.

And in the rhythm of the wheel, in the transformation of raw cotton into thread, there is something… cosmic. You are participating in creation. You are turning chaos into order, the formless into the formed. How is this not poetry?

You experimented extensively with diet – giving up salt for 10 years, consuming only raw foods at times. What were you searching for through these experiments?

Control. Purity. Freedom.

I believed – I still believe – that what we put into our bodies affects not only our health but our thoughts, our morality, our capacity for self-control. If I could not control my appetite for food, how could I control my appetite for power, for pleasure, for violence?

Salt, for instance. I gave it up because I thought it stimulated the body unnecessarily, created cravings. But after ten years, I took it up again. The experiment failed. Or rather, I learned that excessive abstinence was as much a form of violence to the body as excessive indulgence.

The raw food, the limited diet – I was trying to reduce my needs to the absolute minimum. To prove that a man could live on very little and still work, still think, still resist. This was important for me because I was asking millions of poor people to sacrifice for independence. How could I ask this if I myself was not willing to reduce my own needs to theirs?

Every week, you observed a day of complete silence. What happened inside you during those silent days that couldn’t happen through words?

Silence is not the absence of communication. It is a different kind of communication – with oneself, with God, with truth.

I spoke too much, you see. Letters, speeches, meetings, constant conversation. Words, words, words. And words can become mechanical. You can say things without meaning them, without examining them. Words can lie.

On my silent day – Monday, always Monday – I could not hide behind words. I had to listen. Listen to my own thoughts. Listen to my conscience. Listen to what others were really saying, not just waiting for my turn to speak.

Also, it gave my jaw a rest. And it taught others that they did not need my opinion on everything. Many things resolved themselves without my interference. This was a useful lesson for everyone.

The silence was …like clearing a room of furniture so you can see what is actually there. Most of the time, we fill every space with noise, with distraction. In silence, you cannot run away from yourself. You must face what is truly there.

So when everything feels loud, chaotic, overwhelming – what comfort do you return to?

Prayer.

You expect something more sophisticated? Some philosophical answer? No. Prayer. Always prayer.

I said that prayer was “the key of the morning and the bolt of the evening.” Before I did anything else each day, I prayed. And I ended each day the same way. This was not optional. This was not decoration. This was the foundation of everything.

When the world was loud – and oh, it was loud! Violence, hatred, partition, assassination attempts – when all of this was swirling around me, I would go to my prayer meeting. Seven o’clock every evening, without fail. We would read from the Gita, the Koran, the Bible, Buddhist texts. We would sing bhajans.

In that hour, nothing else existed. Not politics, not conflict, not my own fears. Only truth. Only God. Only peace.

And when even prayer felt insufficient, I would spin. The wheel never judged me. It never argued. It never demanded anything except presence. Thread by thread, I would spin my way back to calm.

This was my comfort – these simple, repeated, honest acts. Not complexity. Not cleverness. Just truth, prayer, and spinning.

Your relationship with your wife Kasturba spanned 62 years. You’ve acknowledged being “an overbearing Hindu patriarch” at times. What do you wish you had understood earlier about partnership and equality?

Kasturba… She deserved a far better husband than I was.

When I was young, I was jealous, possessive, tyrannical. I married her when we were both children – she was thirteen, I was also thirteen. I thought I owned her. I forbade her from going places without my permission. I… I used her as a wife uses a man who does not see her as a human being, only as his possession.

Later, when I took my vow of celibacy, I imposed this on her without asking whether this was what she wanted. I assumed that my spiritual experiments should be her spiritual experiments. I dragged her to South Africa, to ashrams, to prison. She gave up everything to follow me, and I never truly asked if this was her choice or only her duty.

What I wish I had understood earlier is this: equality is not something you grant to someone. It is something you recognise was always there. Kasturba was not my subordinate. She was not even my equal. She was simply… herself. Her own person, with her own relationship with truth, with God.

She taught me nonviolence better than any book. She resisted me – quietly, firmly, without hatred. When I was wrong, she did not argue with words. She simply… persisted in being right.  This is satyagraha in its purest form. I learned it from her, though I was too proud to admit it for many years.

Your eldest son Harilal wrote that he couldn’t believe “a salt-free diet indicates strength of character and morality.” It sounds like he was deeply hurt by your priorities.

He was right to be hurt. I hurt him.

I made my principles into gods, and I sacrificed my son to them. This is idolatry of the worst kind.

Harilal wanted to go to university in England. He had the mind for it. But I refused to send him. Why? Because I believed formal education was part of the corrupt modern civilisation I opposed. Because I thought he should learn through service, through practical work.

But the real reason – the one I did not admit even to myself – was that I wanted him to be a symbol of my principles. To prove that my way was right. I used my own son to validate my theories.

He never forgave me. He became an alcoholic. He converted to Islam partly, I think, to wound me. He died broken, bitter, estranged. And whose fault was this? Not his. Mine.

I could fast for the nation. I could go to prison for principles. But I could not bend my pride enough to simply love my son as he was. This is the great paradox of my life – I had compassion for millions but not enough for my own child.

That leads to a difficult question. You demanded celibacy from yourself and those around you after having four children. Looking back, was this fair to impose on others?

No. It was not fair.

I believed – I wrote extensively about this – that sexual energy diverted a person from spiritual growth. That brahmacharya, complete celibacy, was necessary for anyone who wanted to serve truth fully.

I took this vow for myself when I was already married, already had children. Kasturba had no say in this decision that affected her life as much as mine. Then I expected everyone in my ashram to follow the same path. Young people, married couples – I wanted them all to renounce sexual relations.

I even conducted experiments to test my own celibacy in ways that… in ways that were inappropriate and caused pain to the women involved. I see this now. At the time, I told myself it was scientific, that I was testing my self-control. But it was an abuse of the power and reverence people had for me.

Celibacy was right for me – I needed that discipline, that channelling of energy. But I was wrong to universalise it, wrong to demand it of others, wrong to experiment with it in ways that violated trust and dignity. This was violence masked as spirituality.

Let’s shift to your final days. Ten days before your assassination, someone threw a bomb at your prayer meeting. When police offered security, you refused, saying those who prefer security to freedom “had no right to live.” Do you stand by that position?

Absolutely.

You think this is reckless? Perhaps it is. But consider what accepting security would have meant.

If I surrounded myself with armed guards, what message would that send? That I trust in guns more than in God? That my life is more valuable than my principles? That nonviolence is fine for others to practice, but I myself need weapons for protection?

No. If my message was worth anything, I had to trust in it completely. Either God would protect me, or my death would serve some purpose I could not see. But to live in fear, to hide behind bodyguards – this would have been dying while still alive.

When Godse shot me, when I fell with “He Ram” on my lips, this proved – to me at least – that I had been consistent. That I truly believed what I preached. A man who dies violently whilst preaching nonviolence, whilst remaining nonviolent – this death has power. It speaks in ways that a long life dying in bed never could.

But surely your safety meant something to the millions who depended on your leadership…

If they depended on me, then I had already failed. The movement must be bigger than any one person. Principles do not die when a man dies. And if my death could stop the violence of Partition for even a short time, if it could shock people into remembering their humanity, then it was not wasted.

I was 78 years old. I had lived a full life. India was independent, even if it was broken in two. My time was finished. Better to die serving truth than to hide from it.

The partition of India and Pakistan in 1947 devastated you. You called it a “temporary madness.” With nearly 80 years of perspective now, what would you tell those who lived through Partition’s violence?

Partition…

This was my greatest failure. My greatest sorrow.

A million people dead. Ten million displaced. Families torn apart. Friends who had lived side by side for generations suddenly cutting each other’s throats. Trains arriving at stations filled with corpses. Women raped, children killed…

I opposed Partition with everything in me. I said I would rather see India drowned in blood than divided. But I could not stop it. Jinnah wanted Pakistan. The British wanted to wash their hands of us quickly. Even Nehru and Patel, my own colleagues, believed division was inevitable.

What would I tell those who lived through it?

I would say… I am sorry. Sorry that I could not protect you. Sorry that the nonviolence I preached could not prevent this violence. Sorry that religious identity became more important than our shared humanity.

But I would also tell them – do not let this madness become permanent. The politicians drew a line on a map, but this line does not change the fact that you are one people. One culture, one history, one shared suffering under colonialism. The border is a political reality, but it need not be a spiritual one.

I called it “temporary madness” because I believed – I had to believe – that eventually, sanity would return. That the artificial division would heal. Nearly 80 years later, you tell me it has not healed. This fills me with immense sadness. But I do not withdraw the word “temporary.” Even 80 years is temporary in the life of a civilisation. The madness will end, eventually. It must.

You supported recruiting Indian soldiers for British wars despite being a critic of empire. How did you reconcile these positions?

With difficulty. And with what I now see was faulty reasoning.

I believed – this was during the First World War, and again during the Second – that if Indians wanted the rights of citizenship in the Empire, we had to accept the responsibilities. Including military service.

I also believed, naively perhaps, that our service would earn us goodwill. That the British would see our loyalty and grant us more autonomy, perhaps even independence.

I was wrong. The British took our soldiers, used them, and gave us nothing in return except more repression. After the First World War came the Rowlatt Act, Jallianwala Bagh – massacre and cruelty.

But there is another reason I supported recruitment that I am less proud of. I wanted to prove that Indians were not cowards. That we could be brave soldiers if we chose. And then, having proved our capacity for violence, we could make the moral choice to reject it. This was twisted logic. You do not prove you are nonviolent by first proving you can be violent.

It seems like you had a complex relationship with Britain. You once said you held “extreme views about British connection” – loving the British people whilst calling their imperialism “their greatest crime against humanity.” Can you hold both truths simultaneously?

Not only can I – I must.

This is essential to understanding satyagraha. You hate the sin, not the sinner. You oppose the system, not the people trapped in the system.

Many British people I met were good, kind, honest individuals. Some became my friends. They treated me with respect, engaged with my ideas, even supported our independence movement. These were not evil people.

But the Empire – the system of imperialism – this was evil. It was built on the assumption that white Europeans had the right to rule over brown and black people. That our resources existed to enrich Britain. That our culture was inferior and needed to be civilised. This was a crime, yes. A crime spanning centuries.

But if I hated every British person because of the crimes of the Empire, I would be no better than the imperialists who hated all Indians because of our differences. Hatred would poison me. It would make me incapable of seeing truth.

So yes, I held both truths. I fought the Empire with every fibre of my being, whilst treating individual British people – even those who jailed me – with courtesy and respect. This confused people. But it was the only way to remain human whilst fighting inhumanity.

Let’s talk about our current world – 2026. Social media allows instant global communication but also spreads hatred and misinformation rapidly. What principles from satyagraha would you apply to online discourse?

The same principles apply to any form of communication – truth, nonviolence, and responsibility for your words.

First principle: before you speak – or write on your… social media – ask yourself: Is it true? Not “do I believe it,” but “have I verified it? Do I know it to be true?” Most of the poison in discourse comes from people spreading things they have not confirmed.

Second principle: Is it necessary? Is it kind? Will it build understanding, or only create more division? Just because you can say something does not mean you should. The right to free speech carries the responsibility to use that speech wisely.

Third principle: Would you say this to the person’s face, looking in their eyes? This anonymity on the internet allows people to be cruel in ways they would never be in person. This is cowardice, not courage.

I would say this: the speed of communication does not change the need for truth. If anything, it increases that need. A lie used to travel by word of mouth, slowly. Now it travels at the speed of light, reaching millions in seconds. This means the responsibility to be truthful is greater than ever.

Also – understand that real change comes from lived example, not from arguing on the internet. You can write a thousand clever arguments for nonviolence, but one act of genuine kindness will do more to change hearts.

Climate activists today use nonviolent civil disobedience inspired by your methods. What advice would you give to young people fighting environmental destruction?

First, I would tell them they are right to fight. The Earth is not ours to destroy. We are only trustees, borrowing from future generations.

My advice would be this: Make sure your own life reflects what you are asking of others. If you protest against excessive consumption whilst yourself consuming excessively, you have no moral authority. Live simply. Reduce your needs. Show that it is possible to live with less and still live well.

Second: Do not just protest against something. Build the alternative. This is what I called “constructive programme.” If you oppose fossil fuels, show how communities can live on renewable energy. Create the new world in the shell of the old. Make people want to join you, not because you have shamed them, but because you have shown them something better.

Third: Suffer for your cause. Be willing to accept punishment. Go to jail if necessary. This is how you prove you are serious. When people see you willing to sacrifice your comfort, your safety, even your freedom for what you believe – this has power. It speaks to their conscience in ways that words never can.

And fourth: Remember that your enemy is the system, not the people. The executives of oil companies, the politicians who deny climate change – they are human beings, trapped in a system that rewards their destructive behaviour. If you treat them with hatred, you will never convert them. If you treat them with respect whilst firmly opposing what they do, you create the possibility for transformation.

You had quite a strong economic philosophy that emphasised village self-sufficiency and cottage industries over industrialisation. But many argue that industrial development has lifted millions out of poverty. How would you respond to that?

This is the question, isn’t it? This is where everyone says “Gandhi was impractical. Gandhi did not understand economics.”

But I would ask: What is poverty? Is it only lack of money? Or is it also lack of dignity, lack of meaningful work, lack of connection to community?

Your factories may produce more goods, yes. They may create more wealth, yes. But for whom? The factory owner becomes rich. The workers become cogs in a machine, doing repetitive, meaningless work for wages that barely sustain them. The villages empty as people flood to cities looking for work. Communities collapse. Skills are lost. People become dependent on a system they do not control and cannot understand.

I advocated for village industries not because I was against efficiency, but because I was for human dignity. When a person spins their own cloth, weaves their own fabric, grows their own food – they are creators, not consumers. They have power over their own lives.

Now, you tell me that industrialisation has lifted millions out of poverty. I ask you – at what cost? How much pollution? How much inequality? How many communities destroyed? How many people working in factories in conditions little better than slavery?

I do not say there is no place for machinery. I say machinery should serve humanity, not enslave it. Technology should be human-scale, village-scale, controlled by the community that uses it. Not massive factories owned by corporations or governments that care nothing for the people who work in them.

That’s a fascinating perspective. Let me ask about your fasts – you fasted 17 times over 35 years for various causes. In 2026, hunger strikes are sometimes dismissed as performative or manipulative. What distinguishes a true satyagraha fast from manipulation?

This is a very important distinction. A true fast is not manipulation. It is not coercion. It is not emotional blackmail.

A manipulative fast says: “Do what I want, or I will die, and you will be responsible.” This appeals to guilt and fear.

A satyagraha fast says something different. It says: “I feel so strongly that this issue is a matter of truth and justice that I am willing to purify myself through suffering. I am willing to take all the pain upon myself rather than inflict it on others. I fast to appeal to your conscience, to your better nature – but the decision remains yours. If you choose to let me die rather than do what is right, that is between you and God. I will not hate you for it.”

The difference is this: manipulation tries to force the other person to act against their will through guilt. Satyagraha invites them to act according to their conscience, their better self.

Also, a true fast must be for a cause bigger than yourself. I never fasted for my own benefit. I fasted to stop Hindu-Muslim violence, to protest untouchability, to achieve justice for indentured labourers. The cause must be just, the fasting person must be willing to die, and there must be no hatred in their heart toward those they are opposing.

If any of these elements is missing, it is not satyagraha. It is merely a performance.

You’re revered globally, yet scholars increasingly examine your attitudes on race during your South African years, your treatment of your sons, and your controversial experiments with celibacy. How do you wish to be remembered – as a saint or as a flawed human seeking truth?

As a flawed human! Please, always as a flawed human.

I have said this many times – I am not a saint. Or if I am a saint, I am a “saint of a very ordinary type” who makes mistakes constantly. I experimented with truth, which means I often got things wrong. That was the whole point of calling them experiments.

The scholars who criticise me for my racial attitudes in South Africa – they are right. I said terrible things about Africans when I was young. I thought Indians were superior, that we should not be classed with “natives.” This was shameful. I changed my views later, but that does not erase what I said.

And yes, I treated my sons badly. Yes, my experiments with celibacy crossed boundaries they should not have crossed. Yes, I could be dictatorial, stubborn, unreasonable. All of this is true.

But here is what I want you to understand: If you remember me as a saint, as someone perfect and untouchable, then you will think my path is impossible for ordinary people. You will say “I cannot be like Gandhi” and give up before you start.

But if you remember me as a flawed, often foolish man who nevertheless kept trying, kept experimenting, kept moving toward truth even when he failed – then maybe you will think: “If even Gandhi made all these mistakes and still accomplished something, maybe I can too.”

That is what I want my legacy to be. Not perfection, but persistence. Not sainthood, but sincerity. Not someone to worship, but someone whose experiments might inspire your own.

That’s beautifully honest. Let me ask – you advocated fearlessness, abhaya, as essential to freedom. What were you most afraid of in your final years?

I was afraid of failure. Not personal failure – I had failed many times and learned to bear it. But failure of the vision.

In my final years, I watched India tear itself apart. Hindu killing Muslim. Muslim killing Hindu. Sikhs caught in between. Everything I had worked for – unity, brotherhood, nonviolence – seemed to be drowning in blood.

I fasted to stop the violence in Calcutta, in Delhi. And for a time, it would stop. People would remember themselves, remember their humanity. But then I would leave, and the killing would start again.

I was afraid that I had been wrong. That nonviolence was only possible when convenient. That as soon as it required real sacrifice, real discipline, people would abandon it for the easier path of violence.

I was also afraid of becoming irrelevant. The new India – Nehru’s India – would be industrialised, modernised, Westernised. Everything I had warned against. I worried that I had won independence for a country that would then abandon all the principles I believed should guide it.

And I was afraid… that God had left me. In my final months, my prayers felt hollow. The inner voice that had always guided me seemed silent. I wondered if I had lost my way, lost my connection to truth.

But I kept praying anyway. Kept doing my duty. Because what else could I do?

You wrote extensively about the “constructive programme” – building new institutions rather than merely destroying old ones. What institutions did India fail to build after independence?

Almost all of them.

The constructive programme had many parts: village self-governance, economic self-sufficiency, communal harmony, removal of untouchability, education in mother tongue, dignity of manual labour, empowerment of women.

After independence, what did India do? Created a parliamentary system copied from Britain. Industrialised rapidly in the Soviet model. Built a bureaucratic state that was just as distant from ordinary people as the British Raj had been. Maintained caste hierarchies. Neglected villages in favour of cities.

The very things I had warned against! I said that real swaraj – self-rule – must start in the villages, with communities governing themselves, being economically independent. Instead, power was concentrated in Delhi, in state capitals. The villages remained poor, powerless, dependent.

I am not saying India accomplished nothing. Untouchability was legally abolished, though not in practice. Women gained legal rights, though again, practice lagged behind. The country remained democratic, which is no small achievement.

But the vision of a decentralised, village-based, spiritually grounded society? This was abandoned almost immediately. Nehru and Patel were good men, but they did not share my vision. They wanted a modern, industrial, powerful nation-state. And that is what they built.

Let me ask about prayer, since you mentioned it earlier. Prayer was “the key of the morning and the bolt of the evening” for you. But what were you actually doing during those multi-faith prayer meetings?

Ah, the prayer meetings. These were my anchor.

We would gather – sometimes twenty people, sometimes two hundred, toward the end sometimes thousands. Seven o’clock in the evening, always the same time. Punctuality in prayer is important.

We would begin with readings from different scriptures. One day the Bhagavad Gita, another day the Quran, then the Bible, Buddhist texts, Sikh writings. I insisted on this variety because truth is not confined to one religion. God speaks in many languages.

Then we would sing bhajans – devotional songs. “Raghupati Raghav Raja Ram…” Simple songs that everyone could join. Hindu, Muslim, Christian, Sikh – all singing together. This was not just music. It was a demonstration that we are one people, one creation.

And what was I doing during this? I was… opening myself. Emptying myself of ego, of my own cleverness, of my own will. Trying to hear the inner voice, the voice of truth, of God – whatever you want to call it.

Prayer is not asking God for things. It is aligning yourself with truth. It is remembering that you are very small and truth is very large. It is surrendering your own certainty to be open to what you do not yet know.

After the prayers, I would sometimes speak briefly about the events of the day, always trying to connect them to larger principles. But mostly, we just prayed together. This was the centre of everything. Politics, spinning, fasts – all of these flowed from prayer.

You said “God has no religion” and incorporated readings from multiple scriptures. How did you maintain such religious pluralism whilst being deeply rooted in Hinduism?

Because Hinduism, properly understood, is pluralistic.

Hinduism does not claim to have the only truth. It says there are many paths to the same summit. “As many faiths, so many paths,” we say. So for me, reading the Quran or the Bible was not betraying Hinduism – it was fulfilling the best of Hinduism.

I was born a Hindu. I learned about God first through Hindu texts, Hindu practices. The Bhagavad Gita was my constant companion – I read it every day. The concepts of dharma, karma, ahimsa – these shaped how I understood the world.

But when I read the Sermon on the Mount – “Love your enemies, bless those who curse you” – how could I not recognise this as truth? When I read the Quran’s emphasis on surrender to God’s will, on justice and charity, how could I not incorporate this into my understanding?

The problem with religion is not the teachings – most religions teach love, truth, compassion at their core. The problem is when people claim that their religion has a monopoly on truth, that everyone else is wrong or damned. This is the root of religious violence.

I remained a Hindu, yes. But I was also a Muslim, a Christian, a Sikh, a Buddhist. Because truth is one, even if the paths are many. To reject truth simply because it comes from a different tradition is foolish and arrogant.

You described your life as “experiments with truth.” What experiment failed most spectacularly, and what did you learn from it?

Oh, there are so many to choose from!

The biggest failure… I would say my attempt to prevent Partition. This was not just a failure – it was a catastrophic failure that cost a million lives.

I believed that if I fasted, if I appealed to people’s better nature, if I demonstrated the principle of Hindu-Muslim unity loudly enough and clearly enough, that the madness would stop. That we could remain one nation.

I was wrong. My fasts could stop violence temporarily, but they could not heal the deeper wounds – centuries of mistrust, the British policy of divide and rule, the political ambitions of leaders who saw more to gain from separation than from unity.

What did I learn? That sincerity is not enough. That believing in something with your whole heart does not make it achievable. That one man, even with great moral authority, cannot overcome historical forces beyond his control.

This was devastating to realise. But also… liberating? Because it meant I could accept my limitations. I had done everything I knew how to do. I had failed. And life went on. India was broken in two, but it did not disappear. My failure was not the end of everything.

I also learned that sometimes the experiment itself teaches you something more valuable than success would have. If I had succeeded in preventing Partition easily, I might have concluded that my methods work every time, in every situation. The failure taught me humility. It taught me that truth is bigger than my understanding of truth, that God’s plan is beyond my comprehension.

That’s profound. We’re coming to the end of our time together, and I want to ask about your final day. On the morning of 30th January 1948, you asked someone to chant “Whether tired or not, O man! Do not take rest.” Why those particular words on that particular day?

You think I knew?

Did you?

I felt… something. Not a premonition exactly. But a sense that my time was short.

Ten days earlier, a bomb was thrown at my prayer meeting. It did not explode properly, or I would have died then. People said I should cancel the public prayer meetings, should accept protection. I refused. If I was meant to die, I would die. If not, I would live. But I would not live in fear.

“Whether tired or not, O man! Do not take rest” – these words expressed what I felt. I was tired. So tired. My body was failing. My heart was broken over Partition. I felt I had failed.

But the work was not finished. It will never be finished. Truth does not rest. Injustice does not rest. So those who serve truth cannot rest either, no matter how weary.

I asked for those words to remind myself – and anyone listening – that this work is bigger than any one person. That when I was gone, others would have to continue. That fatigue is not an excuse to abandon truth.

That evening, at the prayer meeting, Godse shot me. Three bullets. I fell saying “He Ram.” Whether I truly said it or whether it was legend, I do not know anymore. But it was what I hoped to say – God’s name at the moment of death. Forgiveness, not hatred. Peace, not violence.

That brings me to my final question. You once told your companion Manu that if you died of illness, she should declare you a “false mahatma,” but if you died from an assassin’s bullet with Rama’s name on your lips, only then was your message validated. Looking back, do you really believe that the manner of death determines the truth of one’s life?

No. I do not believe that anymore.

When I said that, I was clinging to… a kind of magical thinking. The idea that if I could just die in the right way, perfectly, then it would prove I was right about everything. That my death would validate my life’s work.

But this is foolish. The manner of death proves nothing. A man can die bravely whilst being wrong. He can die peacefully whilst having lived hypocritically.

What matters is not how you die, but how you live. Whether you pursue truth even when it is inconvenient. Whether you have the courage to admit your mistakes. Whether you cause more good than harm. Whether you leave the world slightly better than you found it, even if you fail at your grandest ambitions.

I died with Rama’s name on my lips – or so they say. But Kasturba died in my arms in a prison, and she was as holy as I ever was. Perhaps more so. Harilal died broken and estranged, but his suffering was partly my fault, which means his death also belongs to my account.

The truth of my life will not be determined by how I died. It will be determined by whether the principles I tried to live by – truth, nonviolence, service, fearlessness – continue to have power. Whether they help others find their own way toward justice and peace.

If my death inspired some people to choose nonviolence over violence, then it had meaning. But so did my life – the experiments, the failures, the stubborn persistence toward truth. All of it together. Not just the final moment.

I was wrong to think that one perfect moment could redeem or condemn a whole life. Life is much messier than that. Much more human. And that is not a flaw – that is its truth.

Mr. Gandhi, thank you. This has been extraordinary.

Thank you for asking difficult questions. That is the only way to find truth – by questioning everything, including the answers you receive.

Now, if you will excuse me, I must go spin. The charkha is waiting, and there is always more work to do.

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Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi was assassinated on 30th January 1948, at Birla House (now Gandhi Smriti) in New Delhi. At approximately 5:17 PM, while walking to his daily prayer meeting supported by his grandnieces, he was approached by Nathuram Godse, a Hindu nationalist. Godse fired three bullets into Gandhi’s chest at point-blank range; Gandhi died shortly thereafter. His death occurred less than six months after India gained independence from British rule, a victory shadowed by the violent Partition that created the separate dominions of India and Pakistan.

Gandhi’s philosophy of Satyagraha (truth-force) and Ahimsa (non-violence) had mobilised millions in the struggle for freedom, employing civil disobedience campaigns like the 1930 Salt March to challenge imperial authority without resorting to arms. However, his final years were marked by profound disillusionment as communal violence between Hindus and Muslims intensified. He spent his last months fasting and touring riot-torn areas in Bengal, Bihar, and Delhi, attempting to quell religious hatred.

Following his cremation at Raj Ghat on 31st January 1948, which was attended by over two million mourners, his ashes were distributed across India for immersion. His assassin, Godse, along with co-conspirator Narayan Apte, was tried and executed in November 1949, despite pleas for clemency from Gandhi’s sons, who argued that capital punishment contradicted their father’s principles. Today, 30th January is observed as Martyrs’ Day (Shaheed Diwas) in India to honour Gandhi and those who sacrificed their lives for the nation. Globally, Gandhi remains a seminal figure whose methods influenced civil rights leaders such as Martin Luther King Jr. and Nelson Mandela, cementing his legacy as a defining moral force of the 20th century.

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Bob Lynn | © 2026 Vox Meditantis. All rights reserved.