PDF Summary:The Story of My Experiments with Truth, by Mahatma Gandhi

Before he was a world-famous activist, Mohandas Gandhi was a normal child in India, a hopeful law student in England, and a struggling lawyer in South Africa. Gandhi's autobiography, The Story of My Experiments with Truth, walks us through his life from childhood until 1921, as he was about to become a pivotal figure in India's fight for independence from British rule. The title references Gandhi's dedication to uncovering Truth—an unwavering foundation of morality and justice—by committing to nonviolence and an austere lifestyle devoid of sexual pleasure and indulgent foods.

Our guide explores Gandhi’s life story, lifestyle, and nonviolent activism. We’ll complement Gandhi’s narrative and reflections with cultural and historical context, provide possible explanations for some of his choices, and include elements of his story that he doesn’t mention in his book.

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Kasturbai was a quiet and self-sufficient girl who hadn’t received any education. Mohandas says he wanted to teach her, but he was distracted by lust for her during the first years of their marriage. When that distraction wore off, he got involved in public service, which kept him from having time to teach Kasturbai anything beyond basic literacy.

(Shortform note: Kasturbai’s story of child marriage and lack of access to education isn’t rare, even today. According to a 2008 report by the International Centre for Research on Women, more than half of young Indian women over the age of 20 with no education were married before they were 18. India instituted the Prohibition of Child Marriage Act in 2006, forbidding the marriage of girls under 18; but in 2013, Plan International reported that parents still find ways to defy the law and marry their daughters off as early as 12 years old.)

Teenage Years

As a teenager, Gandhi further developed key values that would guide him as an adult: honesty, nonviolence, duty, and self-restraint. Two events show these values taking shape.

Honesty and Nonviolence

Mohandas and some of his friends experimented with smoking and eating foods that their parents forbade. In the process, they racked up debt at a local store and Mohandas stole gold from his brother to repay the debt. Later, he felt guilty and wrote a letter to his father confessing. Instead of punishing him, his usual response to misbehavior, his father ripped up the confession and hugged him. Mohandas believed and admired that his father responded with love instead of violence because he knew that Mohandas’s confession came from true regret.

Duty and Self-Restraint

When Mohandas was 16, his father became ill. He was happy to be his father’s nurse, but Mohandas often felt impatient to return to his wife’s room to have sex, which caused him shame. The night his father died, Mohandas was with his wife. Mohandas says he deeply regretted that lust kept him from being with his father in his final moments.

Mohandas’s Guilt and Shame

Mohandas’s teenage experiences show opposing examples of dealing with mistakes: through guilt and through shame. In Daring Greatly, Brené Brown argues that the difference between shame and guilt is “I’m bad” (shame) versus “I did something bad” (guilt). Shame impedes action and growth, but guilt facilitates self-awareness and initiative for growth.

The fact that Mohandas confessed and apologized after stealing from his brother demonstrates self-awareness and a desire to grow. Therefore, Brown would likely call this experience one in which Mohandas felt guilty (rather than ashamed). The positive response he received from his father encouraged him to view the experience as a moment of personal growth and cemented his belief in honesty and nonviolence.

However, having sex with his wife the night his father died caused Mohandas to feel shame—he uses this exact word when describing this incident in his autobiography. This experience of shame may explain his self-punishing behavior such as intense self-restraint and ultimately celibacy.

Law School in England

In this section, we’ll discuss Gandhi’s life after he finished high school, including his three years studying Law in London.

Making It to England

In 1887, Gandhi finished his high school education but wasn’t sure about his next steps. A family friend suggested that he go to England and study law. This would secure him a high-earning and respectable career. Gandhi says he felt both scared and thrilled at the idea of going abroad. But two major obstacles stood in the way:

First, Putlibai didn’t approve of her son living abroad for several years. She was worried that he’d be tempted to drink alcohol, eat meat, and have relationships with women. To calm her fears, Mohandas took an oath to abstain from those vices and she gave him her blessing.

Then, the caste Gandhi’s family belonged to forbade him to travel because they followed religious prohibitions against foreign travel. He decided to go despite their prohibition, and the caste expelled him from the group. (Shortform note: In India in the late 19th century, a widespread caste system categorized people into a hierarchy of varnas, or social classes. Gandhi and his family belonged to the Vaishya (merchant and landowner) caste, the third highest of the main four varnas. The members of these varnas all rank above the Dalits, or “untouchables”—a social class that falls outside of the caste system.)

The Soft Power of Gandhi’s Self-Restraint

The challenges Gandhi faced as he pursued his goal of higher education in England illustrate how he wielded soft power to achieve his aims. In Quiet, Cain argues that Gandhi was extraordinarily effective in wielding soft power, the quiet persistence in building support through day-to-day personal interactions. According to Cain, Gandhi's shyness and fear of authority figures evolved into self-restraint—the ability to choose his battles wisely and avoid conflicts that could undermine his leadership and the support of his community. This allowed him to nurture his connection with his followers and build support even through periods of controversy and conflict.

The two obstacles Gandhi describes arguably illustrate this. He exercised self-restraint around food, alcohol, and women to fulfill the vow he swore to his mother, a key authority figure in his life. Then he exercised self-restraint by accepting his caste members’ decision to expel him. Because of his nonresistance, the caste left him alone and later even helped in his political work. Had Gandhi fought back, he and caste leaders might have been in perpetual conflict.

Cain explains that Gandhi’s soft power became a hallmark of his life. Because he stayed focused on his ultimate goal, rather than being diverted by unnecessary fights, Gandhi’s self-restraint became one of his greatest assets by continuously protecting his relationship with his followers and community.

Life in England

Once in London, Gandhi remembers that he continued to face formative challenges. Those challenges included:

Finding vegetarian meals. Gandhi says he often starved because he couldn’t get filling vegetarian meals in London. He also had to defend his decision whenever people insisted he eat meat. He eventually found vegetarian restaurants and learned to cook.

Living on a tight budget. He spent a lot of money trying to fit into London society, including investing in an entirely new wardrobe. However, he soon had to cut back. He moved to a modest apartment, began walking instead of using public transportation, and took meticulous notes of all the money he spent. These habits stayed with him all his life.

(Shortform note: These challenges set the stage for what would become Gandhi’s signature simple living: austere accommodations, simple and traditional clothing, and vegetarian meals he could easily prepare himself. The ashram he founded later in life—where he was living when he wrote his autobiography—taught families to live a simple, self-sufficient lifestyle where even the furniture they slept on and the clothes they wore were made by themselves or others in the community.)

Early Career in South Africa

In this section, we’ll describe the time after Gandhi completed his legal training. He passed his Law school exams on June 10th, 1891, and he was on a ship back home by the 12th. He eventually found work in Natal, a province in South Africa. This is where he had his first experiences of discrimination and began his activism career defending the rights of Indians.

Moving to South Africa

Back in India, Gandhi didn’t have much success as a lawyer. He was shy and felt uncomfortable charging his clients for his work. His brother, who’d paid for his education, worried that Gandhi couldn’t contribute to the family’s finances.

(Shortform note: Some of the traits that became part of Gandhi’s leadership style (as we discussed above) also made it difficult for him to practice law. As he shares in his autobiography, he was so shy that his first court appearance was a disaster because he couldn’t get a single word out in front of the judge. But he transformed that shyness into soft power as he came into his own as a leader. He also had revolutionary views about the legal profession, even by today’s standards: Elsewhere, he wrote that lawyers and doctors should receive a salary from the government instead of charging fees to their clients or patients. He believed that would ensure everyone received quality legal and medical services, regardless of how much they could afford.)

Amid these worries, Gandhi received a job offer in South Africa from one of his brother’s wealthy business partners. The job was to provide legal counsel to an Indian-owned company. The offer was enticing: It paid well and offered the chance to leave India and have new experiences.

Despite his excitement for this new adventure, Gandhi says he was sad to say goodbye to his wife once again, especially as they’d welcomed their second baby since his return from England. So, when he set off to South Africa in April 1893, he was filled with both excitement and sadness.

(Shortform note: Gandhi’s choice to move to South Africa without his wife and children was an example of him putting his career—whether as a lawyer or as a public leader—before his family. Gandhi’s biographers found that his two eldest sons had a difficult relationship with him, even becoming estranged at one point, as a result of the way Gandhi prioritized his pursuit of Truth and justice over being an involved father and husband.)

Experiencing Racism

Gandhi’s experience in South Africa was eye-opening. He experienced racism as an immigrant of color in a European colony. He narrates several noteworthy experiences, including:

• Suffering discrimination on the train. Due to his race, Gandhi couldn’t travel first class. On his first train trip, he was kicked off the train for complaining. He completed the trip by coach, and the coach leader hit him when he refused to sit outside.
• Being referred to as a "coolie barrister." The Indian community was made up of several cultural, geographic, and religious groups, but the Europeans referred to all Indians as “coolies,” a derogatory term for Indian laborers.

Gandhi’s Attitude Toward Black South Africans

Gandhi’s critics note that the native population of South Africa faced the same or worse racism, but Gandhi didn’t seem to care as much about their suffering as he did for that of his fellow Indians. In fact, critics argue he participated in it. For example, while Gandhi resented being called a “coolie barrister,” he used the derogatory term “kaffir” to refer to Black South Africans.

Additionally, he thought Indians should have the same freedom of movement as the Europeans, but he didn’t want the same for the native population. For example, the post office in South Africa had separate entrances for Blacks and whites—and Indians had to use the entrance for Blacks—but Gandhi fought for Indians to have a separate entrance instead of advocating for integration that would benefit Black South Africans.

Starting Public Work

Gandhi’s experiences of discrimination led him to become an activist for Indian national dignity. During his time in South Africa, he became a leader of the Indian community. After seeing they were divided along religious and ethnic lines, he advocated for coming together as Indians. He proposed establishing the Natal Indian Congress to bring the problems Indian settlers faced to the authorities, and he volunteered his time and effort for this cause.

These are two of the key moments of Gandhi’s leadership journey in South Africa:

The Natal Franchise Bill

In 1893, the Natal Legislative Assembly proposed the Franchise Bill to take away Indians’ voting rights. Gandhi and his friends drafted a petition and collected signatures opposing the bill. It passed, but Gandhi argues that their resistance united the Indian community in their commitment to defending their political rights.

The £25 Tax

In 1894, Gandhi advocated for the rights of Indian indentured laborers in South Africa. These laborers were taken to South Africa to work in sugarcane farming on five-year contracts, after which they were free to do other work and purchase land. Many had become independent farmers and merchants. However, Gandhi says that the Europeans in South Africa resisted their competition in trade and rejected the Indians’ lifestyle, from their hygiene habits to their religion.

To stop former indentured laborers from working freely in Natal, the government enforced a yearly tax of £25 on any contracted Indian laborers who stayed in South Africa to work independently. After the Natal Indian Congress campaigned against the tax, the government reduced it to £3.

The Shared History of Indians and South Africans

The origins of Indians in South Africa date back to the Dutch colonial era when Indians arrived as enslaved people in 1684. The Indian community in South Africa grew through indentured laborers arriving in the 19th century and later as free Indians seeking new opportunities.

The political struggles against discriminatory laws helped forge a common South African Indian identity, with organizations like the Natal Indian Congress playing a key role. The movement for national dignity in South Africa also contributed to the push for Indian independence. And decades later, a free India contributed to the dismantling of apartheid in South Africa: India confronted the racist South African government and advocated for African sovereignty at the United Nations.

Today’s Indian South African community maintains its cultural ties to India, as well as the religious diversity that characterized it in Gandhi’s time. Many Indian South Africans still speak Indian languages such as Hindi and Gujarati, and they still practice their ancestral religions, including Hinduism, Islam, Christianity, and Sikhism.

Political Leadership in India

Gandhi’s experiences in South Africa prepared him to become a national leader in his country. He returned to India as a well-known defender of Indian rights. He defended farmers, laborers, and other disadvantaged groups from the British government’s unfair treatment. Over time, he says, these experiences changed his views on the British Empire, and he began to see independence as the only way for Indians to achieve their rights.

This section will explore some of the highlights of Gandhi’s political leadership, which demonstrated his commitment to the nonviolent pursuit of Truth. Gandhi founded the Satyagraha movement—nonviolent resistance to the British Empire’s oppression of Indians. Satyagraha (from the Sanskrit words sat, meaning truth, and agraha, meaning steadfastness) involved resisting unfair or immoral situations through nonviolent action. The nonviolent actions he endorsed were mostly disobeying laws in a way that didn’t endanger or harm anyone.

(Shortform note: Gandhi’s Satyagraha movement inspired other freedom and equality movements around the world. For example, when US Civil Rights leader James Farmer led the first civil rights sit-ins in 1942, he employed nonviolent protest techniques he learned from Gandhi.)

Champaran Satyagraha

In 1917, Gandhi conducted his first satyagraha campaign in India. He met Rajkumar Shukla, a farmer from the Champaran region who shared that the British indigo planters were exploiting them. Gandhi was initially hesitant to take up the cause of the farmers who were forced by the planters to grow indigo on their land. He finally decided to travel to Champaran and conduct his investigation after much insistence from Shukla.

The Champaran Satyagraha involved different levels of nonviolent action. First, with his team of activists, Gandhi questioned hundreds of farmers to identify the injustices taking place. He also met with the planters to hear their side of the story and understand their needs. At the same time, he organized volunteers to provide education, medical care, and sanitation services for the farmers. (Shortform note: Gandhi learned through his inquiry that the farmers lacked access to basic services, and he believed that their lack of education allowed the British planters to treat them unfairly. To him, providing those basic services was part of the broader struggle for liberation.)

Many planters weren’t happy with Gandhi’s investigation, and they lobbied the government to pressure Gandhi to leave Champaran. He refused to leave unless the government began an official investigation into the farmers’ complaints. Gandhi continued his inquiry despite opposition and faced a court summons for violating an order to stop the investigation. Gandhi's trial marked the first instance of civil disobedience—the refusal to comply with unfair laws—in the country and increased his popularity among the peasants.

Finally, the governor instituted a committee to investigate and invited Gandhi to be a member. The committee’s findings favored the farmers, and the abusive system the planters had used until then was abolished. This victory cemented Gandhi’s stance as a national leader.

(Shortform note: Gandhi might not have grown into the role of nationwide leader if not for Rajkumar Shukla and many other local leaders. Shukla convinced Gandhi to help and organized the resistance movement in Champaran, along with other local activists. They also mobilized villagers to protest when he was put on trial. Perhaps the most dramatic example is that of a cook named Battakh Miyan. When Miyan’s boss, a wealthy indigo planter who was unhappy about Gandhi’s investigation, ordered Miyan to put poison in Gandhi’s food, he alerted the Mahatma. He saved Gandhi’s life, but Miyan’s family was attacked and he was sent to prison.)

Kheda Satyagraha

In 1918, Gandhi led a satyagraha movement in the Kheda district of India. Crops had failed and there were widespread famine and plague epidemics. The farmers or ryots asked the government to cancel the year's tax since they hadn’t made a profit, but all their petitions failed.

Gandhi traveled to Kheda and led the farmers in a satyagraha resistance in which they refused to pay their taxes despite the government considering it illegal. Even those who could afford to pay promised not to, in solidarity with the farmers most affected by the failed crops. In response, the government pressured the farmers by taking away their agricultural machinery.

Gandhi says that after several months of resistance, they needed to find a resolution that would allow both sides not to lose face. He negotiated with the government to allow the poorest farmers not to pay their taxes but still collect from the ones who could afford to pay. Although it wasn’t a total victory, Gandhi still felt that the effort had been worthwhile because it showed the farmers that they had political power they could use to fight injustice.

The Political Origins of Famine

The difficult conditions facing the Kheda farmers were representative of the conditions in many other districts in India and of the decades of British rule in the country. In 1878, 40 years before the Kheda Satyagraha, Florence Nightingale—who became famous during the Crimean War for her reforms in wartime nursing and sanitation—wrote a public essay condemning the British government’s lack of policies to prevent famine in India. She argued that the British Empire’s failure to invest in irrigation and transportation infrastructure and the unchecked deforestation made famine inevitable.

Elsewhere, Nightingale questioned the fairness of the system of land ownership the British government put in place. The Indian ryots paid taxes on what they produced, and the British government used these taxes to fund its wars in other countries. However, the British landowners became wealthy by selling what the ryots produced abroad. Despite creating a wealth of products and paying taxes, the ryots starved when they had a bad crop. This was because they didn’t have food stores to fall back on, as the landowners exported everything they produced. Nightingale remarked that the government had to allow tax remissions every year in some districts because the ryots were chronically impoverished.

Nightingale further highlighted the oppression of the ryots by contrasting the political systems in England and India. The English Parliament was made up of representatives from the largest social groups in English society, which ensured that these groups had a voice, particularly in issues that impacted their economy. However, in India, ryots were the largest slice of the population yet had no voice in the British government. This made it nearly impossible for them to advocate for themselves. It would be several decades until Gandhi and his fellow nonviolent activists found a way for the government to hear the voices of the millions of agricultural workers.

The Amritsar Massacre

In 1919, the people of India were eager for independence. Gandhi explains that the nonviolent movement for national dignity was growing, but not everyone understood the principles of nonviolence. In Amritsar, which is located in the Punjab region of India, the people’s desire for justice and respect reached a boiling point. There were frequent confrontations between them and the government forces, which responded with unrestrained violence.

(Shortform note: Gandhi doesn’t explain what the Amritsar massacre entailed, only that it was a tragedy. According to a Gandhian scholar, a crowd of thousands gathered in a walled garden in Amritsar to protest the British government’s unfair treatment of Indians. British troops responded violently, resulting in hundreds of people, including children, being killed and hundreds more wounded.)

Gandhi’s response to the Amritsar Massacre exemplified his commitment to satyagraha and to uncovering Truth. Other leaders urged Gandhi to go to Amritsar soon after the massacre—but the government forbade him, which further enraged the population. Instead of traveling to the Punjab despite the prohibition, Gandhi decided to wait. He knew the people were looking to him for leadership, and he believed that if he had taken bold action, the people of Punjab would have used that as a cue for more violent resistance.

Instead, he had multiple conversations with government officials and showed them that allowing him to be there to engage with the people would help bring peace to the situation. Eventually, the government allowed Gandhi to travel to Punjab, and he spent time getting to know the locals’ grievances—finding the factual truth behind the violent events that had taken place, as well as the Truth that would bring morality and justice back to the community. He learned how the British government had been oppressing them, including making them crawl on their hands and knees when they traversed a specific road.

(Shortform note: Gandhi’s visit to Amritsar marked a turning point in his relationship with the British government. Before, he believed that India should remain part of the British Empire but that the government should treat the native population fairly and morally. But seeing the excesses of the British government in Amritsar, and their lack of regret, he began to think that independence was the only path forward.)

The Non-Cooperation Movement

In 1920, Gandhi participated in a gathering of Hindu and Muslim leaders in Delhi, an event that he says led to the birth of the term non-cooperation. Non-cooperation was a form of satyagraha that focused on rejecting and boycotting the rules that the British government imposed.

(Shortform note: Non-cooperation is different from other forms of satyagraha because it aims to boycott the government at every opportunity. It encourages rejecting every government-mandated system from public schooling to curfews. Other non-violent resistance movements Gandhi led focused on specific unjust laws, such as the unfair tax scheme in the Kheda Satyagraha.)

The gathering where Gandhi came up with the term “non-cooperation” was focused on discussing how both religious groups might respond to a divisive policy announced by the British Empire, which Gandhi refers to as “the Khilafat question.”

(Shortform note: The Khilafat movement was a political campaign by Muslims in India against the British Empire’s planned dismemberment of the Ottoman Empire—a majority Muslim empire—post-World War I. The movement aimed to protect the caliphate, a religious authority for Muslims within and outside the Ottoman and British Empires. Gandhi supported the movement to address the Muslim population’s grievances and oppose British imperialism.)

During this gathering, Gandhi proposed non-cooperation as a way to exert pressure on the British Empire. He believed it would achieve two aims:

1. Send a message of opposition to the British government without using violence
2. Unite Muslims and Hindus since both groups had separate grievances with the British Empire but would act together to oppose it

As a result of Gandhi’s advocacy, the Indian National Congress agreed to support the Khilafat movement through non-cooperation. Gandhi says this was an important step toward Hindu-Muslim unity and to the struggle for Swaraj, the self-government of India. However, many of his followers criticized him for investing so much effort into Hindu-Muslim unity.

Other Criticisms Against the Khilafat Movement

The Khilafat movement is a contentious part of Gandhi’s legacy. Some critics argue that by encouraging the movement, Gandhi fostered religious divisions rather than unity. Before the movement, secular Indian politicians found ways for Hindus and Muslims to put aside their religious differences and focus on shared political aims. But when Gandhi traveled around India encouraging Indian Muslims to join the Khilafat movement, he brought religious concerns to the forefront.

As a result, secular Indian politicians lost popularity, and their efforts to unite both groups around political issues fizzled out. The movement became a symbol of the differences between both populations. These divisions led to the 1974 partition of India and the creation of Pakistan as a homeland for Muslims.

Khadi Movement

The Khadi movement was part of Gandhi’s efforts for India to become less dependent on the British Empire. Gandhi’s activism gradually led him to the conclusion that they needed to be free of British rule. However, India’s economy was tied to the British Empire, and political independence would require economic autonomy, too.

Gandhi believed that one way for Indians to become autonomous was to start making their clothes, instead of relying on mills that traded with the British and imported much of the cotton used in India. Gandhi saw the khadi, a traditional Indian garment made of spun cotton, as the perfect vehicle for Indians to exercise their autonomy. Women could make khadis at home using spinning wheels, and it would be a source of income for them. In addition, it would invigorate the national textile industry, which would have to supply enough finely spun cotton for them to make their khadis. As part of his khadi activism, Gandhi learned to use the spinning wheel and dressed only in Indian-produced khadis.

The Power of Everyday Things and Regular People

The Khadi movement, which began in 1918, was a precursor for one of Gandhi’s most well-known Satyagraha campaigns: the 1930 Salt March (also known as the Salt Satyagraha). Both the Khadi movement and the salt march focused his activism on a specific material that people needed for daily life, using it to highlight the injustices the government was committing and the power of regular people to take back economic control through organized action.

In Salt, Mark Kurlansky explains that the British government established a monopoly over salt made by Indian saltworks, requiring Indian salt producers to sell all their salt to the British. Indian salt harvesters rebelled against this monopoly in 1817 by attacking British-controlled saltworks in India. Indian resistance to Britain’s control of salt production reached new heights in the early 1900s when Indians grew upset about the high tax Britain required them to pay on salt. The Indian Legislative Assembly demanded Britain reduce this tax, but Britain refused. In response, Gandhi and his followers walked nearly 250 miles along the Indian coastline, gathering sea salt—illegal under British law.

The campaign worked: In the early 1930s, the British signed a pact promising to release political prisoners and permit Indians to collect sea salt. According to Kurlansky, this pact and Gandhi's campaign paved the way for Indians to secure their independence in 1947.