Page 45 - GANDHI A Biography for Children and Beginners

GANDHI – A Biography for children and beginners

discover the transformation that the individual and the community needed to

lead a life free from exploitation and dedicated to the realization of high

ideals. Among the members of the community were Polak and his wife Millie,
Maganlal Gandhi and many others.

The experiments that Gandhi conducted at the Settlement related to all

aspects of life. He had to discover what helped to tame the body and mind, —
to acquire mastery over the senses, to overcome the ego that stood in the way

of the mind, and an order that worked for the welfare of all that he described

later as Sarvodaya.

So there were experiments with food or diet; experiments aimed at self-

sufficiency in the production of essentials; experiments on the extent to which

an individual could go in achieving self-sufficiency consistent with
interdependence; experiments in new methods of education through manual

work or craft, supplementary study, character-building and community living.

Gandhi was the example that inspired these experiments and monitored the

evolution towards truth, love, sacrifice and non-exploitative values. The
community also witnessed experiments aimed at acquiring control over

emotions like anger and jealousy, and problems arising from boys and girls

living in each other's constant company.

In the meanwhile South Africa was rocked by a rebellion of the Zulus. There

were large-scale military operations against the Zulus. Again Gandhi offered to

raise an Indian Ambulance Corps to tend the wounded and remove the dead.
Gandhi's experiences during the Rebellion were harrowing and excruciating. He

saw barbarism at its worst. Zulus were whipped till their skins peeled off. They

were left in a pool of blood. Whites refused to tend the wounded Zulus. They

wanted the Zulus to bleed and die, and be fed upon by birds of prey or wild
beasts. The Indian Ambulance Corps looked after the Zulus - wounded and

dead. Again the courage and forbearance of Gandhi and his colleagues were

commended, and they were honoured with medals. But Gandhi's mind was
restless and in remorse for what he had seen of the cruelty of man against man.

The physical sufferings that he had seen had drained his mind of all desire for

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