Gandhi and His Ashrams

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Mahatma Gandhi, revered, cherished and at times severely criticised, is known to the world at large as an enigmatic leader and a political revolutionary. Gandhi has been presented by his biographers in various images from a political pencil leader to a saint, prophet and philosopher. Little has been written about his Ashrams and the non-violent action he propagated through them. The author presents to the readers the influences on Gandhi - his early childhood to the turbulent traumatic years in South Africa which led to the setting up of his Ashrams Phoenix Ashram and Tolstoy Farm in South Africa and Sabarmati and Sevagram Ashrams in India. "Our creed was devotion to truth and our business was the search for and insistence of truth. I wanted to acquaint India with the method I had tried in South Africa, and I desired to test in India the extent to which its application may be possible." His unending search and experiment with truth found shape in these Ashrams.

Mark Thomson was born in Sydney and spent his early life in Papua New Guinea. He graduated from the University of Sydney in 1974 with a Bachelor of Arts degree and completed a Masters degree in 1977. He graduated with a Doctorate in history from the University of Bombay in 1985 for his thesis on Mahatma Gandhi's ashram movement. He has to his credit many articles on Gandhian philosophy and activities. He worked in international development from 1985, including serving as First Secretary responsible for development assistance from 1992-1996 in the Australian High Commission, New Delhi. He later served as Counsellor in the Australian High Commission, Port Moresby. In 1994 he was awarded the Bharat Mitra Samman for this book by National Press India at a ceremony in New Delhi. He has retired to Canberra where he continues to teach hatha yoga, a passion since the early 1980s.

Since Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi's death in 1948 his life and thought have continued to be the subject-matter of extensive study. The rich and diverse legacy he left behind has provided a seemingly inexhaustible source for research scholars. From the publication of the first biography of Gandhi in 1909¹ to the present day, his way of life and philosophy have been chronicled and analysed more extensively than any other twentieth century figure. By the time of his return to India from South Africa in 1915 he was already known around the world as an ascetic revolutionary.

The main body, of writings about Gandhi are in the form of complete biographies, brief biographical essays, personal memoirs, and articles and treatises on his moral, political, economic, social and educational thought, which he designated his philosophy of satyagraha or truth-force. As Gandhi became a figure of world renown, men and women who lived and worked closely with him in South Africa and India were motivated to write biographical accounts and personal recollections of their friend, colleague and mentor. However, apart from an exceptional few, the many early biographies suffer from unevenness and lack of focus, and are often more identifiable with panegyric than historical writing.

The best biographies have been written since his death, including the comprehensive study of the early and later stages of his life by Pyarelal, Gandhi's secretary of many years, and books by Fischer, Nanda, Ashe, Payne, together with the small but excellent study by Woodcock. In the preface to his penetrating biography Ashe highlights the need to define the paradoxical figure of Gandhi and demystify his ideas.