Читать книгу Gandhi and Rajchandra - Uma Majmudar - Страница 9

It was not, however, a smooth sailing before or after. Before Gandhi could finally leave on the scheduled date, he had to face two major hurdles: one entailed facing his “Modh Bania” caste ostracism, and the other was the challenge of appeasing his strictly religious mother’s moral qualms. In those days, “crossing the black seas,” called kalapani in his native Gujarati language, was considered to be a mortal sin by the rigid caste rules. By daring to defy them, Mohandas had infuriated his caste elders so much so that they had threatened to excommunicate not only him but his entire family. And they certainly did. Yet, fearless and nonchalant, Gandhi stood his grounds. He did not argue with them; he just prevailed. This was the earliest incidence of the Gandhian style of civil disobedience—a nonviolent yet firm resistance to injustice.

The other hurdle was of a different nature related to his “saintly mother” Putliba’s love and concern for her son, that in a foreign land, her young son may likely go astray. Though she herself belonged to the Pranami sect of Vaishnavism, in practice Putliba was very much like a scrupulous Jain—fasting frequently, taking the hardest of the hard vows, eating only vegetarian foods, and observing many such rigorous self-disciplines. Therefore, only reluctantly she agreed to let her son go overseas to England with a condition that Mohandas must promise in front of Becharji Swami—a Jain family priest—to abide by three moral stipulations: to not eat meat, drink alcohol, or be sexually involved with any woman other than his wife—whom he was leaving behind. Gandhi instantly agreed because in the heat of his excitement to go to his dreamland, he would not let anything or anyone stand in his way, and of course, he so adored his mother, that he would never imagine disobeying her or displeasing her on his account.