And what will you write? Supposing you reject tomorrow the things you hold as principles to-day, or supposing you revise in the future your plans of to-day, is it not likely that the men who shape their conduct on the authority of your word, spoken or written, may be misled? Don’t you think it would be better not to write anything like an autobiography, at any rate just yet?” I know of nobody in the East having written one, except amongst those who have come under Western influence.
It is obvious that in his autobiography which bears the most significant second title of Experiments with Truth, he narrates for the education of his countrymen his life-long attempts to conquer and remake himself.Ī God-fearing friend had his doubts when Gandhi expressed his idea to write his autobiography, and asked him, “What has set you on this adventure? Writing an autobiography is a practice peculiar to the West.
Louis Fischer opines that throughout his life, Gandhi concentrated on the personal ‘one man’s day-to-day behaviour’. His autobiography is of great value to India, not only because it gives a measure of the greatness of the nation’s ‘Father’ but also because it affords some important lessons to India. It is the story of a person written by himself and of all autobiographies, Gandhi’s is among the most frank and truthful. It had the benefit of being revised later from the point of view of language by an eminent English Scholar.Īn autobiography is by definition self-revelatory.
The translation, as it appeared serially in Young India, had the benefit of Gandhiji’s revision. Mahadev Desaiwho was close to Gandhi and studied him at closer quarters translated his autobiography into English in such a way that one feels as if it was done by Gandhi himself, and it has a continuous influence on Indian writing in English. Unlike Jawaharlal Nehru, who loved English and felt more at home in it than any other language Gandhi wrote it in his mother tongue Gujarati but not in English. His autobiography, The Story of My Experiments with Truth is an imperishable classic. Gandhi exercised a potent influence on our society through his own writing in English and Gujarati.
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