Notes
Notes Chapter 1. Gandhis Body, Gandhis Truth 1. Quotations from the collected works of Mohandas K. Gandhi are cited in the text by the abbreviation CWo Complete bibliographical information is given in the References. 2. Given the uniqueness of what he was tring to do, Gandhi coined a number of new terms to denote key aspects of his practice. Satyagraha, a term derived from Sanskrit, refers to nonviolent political/moral action. 3. Along with his candid discussions of night discharge, Gandhi wrote publicly and frankly about the failure of his intestines, for example (CW 26: 144), and, when suffering from appendicitis, malaria, and piles, his biomoral compromise with Western medicine (CW 15:73; 23: 191,262; 29:211; 30:126,316-17). In fact, given his definition of Truth, nothing about his life, or his body functions, was private. 4. Immediately after a lengthy summary ofthe development of his thinking on dietary experiments, Gandhi wrote in his History of the Satyagraha Ashram, "The reader has perhaps now seen that the Ashram set out to remedy what it thought were defects in our national life from the religious, economic and political standpoint" (CW 50:192). Significantly, Gandhi sought to implement a program of dietary reform and healthy living in villages through his constructive program (CW 75: 41-44). 5. It is also worth quoting Gandhi's response to an "ignorant," "virulent," and "offensive" racist attack against Asiatic morals written by a Western commentator whose "very civilization ... makes for ignorance, inasmuch as its exacting demands upon the frail physical frame render it well-nigh impossible for any dweller therein to have any but the most superficial knowledge of things in general" (CW 11:192-93). 6. On a smaller scale the connection among morals, ethics, and health comes across clearly, albeit inverted, when Gandhi, studying a book written by an American on eyesight disorders, finds a "potent sentence" that reads, "a lie heats the body and injures eyesight." Gandhi comments on this by saying, "It is true ifyou would give an extended meaning to the term 'lie' ... 160 Notes to Pages 12-14 but the body is injured in every case" (CW 54:56). Hence, telling the truth is not just right, it is essential to good health; un-truth is embodied. 7. Gandhi did not seem to have very much to say on the enervating effect of sex and reproduction on women. In a letter to K. S. Karnath, however, he wrote, "In the male the sexual act is a giving up of vital energy every time. In the female that giving up commences only with parturition" (CW 34: 196). He did point out that menstruation was a period of time during which it was possible for women to regain strength. ''A woman who spends the period in the right manner gains fresh energy every month" (CW 54:388; also 55:210). Nevertheless Gandhi's conception of the physiology of self-control was male by implication, if not in fact. Although he clearly meant to include both men and women in his program of moral reform-and made the point explicitly numerous times-only on a relatively few occasions did he make note of female celibacy per se (CW 50: 423), and then mostly with regard to widows (see CW 23:523; 33:47; 79: 133). In a telling comment, when asked directly about the physiological differences between men and women with regard to the kind of work people were asked to do, Gandhi observed that the differences were only skindeep . "Whatever differences you see can be seen, as it were, with the naked eye.... Are these differences not plain enough to be clear to you?" (CW 50:256). 8. Although Gandhi was fairly strict in his resistance to vaccination, he was in other respects a pragmatist. For example, when explaining to Akbarbhai Chavda how to deal with an epidemic and treat people for diarrhea and fever, he emphasized the importance of natural therapy and hygiene, but wrote: "To meat-eaters you may unhesitatingly give meat soup ... This is not the time for doing our religious duty of propagating vegetarianism. Soup is bound to be useful where milk is not available" (CW 78:374). 9. Although Gandhi's own experiments were conducted mostly on himself while living in ashrams, he was at various times and to various degrees under the care of Dr. Dinshaw Mehta. In 1944 Gandhi encouraged Dr. Mehta to establish a nature-cure clinic with inpatient facilities on...
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