If humans are to achieve a stable society in the distant future, it will be necessary for them to become modest in their economic behavior and peaceful in their politics. For both modesty and peace, Gandhi is useful as a source of ideas.
Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi was born in 1869 in Porbandar, India. His family belonged to the Hindu caste of shopkeepers. (In Gujarati “Gandhi” means “grocer”.) However, the family had risen in status, and Gandhi’s father, grandfather, and uncle had all served as prime ministers of small principalities in western India.
In 1888, Gandhi sailed for England, where he spent three years studying law at the Inner Temple in London. Before he left India, his mother had made him take a solemn oath not to touch women, wine, or meat. He thus came into contact with the English vegetarians, who included Sir Edward Arnold (translator of the Bhagavad Gita), the Theosophists Madame Blavatski and Annie Besant, and the Fabians. Contact with this idealistic group of social critics and experimenters helped to cure Gandhi of his painful shyness, and it also developed his taste for social reform and experimentation.
Gandhi’s exceptionally sweet and honest character won him many friends in England, and he encountered no racial prejudice at all.