The moral compass that guided Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi through decades of struggle for justice wasn’t shaped by political theory alone. Long before he became the Mahatma, young Gandhi absorbed lessons from ancient Indian scriptures and folklore that would permanently shape his ethical worldview. From the Manusmriti’s philosophical foundations to the dramatic tales of truth-telling kings and devoted sons, these early influences planted seeds that would later bloom into the principles of Satyagraha and nonviolent resistance.
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Manusmriti and the foundation of morality
Gandhi’s engagement with the Manusmriti, one of ancient India’s most debated legal and ethical texts, demonstrates his critical approach to traditional scriptures. While he approached the text with considerable skepticism-particularly regarding its creation stories and its treatment of women and lower castes-Gandhi extracted from it what he considered its philosophical essence: the conviction that morality forms the basis of all existence, and that truth constitutes the very substance of morality.
This early reading steered Gandhi toward making truth his supreme objective in life. In his autobiography, he acknowledged that while the Manusmriti did not teach him ahimsa, he valued certain moral principles from the scripture as useful for developing self-restraint. Gandhi’s approach was selective and reformist. He once wrote to Ranchhodlal Patwardhan declaring that if people were to follow some of the tenets of Manusmriti, there would be moral anarchy-and so he quietly discarded those portions altogether.
Gandhi even used the Manusmriti’s morally rich passages to counter Western claims of Eastern ethical inferiority. When Lord Curzon suggested in 1905 that truth was largely a Western conception, Gandhi quoted several passages from the ancient text to demonstrate that lofty moral principles existed in Indian tradition long before such ideals were similarly honoured in the West. This selective engagement-accepting what harmonized with reason and morality while rejecting what was repugnant to truth and nonviolence-became characteristic of Gandhi’s approach to all religious texts.
Upanishads and the ethic of ahimsa
The Upanishads, particularly the Chhandogya Upanishad, provided Gandhi with ancient scriptural authority for nonviolence as a fundamental ethical virtue. The Chhandogya Upanishad, dated to the 8th or 7th century BCE, contains some of the earliest evidence for the use of ahimsa as a code of conduct familiar in Hindu tradition. This ancient text lists ahimsa alongside truthfulness, sincerity, charity, and penance as essential virtues to cultivate.
For Gandhi, this Upanishadic endorsement helped transform ahimsa from a passive concept of avoiding harm into a positive force of universal goodwill. He made a distinction between the negative and positive aspects of ahimsa. In its negative form, it simply means not injuring any living being. But Gandhi expanded this understanding dramatically. According to UNESCO’s analysis of Gandhian thought, his conception of ahimsa precluded not only physical injury but also mental states like evil thoughts and hatred, unkind behaviour such as harsh words, dishonesty, and lying-all of which he viewed as manifestations of violence.
Gandhi believed ahimsa to be a creative energy force that could lead one toward finding divine truth. In its positive form, ahimsa meant the largest love and the greatest charity. As Gandhi’s philosophy of nonviolence evolved, he made ahimsa meaningful in social and political spheres by moulding tools for nonviolent action to use as a positive force in the search for social and political truths. The Jain and Buddhist traditions surrounding him in Gujarat reinforced these teachings, but the Upanishadic foundation gave them a distinctly Hindu philosophical grounding that Gandhi would later deploy in his national movement.
The ideal of truth: Harishchandra’s ordeal
Perhaps no single story shaped young Gandhi’s commitment to truth more profoundly than the legend of Raja Harishchandra. As Gandhi recounts in his autobiography, watching a play about this truth-king performed by a travelling dramatic company captured his heart completely. In his own words from the autobiography, the play haunted him, and he acted out the role of Harishchandra to himself times without number.
The legend of Harishchandra tells of a king who, having promised to give everything he owned to the sage Vishwamitra, proceeds to sacrifice his kingdom, sell his wife and son into slavery, and work as a keeper of cremation grounds-all rather than speak a single untruth. Even when his own son dies and his grief-stricken wife cannot afford the cremation fee, Harishchandra refuses to waive his duty or compromise his word. The story culminates in divine intervention that rewards his unwavering honesty.
The young Gandhi asked himself a question that would echo throughout his life: Why should not all people be as truthful as Harishchandra? To follow truth and to go through all the ordeals Harishchandra endured became his personal ideal. He literally believed in the story, and the thought of it often moved him to tears. Though his adult judgment told him Harishchandra could not have been a historical figure, Gandhi maintained that both Harishchandra and Shravana remained living realities for him, and that he would be moved as before if he were to encounter those plays again.
From theatrical inspiration to philosophical foundation
This early theatrical experience planted seeds that would later grow into Gandhi’s concept of Satyagraha-literally “holding firmly to truth.” The connection between the dramatic portrayal of Harishchandra’s steadfastness and Gandhi’s later methodology of truthful resistance is unmistakable. Just as Harishchandra endured suffering rather than compromise truth, Satyagrahis would accept imprisonment, beatings, and worse rather than abandon their principled position. The entertainment of childhood had become the foundation of a revolutionary political philosophy.
Lesson in filial devotion: the story of Shravana
The story of Shravana left an equally indelible mark on Gandhi’s developing character, though its lesson concerned duty and selfless service rather than truth alone. Gandhi encountered this tale through both a book his father had purchased-Shravana Pitribhakti Nataka (a play about Shravana’s devotion to his parents)-and through itinerant showmen who displayed pictures depicting the story’s central image.
Shravana Kumara was a devoted son whose elderly parents were both blind. When they expressed their wish to undertake a pilgrimage to sacred places, Shravana fashioned a carrying device using slings fitted to his shoulders, placing his parents in baskets on either end. He then carried them himself across the arduous journey to the holy sites they longed to visit.
The picture that Gandhi saw as a boy-of Shravana carrying his blind parents on pilgrimage-became a personal model for pure, selfless service and duty. The story’s tragic ending, in which Shravana is accidentally killed by an arrow from King Dasharatha while fetching water for his thirsty parents, and his parents’ subsequent grief-stricken death, moved Gandhi deeply. He played the melting tune of the parents’ lament on a concertina his father had purchased for him, internalizing the emotional lesson of devoted service and the devastating consequences when such care is interrupted.
Service as spiritual practice
The Shravana story taught Gandhi that service to others-particularly to those who depend upon us-constitutes one of the highest forms of duty. This lesson would later manifest in his concept of seva (selfless service) and his emphasis on caring for the most vulnerable members of society. The image of carrying others’ burdens, literally shouldering the weight of those who cannot walk themselves, became a metaphor for the kind of leadership Gandhi would practice: one that elevates others rather than seeks personal glory.
The synthesis of scripture and folklore
What makes Gandhi’s engagement with these diverse sources remarkable is how he synthesized them into a coherent ethical framework. From the Manusmriti, he took the philosophical conviction that morality underlies all existence. From the Upanishads, he drew the ancient sanction for nonviolence as a positive spiritual force. From Harishchandra, he learned that truth must be pursued regardless of personal cost. From Shravana, he understood that loving service to others represents the highest expression of duty.
These threads wove together throughout Gandhi’s life, informing his experiments with truth and his development of Satyagraha as a political methodology. He approached religious texts not as infallible authorities but as repositories of wisdom to be critically examined-accepting what resonated with reason and conscience while rejecting what did not. This approach allowed him to draw inspiration from Hindu, Jain, Buddhist, Christian, and Islamic sources alike, creating an ethical synthesis that transcended sectarian boundaries.
The scriptures and folklore of Gandhi’s childhood did not simply inform his beliefs; they became what he called “living realities” that shaped his actions throughout life. In an age when religious texts are often weaponized for division, Gandhi’s example offers an alternative: critical engagement that seeks universal ethical principles rather than exclusive claims to truth.
What do you think? Can ancient scriptures and folklore still offer meaningful ethical guidance in the modern world, or must each generation discover moral principles anew? How might Gandhi’s method of selective, critical engagement with religious texts apply to contemporary ethical challenges?
References
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manusmriti
- https://www.tribuneindia.com/news/archive/comment/gandhi-had-open-mind-on-manusmriti-532030/
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ahimsa
- https://www.unesco.org/en/articles/ahmisa-non-violence-gandhi-and-global-citizenship-education-gced
- https://www.gandhiashramsevagram.org/gandhi-articles/gandhi-philosophy-of-nonviolence.php
- https://www.mkgandhi.org/autobio/chap02.php
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahatma_Gandhi
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shravana_Kumara
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