‘An Autobiography Mahatma Gandhi : The Story of My Experiments With Truth’ Summary of the book
The first part narrates incidents of Gandhi’s childhood, his experiments with eating meat, smoking, drinking, stealing and subsequent atonement. There are two texts that had a lasting influence on Gandhi, both of which he read in childhood. He records the profound impact of the play Harishchandra and says,”I read it with intense interest…It haunted me and I must have acted Harishchandra to myself times without number.” Another text he mentions reading that deeply affected him was Shravana Pitrabhakti Nataka, a play about Shravana’s devotion to his parents. Gandhi got married at the age of 13. In his words, “It is my painful duty to have to record here my marriage at the age of thirteen…I can see no moral argument in support of such a preposterously early marriage.” Another important event documented in this part is the demise of Gandhi’s father Karamchand Gandhi. Gandhi wrote the book to deal with his experiment for truth. His disdain for physical training at school, particularly gymnastics has also been written about in this part.
