Stealing and Atonement

This memoir by Mahatma Gandhi, which is taken from his autobiography The Story of My Experiments with Truth, features in B.Ed. 1^st Year’s General English book (Tribhuvan University). Here follow the key takeaways from the text:

1. A memoir of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi [Mahatma Gandhi (1869-1948)], leader of the nationalist movement (non-violent resistance) against the British rule of India.

2. When M. K. Gandhi was very young (twelve or thirteen years old), he and a relative became fond of smoking. Hiding from the elders, they began smoking the stumps of cigarettes thrown away by their uncle. Unsatisfied with the stumps, they wanted to smoke full cigarettes and get full pleasure. But they didn’t have money to buy the cigarettes. So, they began stealing money from the servant’s pocket money in order to buy the cigarettes.

3. Distressed by the restrictions put by the elders, these boys once tried to commit suicide by eating Dhatura seeds which were known to be an effective poison. However, the boys couldn’t actually dare to kill themselves. M. K. Gandhi realized that it was not as easy to commit suicide as to contemplate it. Later, the boys gave up the habit of smoking as well as stealing the money.

4. When he was fifteen, he committed more severe theft. He stole a bit of gold out of his meat-eating brother’s armlet. But then, it soon made him feel guilty. He resolved never to steal again. He also decided to confess it to his father. He felt “that there could not be a cleansing without a clean confession.” But he could not dare to speak to his father about it for fear of causing him pain. So, he decided to write out the confession on a slip of paper and give it to his father. He wrote a note confessing his guilt and asking adequate punishment for it, and also requesting his father not to punish himself for his son’s sin, and pledging never to steal again. He handed it to his father, who read, but said nothing, instead, his tears trickled down his cheeks wetting the paper. Gandhi also cried along with his father. These teardrops of love cleansed his heart and washed his sin away. It was for him a lesson in Ahimsa.

5. “A clean confession, combined with a promise never to commit the sin again, when offered before one who has the right to receive it, is the purest type of repentance.” Because of the clean confession, M. K. Gandhi’s sin was forgiven. His sin was atoned for with tears of love.