Foreignness and "the Other" Quotes - Quotes, The Story Of My Experiments With Truth | The Story of My Experiments with Truth - Summary & Themes - Novels PDF Download

Behold the mighty Englishman / He rules the Indian small, / Because being a meat-eater / He is five cubits tall. (1.6.9)

This doggerel reflects the feelings of the subjugated Indians, ruled over by the foreign British.

He thought it over and said: "I am not sure whether it is possible for one to stay in England without prejudice to one's own religion. From all I have heard, I have my doubts. When I meet these big barristers, I see no difference between their life and that of Europeans. They know no scruples regarding food. Cigars are never out of their mouths. They dress as shamelessly as Englishmen. All that would not be in keeping with our family tradition." (1.11.12)

Imagine wanting to leave for a new country and your family resisting your desire to change your life. Gandhi conquers that early on and becomes a worldly person who has an accurate understanding of what life is like in a foreign land—he isn't limited to guessing, like this guy.

Someone had told her [Gandhi's mother] that young men got lost in England. Someone else had said that they took to meat; and yet another that they could not live there without liquor. "How about all this?" she asked me. I said: "Will you not trust me? I shall not lie to you. I swear that I shall not touch any of those things." (1.11.19)

How do we remain who we are when we move to a foreign place? For his mother, Gandhi takes serious vows to remain the person she wants him to be.

The clothes after the Bombay cut that I was wearing were, I thought, unsuitable for English society, and I got new ones at the Army and Navy Stores. I also went in for a chimney-pot hat costing nineteen shillings—an excessive price in those days. Not content with this, I wasted ten pounds on an evening suit made in Bond Street, the centre of fashionable life in London; and got my good and noble-hearted brother to send me a double watch-chain of gold. (1.15.5)

Does changing your clothing change who you are? Appearances do make an impression on other people, and you know what they say: when in Rome, do as the Romans do.

As if all this were not enough to make me look the thing, I directed my attention to other details that were supposed to go towards the making of an English gentleman. I was told it was necessary for me to take lessons in dancing, French and elocution. (1.15.6)

Like many migrants, Gandhi wants to belong and fit in.

I had not to spend a lifetime in England, I said to myself. What then was the use of learning elocution? And how could dancing make a gentleman of me? The violin I could learn even in India. I was a student and ought to go on with my studies. (1.15.8)

Gandhi eventually sees that his desire to fit in as an English gentleman is kind of a trap. His job is to be Gandhi, and he came to England to study law.

[The merchants'] responsibility to be truthful was all the greater in a foreign land, because the conduct of a few Indians was the measure of that of the millions of their fellow-countrymen. (2.12.4)

Migrants reflect on their home country, in other words.

Up to now the Europeans living with us had been more or less known to me before. But now an English lady who was an utter stranger to us entered the family. I do not remember our ever having had a difference with the newly married couple, but even if Mrs. Polak and my wife had had some unpleasant experiences, they would have been no more than what happen in the best-regulated homogeneous families. And let it be remembered that mine would be considered an essentially heterogeneous family, where people of all kinds and temperaments were freely admitted. When we come to think of it, the distinction between heterogeneous and homogeneous is discovered to be merely imaginary. We are all one family. (4.22.9)

Gandhi argues that the idea of the Other—that someone else can be alien to you—is an illusion. Instead, we're all one big family.

It has always been my conviction that Indian parents who train their children to think and talk in English from their infancy betray their children and their country. They deprive them of the spiritual and social heritage of the nation, and render them to that extent unfit for the service of the country. Having these convictions, I made a point of always talking to my children in Gujarati. Polak never liked this. [...] He contended [...] that, if children were to learn a universal language like English from their infancy, they would easily gain considerable advantage over others in the race of life. He failed to convince me. [...] Though my sons have suffered for want of full literary education, the knowledge of the mother-tongue that they naturally acquired has been all to their and the country's good, inasmuch as they do not appear the foreigners they would otherwise have appeared. They naturally became bilingual, speaking and writing English with fair ease, because of daily contact with a large circle of English friends, and because of their stay in a country where English was the chief language spoken. (4.23.6)

It's not so much where you're born, he says, but knowledge of a country's mother tongue that makes you a true member of that place.

Then there was the Gujarati function. [...] As far as I remember most of the other speeches were also in English. When my turn came, I expressed my thanks in Gujarati explaining my partiality for Gujarati and Hindustani, and entering my humble protest against the use of English in a Gujarati gathering. This I did, not without some hesitation, for I was afraid lest it should be considered discourteous for an inexperienced man, returned home after a long exile, to enter his protest against established practices. But no one seemed to misunderstand my insistence on replying in Gujarati. In fact I was glad to note that everyone seemed reconciled to my protest. (5.1.7)

When subjects of a colonial power allow themselves to replace their own language with the foreign one, they lose who they are.