Part One
§ 1
Dark, tranquil eyes. A small frail man, a thin face with large protruding ears. His head covered with a little white cap, his body clothed in coarse white cloth, barefooted. He lives on rice and fruit and drinks only water. He sleeps on the floor—sleeps very little, and works incessantly. His body does not seem to count at all. There is nothing striking about him, at first, except his expression of “great patience and great love.” W. W. Pearson, who met him in South Africa in 1918, instinctively thought of St. Francis of Assisi. There is an almost childlike simplicity about him.1 His manner is gentle and courteous even when dealing with adversaries,2 and he is of immaculate sincerity.3 He is modest and unassuming, to the point of sometimes seeming almost timid, hesitant, in making an assertion. Yet you feel his indomitable spirit. He makes no compromises and never tries to hide a mistake. Nor is he afraid to admit having been in the wrong. Diplomacy is unknown to him; he shuns oratorical effect or, rather, never thinks about it; and he shrinks unconsciously from the great popular demonstrations organized in his honor. Literally “ill with the multitude that adores him,”4 he distrusts majorities and fears “mobocracy” and the unbridled passions of the populace. He feels at ease only in a minority, and is happiest when, in meditative solitude, he can listen to the “still small voice” within.5
This is the man who has stirred three hundred million people to revolt, who has shaken the foundations of the British Empire, and who has introduced into human politics the strongest religious impetus of the last two thousand years.