10 Things You Didn’t know about Mahatma Gandhi

Father of the nation or ‘Bapu’ as he is lovingly called in India, spent his life working for the cause of freeing India for the British rule. Some believes that Gandhi policies still play a major role while some believes that Gandhi has no relevance today from the perspective of present Indian Scenario. Well I am not here to judge this. I have made a brief effort to let you know some facts about Mahatma Gandhi that may not be known to you, but they are quite interesting and surprising.

Following are the 10 things you didn’t know about Mahatma Gandhi

• Gandhi always had a set of false teeth which he carried in a fold of his linen cloth. He used that set only when he wanted to eat. After meal he would again took the set of teeth out and put them back in his loin cloth.

• He was educated at London University and became an attorney. But the first time while making a speech in court, he was nervous and his knees trembled. He was also so frightened that he sat down with confusion and defeat.

• As a lawyer in London, he couldn’t succeed. He was a failure there. Years before when he came to England his Irish teacher made him copy the Sermon on the Mount, as an exercise in English. Hour after hour, Gandhi wrote “Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth and these words left a deep impression on him.

• Later, Gandhi went to South Africa to collect huge debts and there he tried to apply there the philosophy of the Sermon on the Mount. It worked and his clients found it useful to settle claims outside the court as it saved them money and time.

• His income in South Africa touched fifteen thousand dollars in those days. It is quite a huge sum for most Indians.

• Gandhi spoke English with an Irish accent as one of his first teachers was an Irishman.

• Mahatma Gandhi often experimented with diets to see how cheap he could live and still be healthy. He started living mainly on fruit diet along with olive oil and goat’s milk.

• During the freedom struggle, he always wore a loin cloth. But all the years he lived in London he wore Silk spats and hat and also carried a cane.

• He never visited US but had numerous fans and followers. One of his admirers was Henry Ford. Gandhi sent him an autographed spinning wheel through a journalist emissary. During the miserable days of the Second World War, Ford would often spin the ‘Charka’, the spinning wheel that Gandhi had sent.

• On seeing the condition of his country men, as one tenth of the Indian people were living in half-starved state, he pleaded to the Indians not to bring children to this painful world that is full of only misery.