Dick Fox discusses Gandhi at Speaker Series event.

Throughout his lifetime, Gandhi tested the ethical claims of public institutions or norms and modeled nonviolent resistance as a method for social and cultural reform.

He called his practices “experiments with truth,” a theme so dominant in his life that the phrase became the subtitle of his autobiography, Dick said.

“Gandhi’s experiments with truth followed two themes,” he said. “First, taking action — or activism — always was required, and passivity was akin to cowardice. Second, such action always must be based upon non-attachment — meaning you should not profit from anything you do, either in heaven or on earth, and it should not be an ego trip, either.

“Gandhi learned if you act with a sense of non-attachment or non-possession and without a payoff or concern for the fruits of your action, you will be true to your Dharma.”

Dick presented six stories of Gandhi’s experimentation, noting, “they all have embedded in them much the same message.”

The six stories were:

• When Gandhi recruited soldiers for the British during World War 1.

People were aghast by this because the British had colonized India and exploited the Indians for generations and because Gandhi was nonviolent, Dick reported.

“Gandhi believed you could not be passive. You had to be active,” he said. “If you could not resist the war actively, then you were bound to support it.”

“This experiment blew up in Gandhi’s face,” he added. “Nobody thought it made sense, and he recruited no one. But he thought it was consistent” with his ethic.

• When B.R. Ambedkar, an Untouchable and famous intellectual, accused Gandhi of being “the greatest enemy the Untouchables ever had in India.”

Because of Gandhi’s noted sympathy for the weak and vulnerable, most people expected Gandhi to aid the elevation of the Untouchables — called Dalits today — who occupied the lowest rung on the Indian caste ladder.

Gandhi opposed parliamentary seats for Untouchables and “went into a fast because he did not believe that should be done,” Dick said. “He didn’t believe in affirmative action. Although he deplored the misuse of Untouchables, he believed the hierarchy of society should be maintained.”

• When Gandhi ate meat and liked it.

In 1882, when he was 13, Gandhi married a girl who was 11, and he thought eating meat would strengthen him sexually, Dick said. “Gandhi secretly joined a Muslim friend who did the cooking, and soon Gandhi came to relish meat curries,” he explained.

“When Gandhi was sent off to England, his mother made him vow to stay vegetarian, and vows, for Gandhi, were inviolable. He soon found the British Vegetarian Society. … They taught vegetarianism as an active choice, and he became a vegetarian — not by upbringing but by accepting it in an active, conscious way.”

• When Gandhi slept naked with his nieces.

“Gandhi said he took a vow of celibacy in 1906, when he was 37 years old,” Dick said. “In 1946, a devoted Gandhian discovered Gandhi was sleeping naked while his young female relatives (Gandhi called them ‘nieces’) slept right beside him, although wrapped in old saris.”

While other Indians who took the celibacy vow tried to avoid contact with women, Gandhi believed the strength of his celibacy vow had to be affirmed by active testing, “and the only way to do that was to sleep naked next to women to see if he was aroused.”

“Gandhi believed if he could affirm his celibacy vow in private, it would give him strength for nonviolent resistance in public,” Dick noted. “He believed you must first change the person, who will then act nonviolently to change social institutions.”

• When Gandhi encountered poisonous snakes and rabid dogs.

Late in the 19th century, Gandhi set up a utopian community on land in South Africa with many poisonous snakes, he said, adding other members of the community were scared and asked Gandhi’s permission to kill the snakes.

“Gandhi resisted because killing the snakes would be an instance of violence,” Dick said. “He thought they should maintain nonviolence, even living among the snakes. But his fellow settlers said they did not have the necessary courage, and Gandhi reluctantly allowed them to kill the snakes.”

In 1933, Gandhi, now in India, reacted differently, Dick reported. When rabies broke out in factories near his ashram, Gandhi supported shooting the rabid dogs to protect workers. The Hindu community was outraged by Gandhi’s support of the killing, which they saw as doing violence, just as Gandhi had with the South African snakes.

“Gandhi ruminated long and then embraced the idea, which for most of us today epitomizes ahimsa or nonviolence, that merciful violence, done to limit the suffering of dogs, is really a form of nonviolence. Here again is another active choice by Gandhi against his Hindu upbringing.”

• When Gandhi threatened a fast, an act that led to his assassination.

The British left India in 1947 precipitously and unconcerned about their former colony. Pakistan and India were made separate countries, but the British did not announce the lines of separation until the last minute, Dick said. What ensued was a mass forced migration, where Hindus and Sikhs left what had become Pakistan for India and Muslims in India left for Pakistan. This horrible period of “Partition” left at least a million people dead on both sides and many more as destitute refugees.

Jawaharlal Nehru, the first prime minister of India, inherited the combined treasury left behind by the British, and he was supposed to divide the funds between India and Pakistan. However, he initially resisted, because India had taken on the burden of a huge Hindu/Sikh refugee population from Pakistan.

“Gandhi decided India must pay up and threatened to fast to force Nehru to give the money over to Pakistan,” Dick said. “Eventually, Nehru gave in. Enraged by this payment to the Muslim country, Nathuram Godse assassinated Gandhi on Jan. 30, 1948. Godse’s Hindu supremacism is now the ruling political ideology in India.”

“Godse punished Gandhi in the most awful way for that experiment of truth,” Dick observed. “Some experiments work, and some fail.

“Gandhi’s activism, his disdain for passivity and his commitment to non-attachment compelled him to work for causes, not to receive some payoff, but to be true to who and what he was. These are things many of us ought to feel and to do,” he concluded.