A first fast

July 13, 2023

On July 13, 1913, Gandhi was in turmoil. The previous day, he’d received information in Johannesburg that confirmed a suspicion, one he delicately hints at in his autobiography as “the moral fall of two of the inmates of the Ashram [Phoenix Settlement].” He left Tolstoy Farm behind, accompanied by Hermann Kallenbach, to take the train three hundred miles to the Phoenix Settlement, where his wife and sons lived.

I’ve written about how Gandhi began experimenting with fasting in the last half of 1912, and now he was ready to take the next step with his first extended fast. It was a shiny new tool among the implements of nonviolence he was assembling, and all he needed was a reason to test it out. I’m reminded of the ancient tradition along the lines of “a drawn sword should not be returned to its sheath unbloodied.” Abstaining for food for a week was not something to be done for fun, or as a personal challenge. It required a specific purpose.

(There are eight 30-day Gandhi challenges during the year, and each has an optional three-day fast with a specific intention. July builds on that; to commemorate Gandhi’s fast from July 13-20, and observe the fast for peace on the 15th, there’s a three-(July 13-16), five-(July 15-20), and seven-day(July 13-20) option. I’m looking forward to this week long fast; it’s been four months since my last one.)

The intention Gandhi brought to his fast was penance — Fasting as Penance is even the title of the chapter in his autobiography. In addition, after the seven-day fast, Gandhi restricted himself to one meal a day for the rest of the year. This was an experiment he’d been wanting try, having proposed it to Kallenbach the previous week as a way of standing in solidarity with the suffering of striking mine workers. Kallenbach had talked him out of it then, emphasizing their diet was already small enough, but as a penitential fast, Gandhi had the moral authority to insist.

The specific causes of the first fast is covered in Gandhi in South Africa (Guha, 2013) and I’ll dig into it in another post this week.

What comes to mind when you hear the word penance?