Alcohol abuse hits home

February 24, 2023

One of the things I admire about Gandhi is that in general, he has a positive tone. He tries to humanize his opponents instead of demonizing them. It’s a conversational style that can be difficult to emulate in hyperpolarized America, but an attitude I hope more people will adopt.

He makes an exception when it comes to alcohol – he has nothing good to say about it, ever. One wonders what he witnessed as a young man that led him to refer to it at the age of 21 as “that enemy of mankind, that curse of civilization.” His time in South Africa hardened his opinion, as he witnessed the ill effects it had on Africans, Indians, and even the English.

But it was back in India that it became personal. His oldest son, Harilal, became an alcoholic after his wife died in the influenza epidemic of 1918. Gandhi tried to pass it off, writing to his youngest son years later that while he “certainly did not drink… Harilal has made up for that…. It was only a matter of degree, not of kind.” But no excuses could be made for Harilal’s final visit to his mother.

When Kasturba Gandhi lay dying in the Aga Khan Palace in 1944, she asked for her sons to visit. The youngest two came obligingly, and Gandhi requested that the British track down Harilal, so his mother might see him a last time. Harilal managed one sober visit while his brothers were there, which cheered Kasturba immensely, but his second visit was less pleasant. He showed up so disgustingly drunk that the old woman began to beat her fist against her own head in frustration. She died soon after.

It was there at the palace that Gandhi produced a pamphlet called The Keys to Health, writing, “Alcohol makes a man forget himself and while its effects last, he becomes utterly incapable of doing anything useful. Those who take to drinking ruin themselves and their people. They lose all sense of decency and propriety.” Harilal Gandhi outlived his father by only a few months, dying at the age of 59.

Do you know someone whose drinking has ruined themselves and their family?