but sunbaked fruits and nuts. He can secure enough nourishment both for the tissues and the nerves from fruits like grapes and nuts like almonds. Restraint of the sexual and other passions becomes easy for a man who lives on such food. My coworkers and I have seen by experience that there is much truth in the Indian proverb that as a man eats, so shall he become. These views have been set out elaborately in the book.
But unfortunately in India I have found myself obliged to deny some of my theories in practice. Whilst I was engaged on the recruiting campaign in Kheda, an error in diet laid me low, and I was at death’s door. I tried in vain to rebuild a shattered constitution without milk. I sought the help of the doctors, vaidyas and scientists whom I knew, to recommend a substitute for milk. Some suggested mung water, some mahua oil, some almond-milk. I wore out my body in experimenting on these, but nothing could help me to leave the sickbed. The vaidyas read verses to me from Charaka to show that religious scruples about diet have no place in therapeutics. So they could not be expected to help me to continue to live without milk. And how could those who recommended beef-tea and brandy without hesitation help me to persevere with a milkless diet?
I might not take cow’s or buffalo’s milk, as I was bound by a vow. The vow of course meant the giving up of all milks, but as I had mother cow’s and mother buffalo’s only in mind when I took the vow and as I wanted to live, I somehow beguiled myself into emphasizing the letter of the vow and decided to take goat’s milk. I was fully conscious, when I started taking mother goat’s milk, that the spirit of my vow was destroyed.
But the idea of leading a campaign against the Rowlatt Act had possessed me. And with it grew the desire to live. Consequently one of the greatest experiments in my life came to a stop.
I know it is argued that the soul has nothing to do with what one eats or drinks, as the soul neither eats nor drinks; that it is not what you put