Published Paper Details:

Gandhi's life and work are infused with food and dietary concerns, dilemmas and questions. But the 'dreary details' of Gandhi's dietetics are improbable. This begs the question of the significance of food in Gandhi's thought as something other than, perhaps more than a thing to eat besides, a source of nourishment for the physiological needs of the body and feeding carnal pleasures, food has implications for the soul, renunciation, and politics. Gandhi's relationship with food is not just biological; it is also intellectual, moral, ethical, and political. The problematic of my paper is food and diet in Gandhi's An Autobiography or The Story of My Experiments with Truth. I wish to explore its relationship with Swaraj--Gandhi's life-project--as enunciated in Hind Swaraj, arguably, Gandhi's most widely read work since its first appearance in 1909. Hind Swaraj is regarded as a norm by which the significance of his other writings--including the Autobiography-- should be assessed. My purpose in this article is to pick out the line of inquiry connecting Hind Swaraj and the Autobiography; that which helps in analyzing the significance of food.