Gandhi and Good health.

When we talk about Gandhi, in our minds we picture an old, bald, skeletal man, with round spectacles, wearing a white dhoti woven of khadi and holding a dandhi, which towers above his height.
We do, as a matter of fact, remember Gandhi at his most emaciated, weak and skinny from weeks of fasting and walking for kilometers at a stretch.
We know him to have pushed his body to physical extremes, to bring an end to Britain's unjust occupation of India.

The question that often bothers us is that, how could one go fasting for weeks; walk more than sixteen kilometers a day at a stretch, and manage to bring freedom to our country by Ahimsa?

"It is health that is real wealth, and not pieces of gold and silver." - Gandhi

Gandhi was wise in matters relating to health and fitness. Health means body at ease, and his health mostly relied upon what he ate. We know Gandhi to be from a Gujarati family, wherein his diet was of a typical vegetarian. We might say that Gandhi, belonging to a vegetarian family was brought up vegetarian as a child. However, it was his morals and his personal altruistic purpose that kept him going, not giving up the vegetarian diet. He stated, "The choice of one’s diet is not a thing to be based on faith. It is a matter for everyone to reason out for himself."

Being a follower of Ahimsa, he never consumed any flesh. He believed that milk too, was an animal product and hence should not be consumed.
Gandhi experimented on the food he consumed for over fifty years. He also, for that matter, took up a vegan diet for six years, where he wouldn’t consume any milk product. In one of his books, "The moral basis of vegetarianism", Gandhi mentions,
"I excluded milk from my diet for six years. At that time, I felt none the worse for my denial. But in the year 1917, as a result of my own ignorance, I was laid down with severe decentry. I was reduced to a skeleton, but I stubbornly refused to take milk or butter milk. But I could not build up sufficient strength to leave the bed. I had taken a vow of not taking milk."
After his wife and a close friend, who was a doctor, insisted him, Gandhi consumed a glass of goat milk (a loophole in the vow that Gandhi took), and was back to his good health within days.

In a letter to Gandhi, Dr. McCarrison, in connection with his experiments in dietics stated, "Do not, I beg of you, decry it, for a pint of milk a day will do more for Young India than most things I wot of."

Gandhi promoted health to whoever was able. He reached out to the poor, showing them ways of how they could, within the resources they have, and all that the economy possibly can provide, keep themselves healthy and fit for a Young India.

In many of his books and speeches, he tries to convince the audience to take up a vegetarian diet. Not because it would fit his purpose, but because he believed that nature has meant a man to be vegetarian.
He often talks about the food values, the consumption in their raw form of the nutrients they have to offer, the proper habits of eating, their intake amounts and the resistance of eating not more than what is required.

"The habit of proper mastication of food inculcated by the use of uncooked greens, therefore, if it does nothing else, will at least enable one to do with less quantity of food and thus not only make for economy in consumption but also automatically reduce the dietic himsa that one commits to sustain life." Gandhi states, as he mentions the benefits of chewing food thoroughly while eating.

"Laymen out to acquire own a workable knowledge of the body which plays such an important part in the evolution of the soul within. And yet about nothing are we so woefully negligent or ignorant as in regard to our bodies. Instead of using the body as a temple of god, we use it as a vehicle for indulgences, and are not ashamed to run to medical men for help in our effort to increase them and abuse the earthly tabernacle."

Being healthy is not just the answer to a clean body, but also a clean soul.
Our bodily functions are trained to send out unpleasant reactions to food, drink or bad habits. It is the way of our body to tell us to take up healthier and better habits. But instead of doing so, we feel it easy and convenient to rely upon medical help and this, in turn, masks the symptoms and results to disbelief in our body's self-healing mechanism.


The basis of having a good health in terms of food, according to Gandhi is, “One should eat not in order to please the plate, but just to keep the body going. When each organ of sense sub serves the body and through the body the soul, its special relish disappears, and then alone does it begin to function in the way nature intended it to do so.”
During his experiments with food and health, Gandhi had found that health was by no means, only associated only with vegetarians. He found that even amongst the non-vegetarians, many of them possessed and remained in good health. It was not alarming for him to find out that several vegetarians found it impossible to remain in good health because they had made food a fetish as they thought that they could eat as much lentils, cereals and cheese as they liked.
“We easily fall prey to the temptations of the palate, and therefore when a thing tastes delicious we do not mind taking a morsel or two more. But you cannot keep health under those circumstances. Therefore, I discovered in order to keep health no matter what you ate, it was necessary to cut down the quantity of your food, and reduce the number of meals.”
While his course of fasting for cause, out of the seventeen times he fasted, three of them lasted for twenty one days (Unity of Hindu and Muslims). Gandhi went without food for three weeks at a stretch. Seemed tough in the 19th century; probably impossible today.
One of the many ways Gandhi tried to maintain his health was by fasting on a regular basis; at least once a week. Fasting can promote health- it cleanses the body, uses up the unused nutrition like fat and gives body enough time to cope with any infection. Fasting period is a detox period for the body.
The Dandi March led by Gandhi and his followers was a protest walk that had covered a distance of 390 kilometers. The march covered about sixteen kilometers a day and Gandhi strode like an elephant. One couldn’t say he wasn’t healthy, even by the looks of it. Walking confronts the obesity epidemic, as well as diabetics and heart problems. One is always advised to walk. Even if the person isn’t able to perform minimal exercise, he should try to walk.
Apart from the nutrition point of view, a good health also meant staying healthy from the mind and the soul.
The practice of Ahimsa, for which Gandhi is widely known for, is one of the ways in which one can attain benefit in terms of health as well as personality. Applying the teaching to other areas of life one attains a way of reducing stress and remaining peaceful and calm. One is also less likely to suffer from hypertension and heart disease. Remaining calm, in turn benefits us from withdrawing unhealthy behaviors such as smoking or stress eating.
Good health of the mind is equally as important as of the bodily functions. We often neglect the most important aspects while trying to acquire a positive, balanced and self-satisfied being.
A man is nothing but the product of his thoughts and will reflect a personality according to that. Hence, thinking positively not only improves health, but also boosts our potential at various skills and at our work.
Forgiving yourself and others is a simple way of keeping the mind healthy and the soul clean. When we accumulate stress in our hearts and our mind, it disturbs our overall health. Act of forgiveness lowers blood pressure, reduces feelings of anger, depression and fatigue. As Gandhi quotes, “The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong.”
Being compassionate brings out the good in us. “An eye for an eye will only make the whole world blind.”
A compassionate lifestyle, in which we become more open to others, become less judgmental and understand how others feel, does benefit to us as to obtaining a personality of a person with a healthy mind. Today, and since a long time before that, people have managed to keep themselves clean; as individuals. However, they fail to keep themselves clean, as members of society.
Maintaining hygiene will eliminate most of the diseases. And thus, lead to a healthier life, of own and of others. Gandhi suggested everyone to become bhangi (sweepers) to maintain cleanliness in the refugee camps during the independence struggle. Gandhi believed that a good health depends upon the harmonious activity of the various component parts of nature; Air, Water, Earth, Light and Vacancy. We all come out of nature and go back to it. Hence, it is important, that for a good health, we value and cherish all that it bears.
His belief, that he strongly tries to impart upon us, which I believe is a path disguised in the form of an ongoing cycle, that leads to the achievement of a good health and finally peace is that which asks us to keep ourselves healthy in order to make our bodies temples of God and that to use them for service of man.