Playing the Gentlemen is an extract from “The story of My Experiments with Truth” By Mahatma Gandhi. The main theme of story is compliance, identification and tradition. Playing the Gentlemen is a fifteen chapter from Gandhi’s autobiography, “The Story of My experiment with Truth”.
Playing the English Gentleman Summary By Mahatma Gandhi
Summary of Playing the English Gentleman By Mahatma Gandhi
The story of chapter revolves around a time when Gandhi was studying law in England. When Gandhi was in England, he had a great interest in Vegetarianism. He had a great interest to be a pure vegetarian person. Gandhi read three books about vegetarianism.
The first book Gandhi read about vegetarian was “The Ethics of Diet By Howard William”, second book, “The Perfect way of diet By Dr Anna Kingsford”, and third book was “Health and hygiene by Doctor Allison”.
Gandhiji belief becomes strong on vegetarianism after reading these three books. He started experimenting with his diet after reading books. But Gandhiji’s friend doesn’t like his vegetarianism as they believe if he doesn’t eat non veg then he would become weak and would never be fit in English society.
Gandhi can’t be fit in English society as he is a vegetarian while English people like to eat non-veg. Gandhiji’s friends made a plan to feed Non-veg to him, they ask Gandhi to come theatre with them but before going theatre they goes to Holborn Restaurant.
They ordered soup in Holborn Restro and as the soup comes to their table, Gandhi starts thinking whether it is vegetarian or Non-vegetarian. Gandhi doesn’t ask his friend about soup, he directly calls waiter but his friend interrupt him. So Gandhi ask his friend about soup, whether it is veg or Non-veg. On this, Gandhi’s friends gets angry and ask him to sit on another table.
Gandhiji did not mind about it and comes out from restaurant. Gandhi was feeling very hungry, there was one vegetarian restaurant but it was closed. So Gandhi does not eat anything that day. After some time, Gandhi goes in theatre with his friends.
After this incident, Gandhi decide he would try to be an English Gentlemen. He thinks it is not necessary to eat Non-veg to be a English Gentleman. There are many other things which I can do to be an English gentleman.
Thereafter, Gandhi bought dresses which English people wears, he purchased Blazer, tie and hack to look like a English gentleman. To look like English man, it is not enough to wear English dresses so he started taking French lessons. He starts learning and playing piano and violin. Gandhi also started taking elocution classes. Gandhiji wants to learn English accent, he gave fees for his classes, his class teacher suggest him to read one book.
Gandhi’s teacher suggest him to read, Bell’s standard Elocutionis. When Gandhi started reading book, he suddenly realized that he came to England to study law not to be an English Gentleman. Since that day Gandhi stop doing English practices to be a English Gentleman. And started focusing on his studies.