Whether Mahatma Gandhi Was Misinterpreted Through the Dilemma of Irrelevant and Relevant Philosophies?

In one of the articles published in Current Anthropology way back in 1973, David G. Mandelbaum talked about two approaches to understand the life of an individual. For him, to observe the lifestyle of a person or gain the knowledge about a lifestyle of a person, social scientists always succumb to two main approaches: life passage studies and life history studies. Life passage studies understand the contribution of society about the socialization and enculturation of their young ones, whereas life history studies emphasize the personified experiences and requirements of the individuals and how the individual copes up with the society. Here I have adopted the means of life history study to see some of the facets of Gandhiji’s life and its influence in the society. I shall do it by looking at some of his philosophies on health, food, sexual life, rather than going into the details of his whole life history. I shall do it without perplexing my own way of understanding “Mahatma” and linking sometimes my own life experiences that had been influenced by the philosophies of Gandhiji. I shall be carrying out an autoethnography by perceiving the virtues of Gandhiji in my own life. Nevertheless, it will rather be a futile exercise to describe his philosophies in a single paper and that too with a minimum experience on his whole life.