Glimpses of Religion
- Between ages 6 and 16, Gandhi picks up religion from his surroundings, not school.
- A family servant teaches him to recite the Ramanama to ward off fear. He maintains the practice as an adult.
- Jain monks and his father's Muslim and Parsi friends come to the family home often and talk with Gandhi's father about religion.
- That breeds in the youth tolerance for different faiths.
- Gandhi finds he dislikes Christianity, however, because a convert to it began to eat beef, drink liquor, and changed his clothes to European dress.
- Gandhi has many questions about religion but finds no answers in the Manusmriti except for the conviction that morality is the basis of things and that truth is the substance of morality.
- Finally, Gandhi comes across a Gujarati stanza that advises returning good for evil. That becomes a guiding principle for him, and he decides to begin numerous experiments with it.