A Lesson from Gandhi’s Life

This is the solution for almost every problem in marriage, these two words—‘forget it’!—Radhanath Swami

There is an extremely instructive incident in the life of Mahatma Gandhi which Radhanath Swami’s guru, His Divine Grace Srila Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada, often narrated. Gandhi once had a serious fight with his wife.

They both got to a point where they became extremely emotional and Gandhi shouted at his wife asking her to get out of his house. Kasturba Gandhi cried and walked out. Though Gandhi was the pioneer of ahimsa or non-violence of the modern age, though he was the inspiration for Martin Luther King and so many others to bring about change in society based on that non-violence, and though he was much against fighting, yet here he was, fighting with his wife. That’s the nature of marriage. Radhanath Swami derives a lesson out of this incident, “Mahatma Gandhi is having trouble keeping peace in his house, though he was much more experienced and empowered than anyone of you. Therefore, you must not be under the illusion that you will not have any troubles in your married life.”

After sometime when Gandhi opened the door, he saw his wife sitting out on the walkway. So he asked her why she was still sitting there when he had asked her to go away. In reply she looked up at him and said she had nowhere else to go. Gandhi smiled and asked her to just forget it and took her inside the house. And that was the end of the conflict.

Radhanath Swami concludes, “This is the solution for almost every problem in marriage- these two words ‘forget it’!”