How Many Fasts?

The 21-day fast of Mohandas K. Gandhi is the Mahatma's tenth public hunger strike since 1918. Many were for minor reasons. Only twice before has Gandhi fasted "against" the British.

Gandhi considers a fast a spiritual weapon, at once an appeal to moral forces and a self-searching of his own motives and failings, not to be undertaken unless the person fasting is certain of his moral ground. Thus on Aug. 19, 1939 Gandhi wrote in his newspaper, Harijan:

"The hunger strike has positively become a plague. On the slightest pretext some people want to resort to a hunger strike. It is well, therefore, that the Working Committee [of the Congress party] has condemned the practice in unequivocal terms, so far at least as a hunger strike for a discharge from imprisonment is concerned."

The statement was made when Congress party members and others were indulging in a spate of hunger strikes, inspired by grudges, pique and ignorance. Gandhi's denouncement was not a condemnation of his own activities: in his view, it all depended on who was fasting, and for what.

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