I know of nobody in the East having written one, except amongst those who have come under Western influence. 'What has set you on this adventure?' he asked, 'Writing an autobiography is a practice peculiar to the West. Why should it not be the autobiography? The Swami agreed to the proposal, and here am I hard at work.īut a God-fearing friend had his doubts, which he shared with me on my day of silence. Something has to be written for Navajivan every week. I could only write a chapter week by week. The Swami wanted me to write it separately for publication as a book. Swami Anand has now repeated the proposal, and as I have finished the history of Satyagraha in South Africa, I am tempted to undertake the autobiography for Navajivan. I should indeed have finished the autobiography had I gone through my full term of imprisonment at Yeravda, for there was still a year left to complete the task, when I was discharged. I replied that I had already framed a programme of study for myself, and that I could not think of doing anything else until this course was complete. Jeramdas, who was one of my fellow-prisoners there, asked me to put everything else on one side and finish writing the autobiography. Then followed a series of events which culminated in my imprisonment at Yeravda. I made the start, but scarcely had I turned over the first sheet when riots broke out in Bombay and the work remained at a standstill.

Four or five years ago, at the instance of some of my nearest co-workers, I agreed to write my autobiography.

My experiments with truth written by