Ahmed Sameer
When I came across *The Story of My Experiments with Truth*, I realised that Gandhi’s life cannot be understood merely through the political contributions he made to India’s freedom struggle. His experiments with truth were also experiments with his own desires, possessions, food, lifestyle and, ultimately, with the manner in which a human being chooses to live.
But while reading it, I felt that another name deserves equal attention whenever Gandhi’s journey is discussed: Kasturba Gandhi.
Kasturba remained with Gandhi through the many transformations of his life, from his pursuit of education and a career abroad to his experiments in South Africa and, eventually, his involvement in India’s freedom struggle. Their relationship was not without disagreements, and Gandhi himself records instances of conflict. Yet what remains striking is the extent of sacrifice, accommodation and companionship that her life demanded. At Phoenix, for instance, Gandhi records her courage during a period of severe illness, including her reassurance to him: “Nothing will happen to me. Don’t worry.”
Her simplicity did not prove to be a barrier to Gandhi’s mission. Rather, the life of restraint that gradually emerged around Gandhi gave him the space to pursue something larger than himself. The Phoenix experiment itself was built around manual labour, simple living and an attempt to reduce dependence on material comforts. Gandhi even writes that the days when they deliberately gave up the use of the engine and worked with hand-power were, to his mind, days of the “highest moral uplift.”
This brings me to a larger question: why has simplicity gradually come to be seen as the opposite of progress?
People who achieved something great in their lives were often simple in their lifestyle, which gave them ample time and mental space to pursue the great things in life. Simplicity, in this sense, is not about poverty or deprivation. It is about curbing unnecessary desires so that one’s attention does not remain perpetually occupied with material things.
We can look at this in the broader framework of simplicity versus modernity. Both have their advantages. Modernity has brought education, technology, mobility, better healthcare and unprecedented opportunities. But the benefits of modernity begin to become problematic when its material logic enters every domain of human life.
It gradually draws an individual’s attention towards consumerism and materialism, and efforts are made to find purpose and solace in such things.
Pause for a moment and look at how this has affected various pivotal domains of our life.
From education to careers, and even the search for a partner in marriage, we increasingly follow a unilinear pathway. Education becomes a route to employment, employment becomes a route to income, income becomes a route to lifestyle, and lifestyle becomes a measure of success.
The same logic enters our social relations.
The field where emotions, sympathy, empathy and mutual respect should have been the norm is increasingly marred by material considerations. This is where the commodification of relations begins.
Marriage, for instance, is obviously not independent of economic realities. Financial stability matters. But when salary, profession, appearance, property, lifestyle and social status begin to dominate the evaluation of a person, something fundamental gets blurred. Money is already a significant source of conflict within relationships; a 2014 APA survey, for instance, found that 31 per cent of partnered adults reported money as a major source of conflict in their relationship.
The larger concern is not that people care about material security. The concern is when material criteria begin to replace relational values.
Can we respect one another?
Can we give each other dignified space?
Can we remain sympathetic towards each other’s vulnerabilities?
Can we sacrifice without keeping an account of who gave more?
These questions do not have a market value.
And perhaps that is precisely why they are increasingly difficult to measure.
Maslow’s hierarchy of needs provides another way of looking at this. Economic needs are, of course, there. They constitute the base of human life. But there are other levels: belonging, esteem, dignity and self-actualisation. Our obsession with base-level desires may be preventing us from even attempting to reach the higher levels.
Great individuals like Gandhi demonstrated the possibility of moving beyond the endless pursuit of wants by deliberately placing restraints upon themselves.
This is the simplicity I am referring to.
It is not about rejecting modernity. It is about refusing to allow modernity to become the measure of everything.
The WHO’s 2025 Commission on Social Connection has itself highlighted the widespread prevalence of loneliness and social isolation across societies, reminding us that material and technological progress does not automatically translate into stronger human connections.
Perhaps, therefore, the question before us is not whether we should return to the past.
It is whether we can retain the benefits of modernity while recovering some of the values that modernity has pushed to the margins.
We have ascended the levels of material progress, but certain domains of life still require the values that were once considered indispensable: dignity, mutualism, empathy, restraint, companionship and respect.
Kasturba’s life deserves to be remembered here. Gandhi’s contribution cannot be separated completely from the people who shared the burdens of his experiments. Her presence reminds us that great public missions also have private costs, borne by those whose names do not always occupy the centre of history.
The problem with modern relationships is perhaps not modernity itself. It is our tendency to seek a material antidote to every problem, a better lifestyle, a better possession, a better status, when the problem may actually require something else.
A relationship suffering from a lack of empathy cannot necessarily be repaired by greater consumption.
A life suffering from a lack of meaning cannot necessarily be repaired by a higher salary.
A marriage lacking mutual respect cannot necessarily be saved by a more luxurious lifestyle.
Perhaps simplicity, therefore, does not mean having less of life.
It means allowing fewer unnecessary things to occupy the space that should belong to life itself.
We have become better at acquiring more.
The challenge before us is to learn what is worth having more of.
