ABSTRACT
In 1982-83 I spent some months at Gandhi’s Sabarmati Ashram when I was
doing research on Gandhi’s celebrated Salt March. I often wondered how
Gandhi could have left this utopia, especially given that it would have been
even more of a utopia in 1930, when it was still surrounded by fields and
orchards. The explanation that Gandhi sacrificed his home at the altar of
nationalist struggle was never completely satisfying. As time went by I realised
that I was also not satisfied with the reasons given for Gandhi founding his
first intentional community, Phoenix settlement: that he read Ruskin’s Unto This Last on a train trip and this changed his life. Most changes of such
magnitude have a context. They are not stand-alone events that happen on
the way to Damascus. The founding of Tolstoy farm seemed a little more
straightforward, but the reasons why he ended up in Sevagram were also a
little overly simple – it was the geographical centre of India and that he
wanted to go and live in a village. Wardha is out of the way with a very
unpleasant climate and he did not end up in a village for some years. There
was obviously more to these stories.
