Either exaggerated vilification of India or exaggerated praise
I had never heard of Katherine Mayo or of her book Mother India before coming across Mahatma Gandhi’s response to it. That itself made me reflect on how works written with strong prejudices can, over time, lose the influence they once possessed. Gandhi’s response, however, is more valuable than simply dismissing Mayo’s book as an unfair attack on India. He exposes what he regarded as its serious distortions while also asking Indians to examine themselves honestly and learn from criticism wherever there is something worth learning.
There is, after all, no country or civilization without its own internal struggles, imperfections, and contradictions. Every society has practices that may rightly call for reform. The difficulty begins when the weaknesses of a society are selected, magnified, and presented as though they constitute the whole of that society. Gandhi’s famous image captures this problem well: if someone carefully describes the drains of London and then declares, “Behold London,” the individual facts may be true, but the resulting picture would still be a distortion of reality. In Gandhi’s view, this was essentially what Mayo had done with India. Gandhi aptly entitled his article “Drain Inspector’s Report” (“452. Drain Inspector’s Report,” The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, Vol. 34, pp. 539–47).
At the same time, Gandhi did not want Indians to respond by denying every criticism simply because it came from an outsider. He explicitly acknowledged that some of Mayo’s observations concerned real problems, even though he believed that she had exaggerated them. He therefore urged Indians to look at themselves through the eyes of others without surrendering their judgment or accepting an outsider’s conclusions uncritically.
This is an important distinction. To reject an entire portrayal as false merely because it is hostile can prevent us from seeing our own shortcomings. Conversely, to accept a hostile portrayal merely because it contains some facts can be equally misleading. Gandhi’s position was to examine both the facts and the manner in which they were assembled and interpreted.
His warning also extends beyond Mayo. Outsiders may approach another society with sympathy, hostility, curiosity, or preconceived ideas; and insiders may respond with pride, defensiveness, or resentment. Complete objectivity may be difficult for anyone, but honesty and fairness remain essential. A writer who presents another people should not allow preconceived notions to determine what is selected, emphasized, or omitted.
Gandhi therefore combined two seemingly opposite responses to Mayo’s book. On the one hand, he strongly condemned what he considered its slanderous and misleading portrayal of India. On the other, he advised Indians not to become so angry that they became incapable of recognizing their own imperfections. He wrote that “we shall learn, as I have certainly learnt, more from our critics than from our patrons” (Young India, 15 September 1927, p. 547).
That, perhaps, is the enduring value of Gandhi’s response. He did not advocate either exaggerated self-condemnation or exaggerated self-praise. He sought a more difficult middle ground: to reject injustice without rejecting criticism, and to defend one’s society without pretending that it is without faults.
Gandhi’s detailed response to Mayo proceeds by examining the way she selected and presented evidence. He challenges her use of quotations taken out of context, her reliance on unnamed or unverified statements, her characterization of Indian customs, and her claims about individuals whom he knew personally. He gives particular attention to her account of his own treatment for appendicitis, showing how, in his view, an incident that reflected consideration and goodwill on the part of British doctors had been turned into something quite different through selective presentation.
He similarly questions Mayo’s dramatic descriptions of public events and her presentation of unnamed Indian princes and other figures. He regards some of these passages as sensational and asks whether statements attributed to unnamed persons can reasonably be accepted without corroborating evidence. He also criticizes the use of quotations from Englishmen and Englishwomen living in India, arguing that, if some of the statements attributed to them were genuinely made, they would themselves reflect badly on those who made them.
Mayo had claimed that she came to India as an independent observer—to see “what a volunteer unsubsidized, uncommitted and unattached, could observe of common things in daily human life.” Gandhi accepts that she may have been unsubsidized, but he rejects her claim to have been genuinely “uncommitted and unattached.” In his judgment, preconceived attitudes are evident throughout the book.
He is particularly concerned with the effect of such a book upon Western readers. He says that he is writing primarily for the American and English readers who followed his writings with sympathy and attention. He warns them against accepting Mayo’s account without examination and advises them to study India for themselves or, at least, to read accounts presenting different perspectives before forming their conclusions.
Gandhi’s advice is strikingly balanced. He does not ask Western readers simply to believe him instead of Mayo. He tells them: “Do not believe newspapers and the catchy literature you get in America.” If they want to know India, he advises them to study it for themselves; if they cannot go to India, they should study what has been written both “for her and against her” and then form their own conclusions. He summarizes the danger in a memorable sentence: “The ordinary literature you get is either exaggerated vilification of India or exaggerated praise” (Young India, 15 September 1927, p. 546).
At the same time, Gandhi turns to the Indian reader and makes an important qualification. Although he considers the book unfit for Americans and Englishmen because of the harm he believes it can do, he says that “it is a book that every Indian can read with some degree of profit.” He adds: “It is a good thing to see ourselves as others see us” (p. 547).
The point is not that Mayo’s accusations should be accepted, but that criticism may reveal genuine weaknesses that deserve attention. Gandhi illustrates this with Mayo’s allegations concerning sanitation, child marriage, and other social problems. He considers her treatment of these subjects exaggerated, but he nevertheless urges Indians to use such criticism as a stimulus to reform: “let them serve as a spur to much greater effort than we have hitherto put forth in order to rid society of all cause of reproach” (p. 547).
His larger warning is against allowing indignation to obscure genuine self-examination. “Our indignation which we are bound to express against the slanderous book must not blind us to our obvious imperfections and our great limitations” (p. 547). Nor should Indians attempt to disprove everything Mayo had written merely to establish that Indians were a people against whom “nothing can be said.” Gandhi believes such a reaction would itself be unwise.
This is perhaps the most enduring lesson of Gandhi’s response. He rejects what he considers Mayo’s exaggerated vilification of India, but he does not answer it with exaggerated praise. He asks instead for discrimination: to distinguish truth from distortion, criticism from prejudice, and genuine reform from sensational condemnation. His response is therefore not merely a defence of India against an unfavourable foreign judgment; it is also an appeal to Indians to examine themselves honestly and to learn from criticism without surrendering their judgment.
It is fitting that Gandhi frames his response with two Indian literary images—one Sanskrit and one drawn from Tulsidas. The Sanskrit verse with which he opens the article speaks of the way virtues and faults may appear differently according to the character of the person who presents them:
On the lips of the good vice becomes virtue,
And even virtue appears as vice in the mouth of the evil-minded:
this need not surprise us.
For, do not the mighty clouds drink the salt waters of the ocean
and return it as sweet refreshing rain,
And does not the cobra, drinking sweet milk, belch it forth as the deadliest poison?
Rivers drink not of their own waters, the trees do not themselves eat the fruit which they bear.
Nor do the clouds partake of the grains they grow;
even so the good devote their powers to the good of others.
गुणायन्ते दोषाः सुजनवदने
दुर्जनमुखे गुणा दोषायन्ते
तदिदमपि नो विस्मयपदम् ।
महामेघः क्षारं पिबति कुरुते वारि मधुरं
फणी क्षीरं पीत्वा वमति गरलं दुःसहतरम् ।
पिबन्ति नद्यः स्वयमेव नाम्भः
स्वयं न खादन्ति फलानि वृक्षाः ।
नादन्ति सस्यं खलु वारिवाहाः
परोपकाराय सतां विभूतयः ।
The image is particularly appropriate to Gandhi’s criticism of Mayo. The problem is not merely what one sees, but how what one sees is received, interpreted, and presented. The same society can be described through its defects and made to appear wholly degraded, or approached with sufficient fairness to recognize both its strengths and its weaknesses.
Gandhi closes with a different but complementary image, drawn from Tulsidas. Everything created by God has both good and bad sides. The wise person, like the mythical bird that separates milk from water, takes the good and leaves the bad. Gandhi’s paraphrase is:
“The wise man, like the fabled bird which separating the cream of milk from its water … will take the good from everything leaving the bad alone.” (Young India, 15 September 1927, p. 547)
Together, these two images beautifully frame Gandhi’s response. The Sanskrit verse addresses the transformation of what is seen through the character of the observer; Tulsidas offers the wisdom by which we should respond—to separate the good from the bad and take what is worth taking. Between these two principles lies Gandhi’s whole approach to Mayo: neither blind acceptance nor blind rejection, neither exaggerated vilification nor exaggerated praise, but the difficult discipline of discernment.
Ashram, September 3, 2026
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