Conviction versus Opinion: A Tale from Gandhiji’s Life

All those who even now attack Mahatma Gandhi’s life and mission may sometimes forget something important. Whatever Gandhi stood for was not simply an ideology borrowed from Scripture or copied from the lives of other role models. He certainly learnt from Scripture, from other people and from the traditions around him. But his convictions increasingly emerged through what he called his “Experiments with Truth”—through his own engagement with life, experience and conscience.

This does not mean that Gandhi was always right. A person can be deeply convinced and still be mistaken. Nor is every opinion necessarily shallow. Sometimes a person holds an opinion tentatively because he is still examining the truth. The important distinction, as I see it, is between a borrowed or constantly changing opinion and a conviction that has been personally examined, deeply assimilated and willingly lived out.

This distinction came to my mind while reading Gandhi’s reply to one of his critics, published in Young India in December 1927 under the title “Indictment”.

The critic had challenged Gandhi on several grounds. How, he asked, could Gandhi preach non-violence when the Bhagavad Gītā presents Krishna urging Arjuna to fight? What about the stories of avatāras defeating Bali, Vāli and Jarāsandha? Had Gandhi not repeatedly changed his position on political questions? What had his experience in South Africa to do with India? What had happened to his earlier promise of swaraj within a year? And why was he involving himself in questions ranging from Hindu-Muslim unity to temple entry, widow remarriage, the charkha and even municipal questions?

Gandhi did not answer by claiming that every traditional story or scriptural passage must automatically support his present position. He argued that the Mahābhārata and the Purāṇas could not simply be treated as collections of historical incidents whose actions must be copied. Even great heroes were not necessarily infallible guides in every circumstance.

Then he made a remarkable statement:

“my belief today having become part of my fundamental being is capable of standing independent of these books or any other” (CWMG, 383–387, at 385).

He went even further:

“Surely there must come a time in the life of a very religiously-minded man when his faith must be SELF-SUSTAINED” (385).

This is an important thought. Scripture, tradition, teachers and other people can awaken faith, guide us and nourish our understanding. But unless what we receive eventually becomes our own conviction, it may not withstand the pressures of life. Borrowed authority can begin a journey; it cannot always carry us through the whole journey.

Gandhi also wrote that the world survives because there is more love than hatred and more truth than untruth in it. For him, truth and non-violence were not merely political techniques but fundamental principles by which life had to be lived. He even said that his faith would withstand the strain of the disapproval of friends whose opinions he valued and cherished (385–386).

There is a lesson here beyond Gandhi himself. We can value another person’s opinion without surrendering our own conviction to it. At the same time, conviction should not become stubbornness. Conviction does not mean never changing one’s mind; it means knowing what one cannot abandon while remaining willing to reconsider how that conviction should be lived out.

Gandhi made a similar point when speaking about the danger of blindly imitating great men. We should not simply copy an isolated action without understanding the circumstances in which it occurred. What we should assimilate are qualities such as courage, self-sacrifice, industry, love of country and steady pursuit of ideals. As Gandhi put it, “We make fatal blunders when without relevance or without adequate knowledge we copy their ISOLATED actions” (386).

There is another interesting dimension to this story. Gandhi’s political opponents did not necessarily share his convictions. The Justice Party in South India strongly opposed the Non-Cooperation movement and regarded Gandhi’s political methods as a threat to the existing order. Its newspapers attacked him severely and criticised his methods and political programme.

Yet political opposition did not prevent the Justice Party from recognising something about the man himself. After Gandhi’s imprisonment, the tone changed. The party acknowledged that its political differences had never blinded it to his “moral worth and intellectual capacity” and also recognised his patriotism and self-sacrifice (Eugene F. Irschick, in Politics and Social Conflict in South India: The Non-Brahman Movement and Tamil Separatism, 1916–1929, Los Angeles, University of California, Press, 1969182–184).

That is worth remembering in our own age. We do not have to agree with another person’s political programme in order to recognise sincerity, courage or self-sacrifice. Nor does recognising those qualities require us to accept everything that person believed or did.

A conviction can be genuine and still be mistaken. Therefore, we must examine deeply, listen honestly, test what we believe through experience, distinguish the fundamental from the incidental, and remain willing to correct ourselves. But once something has genuinely become a fundamental conviction, we should not abandon it merely because prevailing opinion has turned against us.

For me, that is where Gandhi’s story becomes more interesting than a simple argument for or against “Gandhism”. Whether Gandhism as a political philosophy remains relevant today is a separate question. The deeper question is how we form our own convictions.

His critics, then and now, may disagree with him, challenge him and even reject his conclusions; but their disagreements need not erase the larger legacy of the man who attempted to make Satya and Ahimsa the principles of his own life. I find it deeply troubling when criticism of Gandhi’s policies and decisions turns into an attempt to degrade the man himself, or even to glorify his assassin Godse as the real hero. One may question Gandhi’s political programme, disagree with his policies, or reject his conclusions; but for me, that does not justify dismissing or degrading a man whose life was so profoundly shaped by his experiments with Satya and Ahimsa. Their criticisms will remain part of the historical record, but they need not become the whole story; in the larger legacy of Gandhi, they can remain only occasional footnotes.

Considering the present-day attacks on Gandhiji—not merely on particular decisions or policies, but sometimes on the very principles for which he lived—I sometimes wonder whether a time could come when even his picture might be removed from Indian currency and, God forbid, when his statues and memorials might be destroyed by radical elements seeking to erase his place from public memory. We have seen elsewhere how political repudiation can turn against the visible symbols associated with a national figure. But Gandhi’s real legacy does not ultimately depend upon a portrait on a banknote, a statue in a public square, or a memorial anywhere in India. Such symbols can be removed, replaced or destroyed. The more important question is whether Satya and Ahimsa themselves will continue to speak to humanity. In a world where the arms race continues and violence increasingly becomes normalised, their relevance cannot be settled merely by deciding whether Gandhi himself should be honoured or rejected. It must be tested by asking whether truth and non-violence still have anything to say to human beings confronted by hatred, fear, power and violence. For me, as long as Satya and Ahimsa remain more than mere words—as principles to be lived and experimented with—the man who tried to make them the substance of his own life will continue to deserve serious remembrance and reflection.

Perhaps the real danger today is not that people have too many convictions, but that many of our convictions are not really our own. We borrow them from our community, our friends, our leaders, our social media feeds and sometimes even from people whom we admire. When the prevailing opinion changes, our convictions change with it.

Gandhi’s life reminds me that a borrowed belief eventually has to become a personally examined belief—or it remains only an opinion.

We do not have to agree with Gandhiji in order to learn from his response to those who disagreed with him. Nor do we have to imitate every action of a great person. What we can learn is the importance of examining what we believe and having the courage to live by it.

Conviction is not the refusal to think again. It is the courage to think deeply enough that, after thinking again, one knows what one can and cannot abandon.

Ashram, October 2, 2026

For those who would like to read the fuller historical account, with the complete discussion and supporting material, please scroll down to the full article below.

Original

Conviction versus Opinion: A tale from Mahatma Gandhiji’s life

All those who even now attack Mahatma Gandhi’s life and mission from which he never wavered may sometimes forget something important: whatever Gandhi stood for was not simply an ideology borrowed from Scripture or copied from the lives of other role models. He certainly learnt from Scripture, from other people and from the traditions around him. But his convictions increasingly emerged through what he called his “Experiments with Truth”—through his own engagement with life, experience and conscience.

Scathing attacks on Gandhiji were therefore nothing new. They came during his lifetime as well as after his death. Some of his strongest critics questioned not merely his political methods but the very principles upon which he based his public life. What remains remarkable to me is not simply the way Gandhiji answered such criticism, but certain isolated points in his response that are worth meditating upon for anyone who wants to live by conviction rather than simply be carried away by the opinion of others.

Someone has well said, “Great people cherish conviction but small people entertain opinion.” The saying is rhetorically attractive, though I would not take it literally. Opinion is not necessarily shallow, and conviction is not necessarily true. A person can be deeply convinced and still be mistaken, while another person may hold an opinion tentatively because he is still examining the truth. The important distinction for me is between a borrowed or constantly changing opinion and a conviction that has been personally examined, deeply assimilated and willingly lived out.

Opinion may cause temporary suffocation; conviction may cost one’s very life. Gandhiji’s life illustrates this distinction in a remarkable way. He endured criticism, disagreement and even the disgust of people whose opinions he valued, but he did not allow such opinions simply to determine what he himself had come to regard as fundamental. He ultimately died without abandoning the convictions that had become integral to his life.

Whether Gandhism is regarded today as outdated or still relevant is a separate question. In 2026, many of Gandhi’s political methods may appear remote from the circumstances of our own time. Yet the question of how a human being develops and lives by conviction is not outdated. Nor should principles such as truth and ahiṃsā be judged merely by whether every historical application of them produced the results that their supporters or critics expected.

For me, therefore, the important question is not whether Gandhism “succeeded” or “failed”. Nor is it whether Gandhi was right in every political decision he made. The more enduring question is: What can we learn from the way he remained committed to a deeply examined conviction while facing the opinions of people who strongly disagreed with him?

That question takes us to a remarkable exchange published by Gandhi in 1927.

An indictment of Gandhiji

In Young India of 15 December 1927, Gandhiji published what he called “Indictment”, a condensed version of a letter sent to him by a correspondent while he was in Berhampur. Gandhi explained that he believed the correspondent had “boldly voiced what many are harbouring in their breasts” and therefore felt that the indictment deserved an answer (383).

The letter was indeed an indictment.

The correspondent questioned how Gandhi’s political philosophy could be reconciled with the duty of an ideal government, or of a “Great Soul”, to suppress the wicked and protect the righteous. Krishna’s teaching to Arjuna at Kurukṣetra was invoked, as were the traditional stories of the avatāras defeating Bali, Vāli and Jarāsandha. How, the correspondent asked, could ordinary people withstand unscrupulous enemies without retaliation?

Gandhi was accused of preaching an impractical and emotional philosophy. His South African experience was dismissed as having been exaggerated by his admirers and as being incapable of serving as a model for a vast country like India. His promise of swaraj “within a year” was challenged. His decision at Bardoli was described as a “somersault”. His participation in the Khilafat agitation was questioned, as was his vision of Hindu-Muslim unity. The correspondent even suggested that communal feuds had increased since Gandhi’s prominence in Congress (383–384).

The criticism then moved into social reform. Gandhi was challenged for advocating temple entry for the Panchamas and widow remarriage. His charkha was dismissed as unsuitable for an age of science. Even his acceptance of municipal addresses from municipalities that maintained slaughter-houses was questioned as inconsistent with ahiṃsā (384).

Gandhi could have answered each question separately. Instead, he moved almost immediately from the political arguments to a deeper question: How does a person actually arrive at conviction?

When faith becomes self-sustained

The correspondent had appealed to Scripture and to the actions of figures described in the Hindu sacred tradition. Gandhi did not accept the assumption that every action attributed to a scriptural hero should automatically become an infallible guide for us.

He argued that the Mahābhārata and Purāṇas should not simply be treated as history or as collections of straightforward religious maxims. In his reading, they illustrate the religious history of humanity in different ways. Their heroes are themselves imperfect mortals, and their alleged actions cannot therefore be treated as infallible guides for imitation (385).

But Gandhi went further.

He said that his belief in truth and non-violence was derived from and based upon the scriptural teaching of the very books from which his correspondent had drawn his objections. Yet, he continued:

“my belief today having become part of my fundamental being is capable of standing independent of these books or any other” (385).

Then comes the sentence that has stayed with me:

“Surely there must come a time in the life of a very religiously-minded man when his faith must be self-sustained” (385).

I strongly agree with this point.

Unless a person develops personal conviction, the mere authority of Scripture or of another person cannot sustain that conviction indefinitely. Scripture may awaken faith. A Guru, teacher or role model may guide us towards it. Tradition may preserve and nourish it. But eventually there must come a point at which what we believe has become personally assimilated.

This does not mean that Scripture or a Guru becomes unnecessary. Gandhi himself did not say that. He explicitly acknowledged the scriptural roots of his belief. His point was that his experience had taken that belief to a stage where it had become part of his fundamental being and could therefore stand independently of external authority (385).

Borrowed conviction depends upon the authority from which it was borrowed. Personal conviction must eventually become one’s own.

That insight extends far beyond religion.

Conviction is not stubbornness

There is, however, an important qualification. Conviction should not be confused with stubbornness. Nor does remaining committed to a conviction prove that the conviction is true. A person can be sincerely and deeply wrong.

What makes Gandhi’s statement interesting is that his conviction did not arise simply from an unwillingness to listen. His own description of his life as an experiment suggests the opposite. He listened, tested, reflected and acted. He could change a particular method or decision while remaining committed to what he regarded as a deeper principle.

This distinction is particularly important in the case of Bardoli, where his correspondent accused him of a “somersault”. Gandhi defended the decision as the only correct and honourable course in accordance with the creed of the Congress (386). One may agree or disagree with that historical judgment. But Gandhi did not understand a change in political application as necessarily a betrayal of fundamental conviction.

This gives us a more useful definition of conviction:

Conviction does not mean never changing one’s mind. It means knowing what one cannot abandon while remaining willing to reconsider how that conviction should be lived out.

That is very different from blindly holding on to every previous opinion.

Truth and non-violence as lived experience

Gandhi then returned to the question of retaliation. Whatever the avatāras may have done or not done, he said, was of little moment to him. His own daily experience, he claimed, was becoming stronger and richer in its confirmation that there could be no peace for individuals or nations without practising truth and non-violence to the utmost extent possible (385).

He did not deny that fraud or force could produce temporary and apparent success. His argument was that we should not mistake isolated examples for the larger truth of human existence.

He wrote:

“The world lives because there is more love than hate, more truth than untruth in it” (385).

And then:

“Fraud and force are diseases, truth and non-violence is health” (385).

One need not accept every part of Gandhi’s philosophy to appreciate what he was doing here. He was not merely citing an authority and demanding obedience. He was appealing to what he regarded as the accumulated experience of life.

His conviction had become experiential.

That is why the word “experiment” in Gandhi’s description of his own life is so important. He was not claiming that he possessed a final formula that nobody could question. He was saying, in effect, that he had tested certain principles in his own life and that experience had deepened rather than weakened his faith in them.

When the opinion of friends becomes a test

Another sentence in his response particularly struck me:

“my faith will stand the strain of the disgust of all the friends whose opinion I have learnt to value and cherish” (386).

This is a beautiful distinction.

Gandhi did not say that the opinions of others were worthless. Quite the contrary: he valued and cherished the opinions of his friends. Yet their possible disgust could not become the final authority over his faith.

We can value another person’s opinion without surrendering our conviction to it.

This is perhaps one of the most difficult disciplines in life.

We all want approval from people whom we respect. We naturally become uncomfortable when people we love or admire disagree with us. Sometimes their criticism should make us reconsider what we believe. But there is a point beyond which changing our conviction merely to retain approval means that the conviction was never really ours.

Gandhi was saying that his faith could withstand even the disapproval of those whose opinions mattered to him.

That is not arrogance. It becomes arrogance only when a person refuses to listen because he assumes that possessing conviction makes him automatically right.

What should we learn from our heroes?

Gandhi’s discussion of Lokamanya Tilak provides another important dimension to the same theme. The correspondent had referred to Tilak and suggested that Gandhi had once recognised his leadership but had subsequently moved into controversial social and religious questions. Gandhi replied that the correspondent misunderstood Tilak and then explained what he believed we should actually learn from our heroes.

We should not slavishly imitate actions whose circumstances we may not understand. Instead, we should assimilate their courage, self-sacrifice, industry, love of country and steady pursuit of their own ideals (386).

Then Gandhi gives a sentence that deserves special attention:

“We make fatal blunders when without relevance or without adequate knowledge we copy their isolated actions” (386).

This is one of the most valuable statements in the whole response.

A great person’s life is a whole. Yet admirers often extract one isolated action from that life and turn it into a universal rule. They imitate the external action without understanding the conviction, circumstances or experience that gave that action its meaning.

The same mistake can be made with Scripture, saints, Gurus, political leaders, reformers and even our own parents. The deeper lesson is not mechanical imitation. It is to understand the principle that animated the person’s life and then discover how, if at all, that principle can be lived meaningfully in our own circumstances.

The Justice Party: opposition without denial

There is a striking historical parallel from Tamil Nadu during this very period.

The Justice Party was strongly opposed to Gandhi and his programme. Eugene F. Irschick, in Politics and Social Conflict in South India: The Non-Brahman Movement and Tamil Separatism, 1916–1929, Los Angeles, University of California, Press, 1969182–184, describes the party’s opposition in detail.

The Justice Party had already distinguished itself from much of the all-India nationalist movement through its political positions, its demand for communal representation for South Indian non-Brahmans, its unwillingness to condemn the Amritsar massacre, and its willingness to participate in the 1920 elections. Its opposition became even stronger through its complete rejection of Gandhi and the programme of non-cooperation (Irschick, 182).

To many Justice Party members, Gandhi’s programme represented a threat to established political authority. His boycott of councils, courts and government schools, together with his advocacy of khadi, was interpreted as a programme under which disorder could be encouraged. The party’s newspapers, particularly Justice and Dravidan, consistently attacked Gandhi and his ideas (Irschick, 182–183).

The language was sometimes extraordinarily severe. Justice described Gandhi in January 1921 as “the least tolerant and most vain of public men” and “a sort of autocrat”. During the Moplah rebellion associated with the Khilafat movement, Dravidan accused Gandhi of preparing to turn the country into a “cremation ground” before it attained Swaraj (Irschick, 183).

Even Gandhi’s withdrawal of non-cooperation after the violence at Chauri Chaura and the Bardoli decisions did little immediately to win the Justice Party over. Justice continued to question Gandhi’s methods and his motives (Irschick, 183).

Yet after Gandhi’s imprisonment, something remarkable appeared in the pages of Justice. Political disagreement had not disappeared. The Justice Party had not suddenly accepted Gandhi’s political philosophy. But it acknowledged something about the man that disagreement could not erase. Irschick records the newspaper as saying:

“This difference in political opinion has, all the same, never blinded us to a full recognition of the high qualities of moral worth and intellectual capacity that have distinguished the Mahatma” (Irschick, 184).

The newspaper went on to acknowledge Gandhi’s patriotism and self-sacrifice in unusually strong terms (Irschick, 184).

For me, this is an important historical lesson.

One can oppose a person’s political philosophy without denying the sincerity, courage or self-sacrifice with which that person lives according to it.

The Justice Party’s acknowledgment did not establish that Gandhi’s political programme was correct. Nor does Gandhi’s steadfastness establish that every decision he made was correct. What it demonstrates is something more modest and more interesting: political disagreement need not prevent us from recognising conviction in an opponent.

Conviction does not guarantee correctness

This is where I would place an important caution about Gandhi himself.

Gandhi’s steadfastness should not be used as proof that he was right about everything. Nor should his death be romanticised as though dying for one’s conviction automatically validates that conviction. A conviction can be genuine and still be mistaken.

What we can learn from Gandhi is therefore not simply, “Hold firmly to whatever you believe.” That would be a dangerous lesson.

The better lesson is:

Examine deeply. Listen honestly. Test through experience. Distinguish the fundamental from the incidental. Be willing to correct an application. But once something has genuinely become a fundamental conviction, do not abandon it merely because the prevailing opinion has turned against you.

This is much closer to what Gandhi himself describes in “Indictment.”

Opinion changes; conviction must be tested

We live in a time when public opinion can change rapidly. What is praised today may be condemned tomorrow. An idea may become fashionable for a while and then disappear. Political circumstances, social pressures, intellectual fashions and collective fears can all influence what people think.

There is nothing wrong with changing an opinion when evidence or experience demands it. Indeed, the refusal to change an opinion in the face of truth is not conviction; it can simply be stubbornness.

But there is a difference between changing one’s opinion because one has discovered that it was mistaken and changing one’s fundamental conviction merely because others have become uncomfortable with it.

This distinction applies to every field of life.

It applies to faith. It applies to family. It applies to community. It applies to society. It applies to politics. It applies to moral commitments and to the way we understand our own life’s purpose. At some point, we must stop living entirely through borrowed convictions.

A person cannot forever say, “My Guru believes this, therefore I believe it.” Or, “My Scripture says this, therefore I believe it,” without ever allowing that teaching to become personally assimilated. Nor can we simply say, “Everybody thinks this, therefore I must think it.”

Authority can guide us. Community can support us. Tradition can nourish us. The opinions of wise people can correct us.

But conviction must eventually become our own.

What remains for me

Whether Gandhism as a political philosophy ultimately succeeded or failed is a question that can be debated through history and political analysis. Individual Gandhian programmes can likewise be examined and criticised according to their particular circumstances and consequences. But that is not what I want to take away from this exchange.

What remains with me is Gandhi’s statement that faith must eventually become self-sustained; his insistence that his experience had made truth and non-violence part of his fundamental being; his willingness to endure even the disgust of people whose opinions he valued; and his warning against copying the isolated actions of great people without understanding the convictions behind them (385–386).

And there is something else.

Gandhi was not living in a world without criticism. His convictions were not protected by universal admiration. Some of his contemporaries thought his political philosophy was impractical, dangerous or even destructive. The Justice Party in Tamil Nadu openly opposed him. Yet even that determined political opponent could acknowledge his moral worth, patriotism and self-sacrifice.

That makes the distinction between opinion and conviction all the more meaningful. We do not have to agree with Gandhiji in order to learn from his response to those who disagreed with him. Nor do we have to imitate every action of a great person.

Perhaps the real lesson is to examine carefully, listen to criticism without fear, learn from experience, remain willing to correct ourselves, and then live according to what we have genuinely come to regard as true—without allowing every passing opinion, however loud or numerous, to dictate the direction of our life.

Conviction is not the refusal to think again. It is the courage to think deeply enough that, after thinking again, one knows what one can and cannot abandon. That, for me, is the enduring lesson I take from Gandhiji’s “Indictment.”

Ashram, October 2, 2026