"Will you disregard the orders of the caste?" demanded the Sheth.
"I am really helpless," replied Gandhi. "I think the caste should not interfere in the matter."
Boom! He was excommunicated—a judgment that remained in force even when he returned from England several years later with the promise of success that attended a young, English-speaking lawyer. The community was divided over how to handle him. One camp embraced him; the other cast him out. This meant that Gandhi was not allowed even to eat or drink at the homes of fellow subcaste members, including his own sister and his mother- and father-in-law.
Another man, Gandhi knew, would protest for readmission. But he couldn't see the point. He knew that fighting would only generate retaliation. Instead he followed the Sheth's wishes and kept at a distance, even from his own family. His sister and in-laws were prepared to host him at their homes in secret, but he turned them down.
The result of this compliance? The subcaste not only stopped bothering him, but its members—including those who had excommunicated him—helped in his later political work, without expecting anything in return. They treated him with affection and generosity. "It is my conviction," Gandhi wrote later, "that all these good things are due to my non-resistance. Had I agitated for being admitted to the caste, had I attempted to divide it into more camps, had I provoked the castemen, they would surely have retaliated, and instead of steering clear of the storm, I should, on arrival from England, have found myself in a whirlpool of agitation."
This pattern—the decision to accept what another man would challenge—occurred again and again in Gandhi's life. As a young lawyer in South Africa, he applied for admission to the local bar. The Law Society didn't want Indian members, and tried to thwart his application by requiring an original copy of a certificate that was on file in the Bombay High Court and therefore inaccessible. Gandhi was enraged; he knew well that the true reason for these barriers was discrimination. But he didn't let his feelings show. Instead he negotiated patiently, until the Law Society agreed to accept an affidavit from a local dignitary.
The day arrived when he stood to take the oath, at which point the chief justice ordered him to take off his turban. Gandhi saw his true limitations then. He knew that resistance would be justified, but believed in picking his battles, so he took off his headgear. His friends were upset. They said he was weak, that he should have stood up for his beliefs. But Gandhi felt that he had learned "to appreciate the beauty of compromise."
If I told you these stories without mentioning Gandhi's name and later achievements, you might view him as a deeply passive man. And in the West, passivity is a transgression. To be "passive," according to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, means to be "acted upon by an external agency." It also means to be "submissive." Gandhi himself ultimately rejected the phrase "passive resistance," which he associated with weakness, preferring satyagraha, the term he coined to mean "firmness in pursuit of truth."
But as the word satyagraha implies, Gandhi's passivity was not weakness at all. It meant focusing on an ultimate goal and refusing to divert energy to unnecessary skirmishes along the way. Restraint, Gandhi believed, was one of his greatest assets. And it was born of his shyness:
I have naturally formed the habit of restraining my thoughts. A thoughtless word hardly ever escaped my tongue or pen. Experience has taught me that silence is part of the spiritual discipline of a votary of truth. We find so many people impatient to talk. All this talking can hardly be said to be of any benefit to the world. It is so much waste of time. My shyness has been in reality my shield and buckler. It has allowed me to grow. It has helped me in my discernment of truth.
