An Autobiography, or The Story of My Experiments with Truth (1927–29)
The Sin and the Sinner
In 1904 two officers in the Asiatic Department in Johannesburg were taking bribes of one hundred pounds from Indian and Chinese immigrants. Mahatma Gandhi gathered the evidence against them and brought them to trial. An all-white jury acquitted both men despite clear proof, but the government dismissed them anyway. Soon after that, the two men had no money and applied for city jobs in Johannesburg. An intermediary asked Gandhiji not to oppose them. People expected him to keep attacking his enemies, but he agreed at once to help. Both men got the work.
Gandhiji explained his reasoning in one sentence: "Hate the sin and not the sinner." A person and the things they do are not the same thing. You can oppose a bad act completely, and you can still treat the person who did it with decency. If you attack the human being instead of the act, you create hatred, and hatred spreads quickly. He called this distinction the heart of ahimsa, which means non-violence or doing no harm. You stop the harm, but you leave a door open for the person to change.
Therefore
Fight the wrong thing someone does with all your energy. Do not treat the person who did it as an enemy who can never change.
Sabarmati Ashram, Ahmedabad, 1927
Gandhiji wrote down the story of the two officers at Sabarmati Ashram in 1927. He wrote his life story one chapter a week in Gujarati for his paper, Navajivan. His secretary, Mahadev Desai, translated each chapter into English for another weekly paper, Young India. Navajivan published the chapters as An Autobiography, or The Story of My Experiments with Truth between 1927 and 1929. Gandhiji used the story to show how he lived with his opponents. He spent years fighting the government of General Jan Smuts in South Africa, yet the two men remained friends, and Gandhiji even made Smuts a pair of leather sandals while in jail.
A small reminder, on the desk or the door, that you can stop a wrong deed without turning the person who did it into an enemy.
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Related patterns
pairs with
Mahatma Gandhi Experiments with Truth Writing Slate
The book where he wrote down how this worked in practice.
extends to
Gandhi Law of Non-Violence
The rule behind refusing to treat an opponent as an enemy.
contrasts with
Mahatma Gandhi Seed and Tree Quote
Hatred as a means cannot produce peace as an end.