a. They are puzzling, likely to be misunderstood, and as far as I know regularly have been either not understood or misunderstood.

b. The better and hitherto insufficiently understood meanings that I will attribute to Gandhi after offering solutions to the puzzles are undoubtedly true.

 

The third of the above five reasons why my theses may be wrong – that I may be attributing to Gandhi views that are actually my own or someone else’s—concerns me less. I might claim Gandhi’s own approach to reading texts as precedent for reading into Gandhi what he should have said rather than what he did say. That was his own approach to reading the parts of the Rig Veda which when literally read justified untouchability as punishment bad souls deserved for their sins in prior incarnations. He made no bones about deliberately reading the Vedic texts as saying what they should have said. But I do not think I need to follow the method Gandhi’s himself used to interpret the Rig Veda in order to justify my interpretations of him. I think the better meanings I find in Gandhi are part of what he did say, not just part of what he should have said, and in fact they are not in my opinion exactly what he should have said. In any case, I am ultimately more concerned with whether the concepts are true and important than with whether they were Gandhi’s.

Ruling out the fourth and fifth sources of possible invalidity listed above, concerning why Gandhi’s projects failed, and concerning whether India and the world would have turned out better if Gandhi had been better understood, will be attempted in various ways, but not so much in this chapter as in the following ones. The later chapters will also add more reasons for ruling out the first three sources of possible invalidity listed above.