'Certainly no other influencial Indian intellectual was as steeped as Gandhi was', writes Raghavan Iyer, 'in the religious and philosophical texts of the classical Indian tradition as well as the the writings of daring Western moralists of the ninteenth century like Tolstoy, Thoreau, Ruskin, Emerson and Carlyle'.

Gandhi never got his essential philosophical education related to political, moral and religious questions in a formal manner. He did get a prolonged formal education though. He, therefore, did not have any formally structured philosophy. Gandhi got substantial time to uncover those questions of philosophy basically when he was in prison. Gandhi was clearly widely read; 'Certainly no other influencial Indian intellectual was as steeped as Gandhi was', writes Raghavan Iyer, 'in the religious and philosophical texts of the classical Indian tradition as well as the the writings of daring Western moralists of the ninteenth century like Tolstoy, Thoreau, Ruskin, Emerson and Carlyle'. Gandhi was, however, not exactly an intellectual. He seemed to be more inclined towards moral values and what we can say - a moral philosophy.

Gandhi as a son

Gandhi's father was a Dewan (Prime Minister) to the Thakor Saheb, princely ruler of Porbandar, which was among the many small states in the Kathiawad peninsula. (Katiawad has been renamed Saurashtra since the Indian independence) at the time of Gandhi's birth. (Refer to the section on Gandhi's life-history). Then, the family almost, but not quite, held the position as hereditory. Gandhi, as the brightest son, was thus the legatee of family expectation that he would take on an executive role as Dewan. In 1870s, his father moved to Rajkot as the assessor of a court at the invitation of the Government. Thus, due to this incident, the British rule was very much exposed to the young Gandhi. Gandhi wrote his ideas in a very intimate manner, as is shown in his autobiography (1927) in which he has discussed his inward and domestic life openly and in a frank way. Such writings are a good source of research on his psychology as they clearly reflect how Gandhi lived and what he thought about that sense of life in which he lived. This psychological research, in turn, is greatly important in knowing how Gandhi became a Mahatma as we know him now. The family does play an important role in shaping the psychology of an individual. But in Gandhi's case we will have to think differently as India had an extended family system in those days. In such a system, the relationships tend to get more intimate as most of the family members live together in harmony. They do almost all the things together, like eating, celebrating festivals and going to fairs. In such families, the mother-son relationship is especially more intimate. According to A.Copley, this is so because in the traditional system, intimate ties even between husband and wife grow in the latter years of marriage and thus, a son provides the mother an emotional outlet. There is therefore nothing exceptional in Gandhi's closeness to his mother.