The Story of My Experiments with Truth · Chapter
The Great Exhibition explained
Gandhi visits the 1890 Paris Exhibition, ascending the Eiffel Tower multiple times and reflecting on its significance.
What happens
Gandhi visits the 1890 Paris Exhibition, ascending the Eiffel Tower multiple times and reflecting on its significance. He stays at a vegetarian restaurant, explores the city on foot, and is deeply moved by the grandeur and peace of ancient churches like Notre Dame. He contrasts the frivolity of Paris with the reverence of its cathedrals, and discusses Tolstoy's criticism of the Eiffel Tower as a symbol of folly.
Themes in this chapter
Vegetarianism and Dietary Discipline
Gandhi deliberately seeks out and stays at a vegetarian restaurant in Paris, maintaining his dietary principles even while traveling.
Religion and Interfaith Dialogue
Gandhi reflects on the devotion of worshippers in Parisian churches, seeing their reverence as genuine worship of the divine, not mere superstition.
Characters to notice
- Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi
Visits the Paris Exhibition, ascends the Eiffel Tower, stays at a vegetarian restaurant, and reflects on the spiritual significance of churches.
Key passages
“I remember that Tolstoy was the chief among those who disparaged it. He said that the Eiffel Tower was a monument of man’s folly, not of his wisdom.”
Gandhi recalls that Tolstoy condemned the Eiffel Tower as a symbol of human foolishness rather than intelligence.
Gandhi uses Tolstoy's critique to question the value of grand but frivolous creations.
“The feeling I had then has since been growing on me, that all this kneeling and prayer could not be mere superstition; the devout souls kneeling before the Virgin could not be worshipping mere marble.”
Gandhi's experience in Parisian churches led him to believe that the worshippers' devotion was genuine and directed at the divine, not just at a statue.
This reflects Gandhi's evolving interfaith perspective, seeing sincerity in all religious practices.