Gandhi at school in South Africa

Following is a story about Mahatma Gandhi. Gandhi is known as the “Father of the Nation”. He led the non-violence movement in India and helped India in getting freedom from the British rule. This is a particular incident from Gandhiji’s school days in South Africa.

Gandhi was in his first year in high school. One day, the education inspector was supposed to visit the school. Generally, an educational inspector visits the school to see if the education of the school is proper or not. The education inspector, Mr. Giles visited the school. He came to Gandhi’s class and dictated five words in which every student had to spell it in their books. Gandhi had misspelled one of the words. The word was ‘Kettle’. The teacher of the class saw Gandhi’s mistake and signalled him to look from the neighbour’s book. Gandhi was a little surprised to see that because he thought the teacher was supposed to supervise against copying.

Even though the teacher advised Gandhi to copy the spelling from the neighbour’s book, Gandhiji did not look in his. The result was that all the boys except Gandhi spelled all the spellings correctly. Only Gandhi was the one that could not spell it correctly. The teacher later even tried to make fun of him because he did not follow his instructions. Gandhi always followed his principles and copying from others was against his principles. He could never learn the art of coping. Even after the incident, Gandhi never disrespected his teacher. He always treated the teacher with respect and honour. For him, to respect elders was more important than to judge them due to their actions.

Moral:

Never change your principles by getting influenced by someone.

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