Gandhi's unknown love: Music wound its way around him in strangest of ways

Music wound its way around Gandhi in the strangest of ways. He once declared: 'There can be no swaraj where there is no harmony, no music'

Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi had a love few knew of — and that was for music. When hymns ring in the 156th birth anniversary of Gandhi on October 2, let’s recall how the famously frugal advocate of self-discipline was also a great music buff.

 

A careful examination of his comments and letters catalogued in the 90 volumes of The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi reveals a lifelong fan of music and musicians. Gandhi loved and used music to focus his own mind, and calm the minds of the public through the darkest days of the Indian freedom struggle. In this, he