Let no one blindly copy the experiment : Health with Mahatma Gandhi

I have been known as a crank, faddist, mad man. Evidently the reputation is well deserved. For wherever I go, I draw to myself cranks, faddists and mad men. Andhra has its fair share of all these. They often find their way to Sabarmati. No wonder then that I found these specimens in abundance during my Andhra tour. But 1 propose to introduce to the reader only one fellow crank who by his living faith in his mission compelled my admiration and induced me to plunge into a dietetic ex計eriment which I had left unfinished at the age of 20 when I was a student in London. This is Sundaram Gopalrao of Rajahmundry. The ground was prepared for him by a survey superintendent whom I met at Vizagapatam and who told me he was practically living on raw food. Gopalrao has a Nature Cure establishment in Rajahmundry, to which he devotes the whole of his time. He said to me, “The hip-baths and other kindred appliances are good so far as they go. But even they are artificial. To be rid of diseases it is necessary to do away with fire in the preparation of foods. We must take everything in its vital state even as animals do.”

“Would you advise me to adopt entirely raw diet?” I asked.

“Certainly, why not? I have cured cases of chronic dyspepsia in old men and women through a balanced diet containing germinating seeds,” was Gopalrao’s reply.

“But surely there should be a transition stage,” I gently remonstrated.

“No such stage is necessary,” rejoined Gopalrao. “Uncooked food, including uncooked starch and protein are any day more digestible than cooked. Try it and you will feel all the better for it.”

“Do you take the risk? If the cremation ceremony takes place in Andhra, the people will cremate your body with mine,” I said.

~ Young India, 13-6-1929

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