Autobiography as Objectification: Re-presenting the Subaltern in Gandhi’s <i>The Story of My Experiments with Truth<i>

Abstract

This paper examines the rhetorical strategies employed in Gandhi’s autobiography, The Story of My Experiments with Truth (1927). Specifically, the paper focuses on how Gandhi constructs his narrative of identity by purporting to represent the interests of subaltern Indians in British India and South Africa. Its central argument is that in the process of framing the narrative of self, Gandhi’s autobiography objectifies the Indian masses by employing negative tropes to describe their attitudes towards cleanliness and sanitation. The paper demonstrates that by projecting them as dirty and unamenable to change, Gandhi indirectly creates a binary opposition between himself and the subalterns. It concludes that, in spite of his claims of solidarity with the oppressed, Gandhi ends up objectifying them as “others.â€