SOURCE: "The Concept of Truth," in his The Philosophy of Gandhi: A Study of His Basic Ideas, Curzon Press, 1982, pp. 1-16.

In the following excerpt, Richards focuses on truth as the central concept of Gandhi's philosophy.

The concept of Truth (Satya) is fundamental to the thought of Gandhi. It is not without significance that the sub-title of his autobiography is 'The Story of my experiments with Truth', and his whole life might well be interpreted as an attempt to live in accordance with or an existential quest for Truth. Followers of Gandhi explicitly maintain that he was essentially a practical man with no concern for metaphysics or philosophical speculation, yet it is clear that whenever he attempted to explain what he meant by Truth he was involved in metaphysical speculation whether he or his followers realized it or not. My contention is that the unity of Gandhi's thought...