Mahatma Gandhi is well known and recognized for the leadership he provided for the Indian state to peacefully relinquish English oversight by withdrawing from British institutions, denying British awards, and, most important, by learning the art of self-reliance. Yet Gandhi's thoughts on family, although not as well known, are none the less historically pertinent. His concepts about family as an institution and national symbol of support were a central point to his overall political and social stance. From the nuclear family, to the entire community and nation of India to the world at large, Gandhi strived for one family of mankind.
             It is important to understand that when Gandhi uses the word "family" he does not only mean the nuclear family as is the common definition. "Family" is also a metaphor for a group of people who are concerned about the same things as in a national family or the global family of humankind. In his autobiography The Story of My Experiments with Truth, 1Gandhi's understanding of this term was stated clearly as "When we come to think of it, the distinction between heterogeneous and homogeneous is discovered to be merely imaginary. We are all one family."
             Such a statement showed Gandhi's early Utopian ideals about the concept of what the term family can mean at such destructive times as he saw taking place around him. The family was the keystone of Gandhi's notion of swaraj or "self-rule." To Gandhi, family was equated with the entire Indian society or family, who had to join together to stand on its own without the foundation of British rule. As he notes in Experiments with Truth, "I may note in this connection that Gokhale used to laugh at some of my ideas in Hind Swaraj or Indian Home Rule and say: 'After you have stayed a year in India, your views will correct themselves'"2
             Gandhi's main emphasis was on the continuous effort to reject the British...