Be the Change You Want to See in Others

Researchers who have searched the writings of Mahatma Gandhi have not found the sentence, be the change you wish to see in the world, in that form. The nearest passage comes from 1913, in his newspaper Indian Opinion, where he wrote that if we could change ourselves, the tendencies in the world would also change, and that as a man changes his own nature, so does the attitude of the world change towards him. The famous line is a compression of this thought, and the topic offers a variation of it. Its idea is well supported by Gandhi's life, whatever the exact words, and it presents a hard test, that those who want others to change must first change themselves.

The argument is simple. People are persuaded more by what they see than by what they hear. A parent who tells a child not to lie and then lies on the telephone is teaching the lie. A leader who demands sacrifice and lives in luxury will not be believed. By contrast, a person who lives by the standard he preaches carries a moral authority that words cannot give. The demand for change in others is also, in disguise, an excuse for avoiding it in oneself, and the maxim removes the excuse.

Gandhi's life was an experiment in this principle. A story is told of a mother who brought her child to him, asking him to tell the boy to stop eating sugar. Gandhi asked her to come back after two weeks. When she returned, he told the boy not to eat sugar, and explained that he had first had to give it up himself before he could ask it of another. Whether or not the incident happened exactly so, it matches his method. He cleaned latrines at his ashram when others thought it beneath them, and he spun cloth to show that the freedom struggle needed constructive work. When he marched to Dandi in March and April 1930, covering about 240 miles to make salt in defiance of the colonial salt law, he began with a handful of followers and ended with a nation in motion.

Other examples show the same pattern. Dashrath Manjhi, a poor labourer from Bihar, carved a path through a hill with a hammer and a chisel over twenty two years after his wife died for want of timely medical care, and shortened the route to the nearest town from more than fifty kilometres to about fifteen. The Kenyan environmentalist Wangari Maathai began planting trees in 1977 with a few women and eventually led a movement that planted tens of millions, winning the Nobel Peace Prize in 2004. Anna Hazare transformed the village of Ralegan Siddhi in Maharashtra by starting with water conservation and the abolition of liquor, practising what he asked of others. Each began alone, and the example drew others.

The demand for change in others is also, in disguise, an excuse for avoiding it in oneself, and the maxim removes the excuse.

Psychology supports the point. Albert Bandura's work on social learning showed that people, and especially children, copy the behaviour of those they observe. Studies of hand washing in hospitals find that when senior doctors wash their hands, others follow. Organisational researchers find that the ethical climate of a firm tracks the conduct of its leaders. Social norms spread because individuals notice what their neighbours do, and so a single change of behaviour can set off a series of others.

There is also a moral argument. Hypocrisy not only fails to persuade but breeds cynicism, since those who see a gap between word and deed conclude that values are only a pose. The Bhagavad Gita says that whatever a great person does, others follow, and that the people take as the standard whatever he sets. The same idea runs through the Gospels, in the call to remove the plank from one's own eye before the speck from another's. A reformer who first reforms himself holds the right to ask others.

Yet the maxim must be taken with care. First, personal virtue does not always change systems. An honest official in a corrupt department may be transferred, and a single citizen's refusal to pay a bribe may not stop the demand. Laws, institutions and collective action are often needed. Gandhi himself did not rely on personal example alone but organised campaigns, drafted demands and negotiated. Ambedkar's struggle against caste required legal and political change alongside personal moral appeal, and he remarked that the reform of individuals could not by itself dismantle a social order. Second, the words can be turned into a rebuke to the powerless, telling them to fix themselves while the structure that harms them stays intact.

Third, there is a risk of self righteousness. A person who thinks he is the model for others may become intolerant, and may treat those who do not follow as inferior. Gandhi was acutely aware of this, and wrote of the need for humility. A change that is to be a gift to others cannot be an exhibition. It also calls for patience, since example takes time to work, and the one who sets it may never see the result.

Properly understood, the maxim is a strategy and not a slogan. It starts with what one controls, one's own conduct, and builds from there outward, in the home, the neighbourhood, the workplace and then the institutions of the state. Citizens who do not litter, pay their taxes, obey traffic rules and treat their servants with respect create the culture in which laws work. Teachers who read, officials who serve and leaders who confess their errors do more for the country than any number of speeches. Small examples multiply, because every observer is also a potential imitator.

What the maxim cannot say is how large a change in oneself is enough, or how long to wait before others follow. Gandhi waited decades. Manjhi waited twenty two years. Some who changed themselves were never followed at all, and their stories are not told, because no one was watching. The case for doing it anyway rests on a belief that cannot be proved, that a thing done rightly is not wasted even when no one sees it.