Mahatma Gandhi’s List of the Seven Social Sins; or Tips on How to Avoid Living the Bad Life

Image via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

In 590 AD, Pope Gre­go­ry I unveiled a list of the Sev­en Dead­ly Sins – lust, glut­tony, greed, sloth, wrath, envy and pride – as a way to keep the flock from stray­ing into the thorny fields of ungod­li­ness. These days, though, for all but the most devout, Pope Gregory’s list seems less like a means to moral behav­ior than a descrip­tion of cable TV pro­gram­ming.

So instead, let’s look to one of the saints of the 20th cen­tu­ry–Mahat­ma Gand­hi. On Octo­ber 22, 1925, Gand­hi pub­lished a list he called the Sev­en Social Sins in his week­ly news­pa­per Young India.

  • Pol­i­tics with­out prin­ci­ples.
  • Wealth with­out work.
  • Plea­sure with­out con­science.
  • Knowl­edge with­out char­ac­ter.
  • Com­merce with­out moral­i­ty.
  • Sci­ence with­out human­i­ty.
  • Wor­ship with­out sac­ri­fice.

The list sprang from a cor­re­spon­dence that Gand­hi had with some­one only iden­ti­fied as a “fair friend.” He pub­lished the list with­out com­men­tary save for the fol­low­ing line: “Nat­u­ral­ly, the friend does not want the read­ers to know these things mere­ly through the intel­lect but to know them through the heart so as to avoid them.”

Unlike the Catholic Church’s list, Gandhi’s list is express­ly focused on the con­duct of the indi­vid­ual in soci­ety. Gand­hi preached non-vio­lence and inter­de­pen­dence and every sin­gle one of these sins are exam­ples of self­ish­ness win­ning out over the com­mon good.

It’s also a list that, if ful­ly absorbed, will make the folks over at the US Cham­ber of Com­merce and Ayn Rand Insti­tute itch. After all, “Wealth with­out work,” is a pret­ty accu­rate descrip­tion of America’s 1%. (Invest­ments ain’t work. Ask Thomas Piket­ty.) “Com­merce with­out moral­i­ty” sounds a lot like every sin­gle oil com­pa­ny out there and “knowl­edge with­out char­ac­ter” describes half the hacks on cable news. “Pol­i­tics with­out prin­ci­ples” describes the oth­er half.

In 1947, Gand­hi gave his fifth grand­son, Arun Gand­hi, a slip of paper with this same list on it, say­ing that it con­tained “the sev­en blun­ders that human soci­ety com­mits, and that cause all the vio­lence.” The next day, Arun returned to his home in South Africa. Three months lat­er, Gand­hi was shot to death by a Hin­du extrem­ist.

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2014.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Tol­stoy and Gand­hi Exchange Let­ters: Two Thinkers’ Quest for Gen­tle­ness, Humil­i­ty & Love (1909)

Albert Ein­stein Express­es His Admi­ra­tion for Mahat­ma Gand­hi, in Let­ter and Audio

Isaac New­ton Cre­ates a List of His 57 Sins (Cir­ca 1662)

Mahat­ma Gand­hi Talks (in First Record­ed Video)

When Mahat­ma Gand­hi Met Char­lie Chap­lin (1931)

Hear Gandhi’s Famous Speech on the Exis­tence of God (1931)

Jonathan Crow is a writer and film­mak­er whose work has appeared in Yahoo!, The Hol­ly­wood Reporter, and oth­er pub­li­ca­tions,


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  • Wisdom Seeker says:

    The Sev­en Dead­ly Sins are dis­count­ed as “less like a means to moral behav­ior than a descrip­tion of cable TV pro­gram­ming.”

    Gand­hi’s Sev­en Social sins are praised for point­ing out self­ish pat­terns in con­tem­po­rary soci­ety.

    Are these lists worth­less because we find them every­where in our soci­ety? Or are they not pre­cise­ly help­ful because they (both) diag­nose the pat­terns of “self­ish­ness win­ning out over the com­mon good” that should be avoid­ed?

    The sev­en dead­ly sins are also iden­ti­fy­ing nar­cis­sis­tic actions which dam­age our rela­tion to oth­ers and cause social harm. For exam­ple, pride: mak­ing excep­tions for one­self as of more impor­tance than oth­ers; Envy: wish­ing evil for oth­ers who have what we want, instead of being glad for their good; Lust: treat­ing oth­ers as mere­ly a means to our own sex­u­al plea­sure, instead of see­ing our sex­u­al­i­ty as a gift to bring joy to those we love, etc.

    No need to sneer at one wis­dom tra­di­tion in order to give hon­or to anoth­er.

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