 Since childhood , Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi was exposed to the actual practice of non @-@ violence , non @-@ possession and anekāntavāda by his mother . According to biographers like <unk> <unk> , <unk> Gandhi , and Stephen Hay , these early childhood impressions and experiences contributed to the formation of Gandhi 's character and his further moral and spiritual development . In his writings , Mahatma Gandhi attributed his seemingly contradictory positions over a period of time to the learning process , experiments with truth and his belief in anekāntavāda . He proclaimed that the duty of every individual is to determine what is personally true and act on that relative perception of truth . According to Gandhi , a <unk> is duty bound to act according to his relative truth , but at the same time , he is also equally bound to learn from truth held by his opponent . In response to a friend 's query on religious tolerance , he responded in the journal " Young India – 21 Jan 1926 " : 
