Gandhi

by Ramachandra Guha

  Should his grand-niece Manu, Gandhi asked Bhave, stop sleeping in his bed ‘out of deference to custom or to please co-workers’? If she did stop, would Gandhi ‘not be a hypocrite of the type described in chapter III [of the Gita]? If I do not appear to people exactly as I am within, wouldn’t that be a blot on my non-violence?’ Gandhi asked Bhave, as a man more learned than him in these spiritual matters, to let him have his view on them.

  Bhave replied two weeks later. ‘For the sake of achieving brahmacharya,’ he remarked, the experiment conducted by Gandhi was irrelevant. ‘Even if we do this for the sake of consolation,’ he continued, ‘sleeping naked is unnecessary. A father never does it with his daughter even innocently.’

  In Vinoba’s view, to be self-conscious about the difference between man and woman was contrary to brahmacharya. As he put it: ‘If I don’t think of sleeping with a man, what is the purpose of sleeping with a woman?’ If Gandhi had indeed become a proper or true brahmachari, if he had indeed achieved that ‘passionless state’, he wouldn’t need to sleep with a woman to confirm or prove it.5

  J.B. Kripalani was also not approving of Gandhi’s latest experiments. And Vallabhbhai Patel was ‘very angry’ with him.6 Patel’s anger was political rather than personal. He worried that word of these experiments would get out, and Jinnah and the Muslim League, not to speak of the viceroy and the British, would use it to diminish or demean Gandhi’s reputation.

  But Gandhi stubbornly persisted. Why? The answer may lie in a conversation he had with A.V. Thakkar in the last week of February. Thakkar was the same age as Gandhi, and had a long record as a social worker. Known as ‘Bapa’ (Father), he was a greatly respected if also occasionally forbidding figure in nationalist circles. Now, when Thakkar came to see him in Noakhali, Gandhi told him the spread of violence in India had called into question his own lifelong practice of, and faith in, ahimsa. ‘Ever since my coming to Noakhali,’ said Gandhi to his visitor, ‘I have been asking myself the question, “What is it that is choking the action of my ahimsa? Why does not the spell work? May it not be because I have temporized in the question of brahmacharya?”’

  Thakkar reassured him that his ahimsa had not failed. ‘Just think,’ he remarked, ‘what would have been the fate of Noakhali if you had not come.’ Then he added: ‘The world does not think of brahmacharya as you do.’

  Gandhi was unpersuaded. Even if his experiments led to his being ‘debunked’ by ‘millions’, he would carry on. For, as he put it, ‘on the lonely way to God on which I have set out, I need no earthly companion’.7

  To understand this, the strangest of Gandhi’s ‘experiments with truth’, one needs to look beyond rationalist or instrumental explanations of why men behave as they do. For some forty years now, Gandhi had been obsessed by brahmacharya. Both his early mentors, the Jain thinker Raychandbhai and the Russian sage Tolstoy, considered conquest of sexual desire a crucial step towards living a more spiritually fulfilled, and socially worthy, life. Now, at the end of his own life, with his dream of a united and peaceable India in ruins, Gandhi was attributing the imperfections of society to the imperfections of this society’s most influential leader, namely, himself.

  But there may have been another reason for Gandhi’s strange, bizarre, perhaps ultimately inexplicable, experiments. This is alluded to in a letter not available in the Collected Works, and so far as I know not seen by previous scholars or biographers of Gandhi.

  While the Indian press had stayed scrupulously silent on Gandhi’s latest experiments, a Reuters report had alluded indirectly to them. This was read by Agatha Harrison in London, who wrote to Horace Alexander, then in Bengal, for an explanation. Alexander provided this in one very long paragraph, reproduced below:

  When I was with him in East Bengal, during one of our talks, he said: ‘If that is all on the subject (I forget which item on my agenda it was) then there is something I want to talk to you about on which I would like to have your opinion’. He then proceeded to tell me about the girl who was with him, how she had come to Sevagram, and how, after some time, there had been talk of her being in love with Pyarelal; how she had gone away, but had protested that she was totally innocent of any sexual feeling in connection with anyone; how she had felt it necessary to test her sincerity, and had asked her if she was prepared to undergo the severest test, with him. She had said ‘Yes’ and that her feelings towards him were as to her Mother (note the sex). He felt that it was necessary both for him and for her to undergo this test, but if for one moment he felt himself failing in it, he would stop it at once and admit his failure. He went on to tell me of certain cases he had known of where under acute difficulties of accommodation a woman of undoubted purity had been forced to share a bed with a man. And he added that he thought it would be a great thing for mankind to have it demonstrated that men and women could so purify themselves in mind and spirit that they could share a bed without either being put to shame. Then we had to go to prayer-time, and I was left to think about it during the night. Next morning I told him that in principle I saw nothing wrong in what he was doing, but I could not see the absolute necessity of it: that one of my mottoes was ‘Moderation in all things’ and that the character of [the fifth-century Syrian ascetic] St. Simeon Stylites had never appealed to me. He said he agreed about ‘Moderation in all things’ and about St. Simon (of whose private character he had evidently read more than I had). But he thought I missed the point. The necessity of it all arose from the need to test the girl, and her claim to be pure from all sexual feeling. It was true that I had thought he was justifying it as a step he had to take, and I had said I thought it was a pity for him to undertake this ‘experiment with truth’, which was bound to cause misunderstanding, just when he was asking everyone to give undivided thought to the communal problem. He now made it quite clear that the benefits for the world would be secondary, and that it was for her sake that he was thus impelled to ‘sanctify himself’. This, to my mind, put a very different complexion onto the whole affair. Of the paramount necessity of such a ruthless testing of her I still could not judge. But, as I had already said, I saw nothing inherently wrong in what he was doing, provided the circumstances made it necessary. In this case, clearly the circumstances were subjective, not objective. The girl was present, doing chores, most of the time we were talking, and she knew he was discussing it with me. Her English is not good, but she would understand most of what we said. Two other points. One reason why he opened up on it was that Patel had written strongly protesting at his action (whether on principle, or in relation to the need for concentrating his energies on other issues, I do not know). Also, MKG pointed out that all the pressmen and others with him knew that only one bed was made up each night, and he regarded it as a remarkable token of their loyalty that none had written it up for the press or made any protest or raised the issue with him. Well, I hope that covers it. Perhaps it is just as well that there has been occasion to put this on record, as it might lead to all sorts of foolish argument in the future. You will realise that I felt acutely that he was treating me as if I were a ghost of CFA[ndrews], and I also realised that my reply, if I was to be true to him and to the memory of CFA, must be my reply, not what I surmised CFA’s might have been.8

  This letter of Alexander provides an altogether new perspective. We do know, from other sources, that Pyarelal was indeed deeply attracted to Manu Gandhi, and may even have proposed marriage to her. This was not reciprocated; besides, as an ashramite from a very early age, Manu herself had been schooled (dare we say, indoctrinated?) in the virtue and necessity of conquering sexual desire. While they were in Srirampur, Nirmal Bose reported to Gandhi that Manu had told him that ‘she had been steadily losing respect for P[yarelal] because the latter had been pursuing her in spite of clear rejection, and how he had even talked of suicide to her on a former occasion. It was also a surprise to me to learn how his sister [Sushila Nayar] had been pleading and pressing her to accep
t the love of her brother even after she knew her mind.’9

  So, contrary to what has become the received wisdom on this subject, there may have been, as it were, two sides to the story. Both Gandhi and Manu may have wanted to go through this experiment, or ordeal. To be sure, there was a certain amount of imposition—from his side. It was Gandhi who felt it was necessary ‘both for him and for her to undergo this test’, Gandhi who wanted to ‘have it demonstrated that men and women could so purify themselves in mind and spirit that they could share a bed without either being put to shame’.

  II

  Gandhi saw his experiments as untainted because of his special relationship with the young girl with whom he shared his bed. Manu had lost her mother early, and Kasturba and Gandhi had come to be her foster parents. After Ba’s death (Manu was at her side then), Gandhi became both father and mother to her.

  While Manu was with Gandhi in eastern Bengal, she maintained a daily diary, in Gujarati. This was published many years later in English translation, and possibly with some redactions. Notwithstanding the editing and excision it may have gone through, it remains the sole account of the experiment as seen from the perspective of its lesser-known participant. The published diary has many references to Gandhi’s obsession with brahmacharya, along with a few remarks that may (or may not) be construed as coded references to the experiments they were to do together, albeit on his instructions.10

  When asked by Gandhi to join her in Noakhali, Manu was in Udaipur. She reached Srirampur on 19 December 1946, accompanied by her father. Gandhi told him: ‘She will be put to a very severe test by the situation. I consider this Hindu–Muslim unity problem an altar for sacrifice. Not a trace of impurity can pass muster here. If there is even a speck of it in Manu, she will fail and go to pieces. Let’s all be clear on this point. She can return now. Better to do so now than with shame and dishonour afterwards.’

  From this it does appear that Gandhi was asking the father for permission for his daughter to take part in this strange (if to his eyes, necessary) experiment. Before he could reply, Manu did. ‘I will,’ she said to Gandhi, ‘willingly suffer to the last all my trials and troubles. I have the fullest faith and trust in you. And now, the more terrible and darker the picture you draw of Noakhali, the more is my mind steeled to stay on here.’ To this Manu’s father added: ‘Now that she has decided to stay here, you may keep her with you as long as you like. Why should I worry over her when she is with you?’

  Shortly after joining Gandhi, Manu asked him to give her informal lessons on the Gita, which she had studied when at the Aga Khan Palace but stopped thereafter. Gandhi commenced doing so on 22 December, the monthly anniversary of Kasturba’s death, to whom Manu had been devoted. The next day, Gandhi told Manu: ‘You know this is a holy sacrifice; and our old Puranic sacrifices demand perfect purity on the part of the performers. Satanic urges in man such as lust, anger, infatuation, etc. have to be totally overcome.’

  Apart from sharing a bed in this experiment to prove each other’s conquest of lust, Manu’s duties included preparing Gandhi’s meals, accompanying him on walks and boat rides through the ravaged countryside, and massaging his tired legs at day’s end. He also dictated letters to her.

  One morning, some three weeks after Manu joined him, Gandhi launched into a reverie about how while ‘nowadays marriage panders mainly to lust’, it was meant to be about companionship and mutual understanding. He told Manu that Kasturba and he had learnt to practise a brahmacharya that was ‘entirely passionless’. He praised his late wife for her participation in that experiment, and for her other services to him, saying that ‘it is Ba who really deserves the credit for the title of Mahatma which the people have chosen to confer upon me’.

  As recorded in Manu’s diary, Gandhi regularly returned to the importance of brahmacharya in his conversations with her. There were some men, he told his grand-niece, who did not touch women for fear it would arouse them. That was a brahmacharya born out of fear, not courage. For, how could a man’s ‘passion be aroused by a woman’s touch when he considers all women as his mothers, sisters, or daughters!’ The true brahmachari, claimed Gandhi, would ‘remain passionless’ even when faced with ‘the most beautiful damsel on earth’.

  The conversations reported by Manu show Gandhi to have a distinct aversion to women seeking to make themselves attractive to men. He deplored modern hairstyles, and modern clothes even more. ‘What a pity,’ he told Manu, ‘that the modern girl attaches greater importance to following the code of fashion than to the protection of her health and strength!’

  When it came to women’s clothing, Gandhi was opposed to modern fashion, but also to archaic custom. When a Muslim at a prayer meeting asked whether the ‘moral beauty’ of women would ‘be better preserved if the custom of the veil for them is strictly enforced’, Gandhi answered that a ‘woman who throws a veil about her face for mere show and at the same time looks at another person with lustful eyes from behind the purdah, is simply shaming chastity’. Gandhi opposed the veil because ‘it harms women’s health; they can’t get sufficient air and light and they remain disease-ridden’. In any case, he argued, if ‘the original object behind the purdah system was self-restraint’, then ‘that woman alone observes it in the right spirit, who keeps the invisible purdah of self-control’.

  Manu was a grand-niece who was also a devotee, and an especially starry-eyed one at that. When Gandhi cut his soles walking and she had to clean his wounds, she burst into tears. ‘I filled the cuts with ghee,’ she wrote later in her diary: ‘There is a specially deep cut at the joint below the great toe. What a difficult ordeal Bapuji has chosen to go through at this age! How very sad must the plight of Indian people be, if they cannot understand this great man! Or could it be that such is the fate destined by God for exceptionally noble men? It was only because Ramachandraji voluntarily suffered for 14 long years the torments of a secluded and dangerous life in fearful jungles, that he is worshipped as a god today.’

  The diary of Manu Gandhi’s Noakhali travels is entitled The Lonely Pilgrim. Another short book that she wrote about Gandhi is called Bapu, My Mother. Odd though it may seem in light of the experiment they performed together, Gandhi did see himself as stepping into his late wife’s shoes as the adoptive mother of a girl who had lost her own mother when very young. After one of his long talks with—or long lectures to—her, Gandhi told Manu: ‘I am simply discharging my duty as your mother. I am feeding you with what my mind is filled with.’

  A few days later, after Gandhi expressed concern at her having to carry a large bucket of water, Manu herself noted in her diary: ‘Bapu’s conversation was filled with affection greater than any mother could feel. What a deep loving insight into my needs! And that in the midst of all his worries!…Which male shows motherly care and love as he does?’ Then she added: ‘And oh, joy! I am actually having that experience! It is I who am that beloved child of Mother Bapu! I am immensely happy at my rare good fortune.’

  The ashramites and other close disciples called Gandhi ‘Bapu’, Father. ‘Mother Bapu’ in the original Gujarati must have been ‘Ma Bapu’, or, put in plain English, ‘Mother Father’. This curious, indeed unique, appellation shows that at least in the eyes of Manu, Gandhi had transcended not just sexual desire but also the boundaries of gender. The Father of the Nation was also, and at the same time, the Mother of this young woman.

  III

  In the last week of January 1947, the INA officer working with Gandhi, Niranjan Singh Gill, met H.S. Suhrawardy in Calcutta. When he sought to brief him on the situation in East Bengal, the chief minister said he ‘would doubt his bona fides until he [Gandhi] with his men worked in Bihar just as assiduously as in Noakhali’. When Gill reported this to Gandhi, Gandhi took the chastisement to heart, and sent the Sikh to Bihar for a tour of inspection and analysis. He asked Gill to meet leaders of all parties in Bihar, study the condition of the (mostly Muslim) refugees, and ‘
prepare a fairly exhaustive report’.

  Niranjan Singh Gill toured Bihar, and on his return, ‘strongly recommended’ that Gandhi go there, since the situation was far graver than he had previously thought it to be. Gandhi wrote to Nehru, asking him to pass on Gill’s report to the Bihar government, run by the Congress, on whom it reflected rather badly. He thought he might indeed now have to go to Bihar himself.11

  Just as the rioters in Noakhali had sought to avenge Calcutta, the rioters in Bihar sought to avenge Noakhali. In the last week of October 1946, Patna was plastered with handbills asking Hindus not to light lamps that year at Diwali, to mourn the attacks on their co-religionists in East Bengal. This was followed by hartals and processions, which culminated in attacks on Muslims in Patna and in the surrounding countryside.12

  Patna was followed by Gaya and Bhagalpur, where too, large meetings of Hindus were held to protest against the killings in Noakhali, these sparking further attacks on Muslims. As one report had it: ‘The Police appear to have been flabbergasted by the extent of the trouble at most places…’ They remained flabbergasted—and flat-footed—for weeks on end, unable or unwilling to save the minorities from the mobs. Close to four thousand Muslims were killed in the riots, while some 120,000 Muslims lost their homes. About half of them fled to Bengal, where they felt more secure.13

  In early March 1947, Gandhi decided he must study the situation in Bihar at first-hand. There was ‘consternation among the Hindus’ in Noakhali when they heard he was to leave them. He had brought some kind of peace; now, in his absence, they feared a fresh round of attacks. Gandhi told Suhrawardy that he hoped ‘the fear will prove groundless and that you will do all you can to allay the fear’.14