by Sudhir Kakar
Battle, weapons, victory and defeat are a part of Gandhi’s image in his account of a lifelong conflict with the dark god of desire, the only opponent he did not engage nonviolently nor could ever completely subdue. The metaphors that pervade the descriptions of this passionate conflict are of ‘invasions by an insidious enemy’ who needs to be implacably ‘repulsed’; while the perilous struggle is like ‘walking on a sword’s edge.’ The god himself (though Gandhi would not have given Kama, the god of love, the exalted status accorded him in much of Hindu mythology) is the ‘serpent which I know will bite me,’ ‘the scorpion of passion,’ whose destruction, annihilation, conflagration, is a supreme aim of his spiritual strivings. In sharp contrast to all his other opponents, whose humanity he was always scrupulous to respect, the god of desire was the only antagonist with whom Gandhi could not compromise and whose humanity (not to speak of his divinity) he always denied.
For Gandhi, defeats in this war were occasions for bitter self-reproach and a public confession of his humiliation, while the victories were a matter of joy, ‘fresh beauty,’ and an increase in vigour and self-confidence that brought him nearer to the moksha he so longed for. Whatever may be his values to the contrary, a sympathetic reader, conscious of Gandhi’s greatness and his prophetic insights into many of the dilemmas of modern existence, cannot fail to be moved by the dimensions of Gandhi’s personal struggle—heroic in its proportion, startling in its intensity, interminable in its duration. By the time Gandhi concludes his autobiography with the words:
To conquer the subtle passions seems to me to be far harder than the conquest of the world by the force of arms. Ever since my return to India I have had experiences of the passions hidden within me. They have made me feel ashamed though I have not lost courage. My experiments with truth have given, and continue to give, great joy. But I know that I must traverse a perilous path. I must reduce myself to zero,28
no reader can doubt his passionate sincerity and honesty. His is not the reflexive, indeed passionless moralism of the more ordinary religionist.
How did Gandhi himself experience sexual desire, the temptations and the limits of the flesh? To know this, it is important that we listen closely to Gandhi’s voice describing his conflicts in the language in which he spoke of them—Gujarati, his mother tongue. Given the tendency toward hagiolatry among the followers of a great man, their translations, especially of the Master’s sexual conflicts, are apt to distort the authentic voice of the man behind the saint. The English translation of Gandhi’s autobiography by his faithful secretary, Mahadev Desai, in spite of the benefit of Gandhi’s own revision, suffers seriously from this defect, and any interpretations based on this translation are in danger of missing Gandhi’s own experience. Take, for instance, one famous incident from Gandhi’s youth, of the schoolboy Gandhi visiting a prostitute for the first time in the company of his Muslim friend and constant tempter, Sheikh Mehtab. The original Gujarati version describes the incident as follows:
I entered the house but he who is to be saved by God remains pure even if he wants to fall. I became almost blind in that room. I could not speak. Struck dumb by embarrassment, I sat down on the cot with the woman but could not utter a single word. The woman was furious, gave me a couple of choice abuses and showed me to the door [my translation].29
The English translation, however, is much less matter-of-fact. It is full of Augustinianisms in which young Gandhi goes into a ‘den of vice’ and tarries in the ‘jaws of sin.’ These are absent in the original. By adding adjectives such as ‘evil’ and ‘animal’ before ‘passions,’ the translation seems to be judging them in a Christian theological sense that is missing in Gandhi’s own account. St Augustine, for instance—with whose Confessions Gandhi’s Experiments has much in common—was rent asunder because of the ‘sin that dwelt in me,’ by ‘the punishment of a sin more freely committed, in that I was a son of Adam.’30 Gandhi, in contrast, uses two words, vishaya and vikara, for lust and passion respectively. The root of vishaya is from poison, and that is how he regards sexuality—as poisonous, for instance, when he talks of it in conjunction with serpents and scorpions. The literal meaning of vikara, or passion, is ‘distortion,’ and that is how passions are traditionally seen in the Hindu view, waves of mind that distort the clear waters of the soul. For Gandhi, then, lust is not sinful but poisonous, contaminating the elixir of immortality. It is dangerous in and of itself, ‘destructuralizing’ in psychoanalytic language, rather than merely immoral, at odds, that is, with certain social or moral injunctions. To be passionate is not to fall from a state of grace, but to suffer a distortion of truth. In contrast to the English version, which turns his very Hindu conflict into a Christian one, Gandhi’s struggle with sexuality is not essentially a conflict between sin and morality, but rather one. between psychic death and immortality, on which the moral quandary is superimposed.
We can, of course, never be quite certain whether Gandhi was a man with a gigantic erotic temperament or merely the possessor of an overweening conscience that magnified each departure from an unattainable ideal of purity as a momentous lapse. Nor is it possible, for that matter, to evaluate the paradoxical impact of his scruples in intensifying the very desires they opposed. Both fuelled each other, the lid of self-control compressing and heating up the contents of the cauldron of desire, in Freud’s famous metaphor, their growing intensity requiring ever greater efforts at confinement.
Gandhi himself, speaking at the birth centenary of Tolstoy in 1928, warns us to refrain from judgments. While talking of the import of such struggles in the lives of great homo religiosi, he seems to be asking for empathy rather than facile categorization:
The seeming contradictions in Tolstoy’s life are no blot on him or sign of his failure. They signify the failure of the observer…. Only the man himself knows how much he struggles in the depth of his heart or what victories he wins in the war between Rama and Ravana.a The spectator certainly cannot know that.31
In judging a great man, Gandhi goes on to say, and here he seems to be talking as much of himself as Tolstoy,
God is witness to the battles he may have fought in his heart and the victories he may have won. These are the only evidence of his failures and successes…. If anyone pointed out a weakness in Tolstoy though there could hardly be an occasion for anyone to do so for he was pitiless in his self-examination, he would magnify that weakness to fearful proportions. He would have seen his lapse and atoned for it in the manner he thought most appropriate before anyone had pointed it out to him.32
This is a warning we must take seriously but do not really need. Our intention is not to ‘analyze’ Gandhi’s conflict in any reductionist sense but to seek to understand it in all its passion—and obscurity. Gandhi’s agony is ours as well, after all, an inevitable by-product of the long human journey from infancy to adulthood. We all wage wars on our wants.
A passionate man who suffered his passions as poisonous of his inner self and a sensualist who felt his sensuality distorted his inner purpose, Gandhi’s struggle with what he took to be the god of desire was not unremitting. There were long periods in his adulthood when his sensuality was integrated with the rest of his being. Old movie clips and reminiscences of those who knew him in person attest to some of this acceptable sensuality. It found expression in the vigorous grace of his locomotion, the twinkle in his eye and the brilliance of his smile; the attention he paid to his dress—even if the dress was a freshly laundered, spotless loincloth; the care he directed to the preparation and eating of his simple food; the delight with which he sang and listened to devotional songs; and the pleasure he took in the daily oil massage of his body. The Christian St Augustine would have been altogether shocked. Here, then, the Indian ascetic’s path diverges from that trod by the more austere and self-punishing Western monk. Here, too, from Gandhi’s sensuous gaiety, stems his ability to rivet masses of men not by pronouncement in scripture but by his very presence.
In Gandhi’s periods of
despair, occasioned by real-life disappointments and setbacks in the sociopolitical campaigns to which he had committed his life, the integration of his sensuality and spirituality would be threatened and again we find him obsessively agonizing over the problem of genital desire. Once more he struggled against the reemergence of an old antagonist whom he sought to defeat by public confessions of his defeats.
One such period spans the years between 1925 and 1928, after his release from jail, when he was often depressed, believing that the Indian religious and political divisions were too deep for the country to respond to his leadership and that Indians were not yet ready for his kind of nonviolent civil disobedience. There was a breakdown with a serious condition of hypertension and doctors had advised him long rest. Interestingly, this is also the period in which he wrote his confessional autobiography, where he despondently confides, ‘Even when I am past 56 years, I realize how hard a thing it (celibacy) is. Every day I realize more and more that it is like walking on the sword’s edge, and I can see every moment the necessity of continued vigilance.’33 His ideals and goals failing him, Gandhi finds sublime purpose and intent crumbling, exposing desires held in abeyance. These then become prepotent. The psychoanalyst would speak in this instance of the disintegration of ‘sublimations’—conversions of base wishes into socially sanctioned aspirations—and the lonely, painful regression which ensues.
In the copious correspondence of the years 1927 and 1928, the two longest and the most personally involved letters are neither addressed to his close political coworkers and leaders of future free India such as Nehru, Patel or Rajagopalachari, nor do they deal with vital political or social issues. The addressees are two unknown young men, and the subject of the letters is the convolutions of Gandhi’s instinctual promptings. Responding to Balakrishna Bhave, who had expressed doubts about the propriety of Gandhi placing his hands on the shoulders of young girls while walking, Gandhi conducts a characteristic, obsessive search for any hidden eroticism in his action.34 The other letter, to Harjivan Kotak, deserves to be quoted at some length since it details Gandhi’s poignant struggle, his distress at the threatened breakdown of the psycho-sensual synthesis.
When the mind is disturbed by impure thoughts, instead of trying to drive them out one should occupy it in some work, that is, engage it in reading or in some bodily labour which requires mental attention too. Never let the eyes follow their inclination. If they fall on a woman, withdraw them immediately. It is scarcely necessary for anyone to look straight at a man’s or woman’s face. This is the reason why brahmacharis, and others too, are enjoined to walk with their eyes lowered. If we are sitting, we should keep them steady in one direction. This is an external remedy, but a most valuable one. You many undertake a fast if and when you find one necessary…. You should not be afraid even if you get involuntary discharges during a fast. Vaids (traditional doctors) say that, even when impure desires are absent, such discharges may occur because of pressure in the bowels. But, instead of believing that, it helps us more to believe that they occur because of impure desires. We are not always conscious of such desires. I had involuntary discharges twice during the last two weeks. I cannot recall any dream. I never practised masturbation. One cause of these discharges is of course my physical weakness but I also know that there are impure desires deep down in me. I am able to keep out such thoughts during waking hours. But what is present in the body like some hidden poison, always makes its way, even forcibly sometimes. I feel unhappy about this, but am not nervously afraid. I am always vigilant. I can suppress the enemy but have not been able to expel him altogether. If I am truthful, I shall succeed in doing that too. The enemy will not be able to endure the power of truth. If you are in the same condition as I am, learn from my experience. In its essence, desire for sex-pleasure is equally impure, whether its object is one’s wife or some other woman. Its results differ. At the moment, we are thinking of the enemy in his essential nature. Understand, therefore, that so far as one’s wife is concerned you are not likely to find anyone as lustful as I was. That is why I have described my pitiable condition to you and tried to give you courage.35
A ‘hidden power,’ an ‘enemy to be expelled’—in such circumstances the body becomes a strange land inhabited by demons of feeling and impulse divided from the self. With setbacks in unity of intent, there is a further fragmenting of the self. The moral dilemma stirs conflicts of a primeval order, when early ‘introjects’—those presences bound to desire out of which we construct our primary self—are awakened, taste blood or better, poison, and threaten our identity—our sense of wholeness, continuity, and sameness.
Another emotionally vulnerable period comprises roughly 18 months from the middle of 1935 onwards, when Gandhi was almost 66 years old. Marked by a ‘nervous breakdown,’ when his blood pressure went dangerously out of control, Gandhi was advised complete rest for some months by his doctors. He attributed this breakdown to overwork and especially mental exhaustion brought on by the intensity of his involvement and emotional reactions to the personal problems of his coworkers. He considered these as important as those pertaining to the country’s independence, regretting only that he had not reached the Hindu ideal, as outlined in the Gita, of detachment from emotions. Gandhi used this enforced rest for introspection and decided to give up his practice of walking with his hands on the shoulders of young girls. In ‘A Renunciation,’ an article he wrote for his newspaper during this time, he traced the history of this particular practice, reiterated the purity of his paternal intentions towards the girls involved, acknowledged that he was not unaware of the dangers of the liberty he was taking, and based his renunciation on the grounds of setting a good example to the younger generation.36
What is more significant is that in the very first article he was allowed to write by his doctors, Gandhi, meditating on the causes of his ill-health, comes back to the question of his celibacy. He mentions an encounter with a woman during the period of convalescence in Bombay, which not only disturbed him greatly but made him despise himself. In a letter to Prema Kantak, a disciple and confidante in his Sabarmati ashram, he elaborates on this incident further.
I have always had the shedding of semen in dreams. In South Africa the interval between two ejaculations may have been in years. I do not remember it fully. Here the time difference is in months. I have mentioned these ejaculations in a couple of my articles. If my brahmacharya had been without this sheding of semen then I would have been able to present many more things to the world. But someone who from the age of 15 to 30 has enjoyed sexuality (vishya-bhog)—even if it was only with his wife—whether such a man can conserve his semen after becoming a brahmachari seems impossible to me. Someone whose power of storing the semen has been weakened daily for 15 years cannot hope to regain this power all at once. That is why I regard myself as an incomplete brahmachari. But where there are no trees, there are thorn bushes. This shortcoming of mine is known to the world.
The experience which tortured me in Bombay was strange and painful. All my ejaculations have taken place in dreams; they did not trouble me. But Bombay’s experience was in the waking state. I did not have any inclination to fulfil that desire. My body was under control. But in spite of my trying, the sense organ remained awake. This experience was new and unbecoming. I have narrated its cause.b After removing this cause the wakefulness of the sense organ subsided, that is, it subsided in the waking state.
In spite of my shortcoming, one thing has been easily possible for me, namely that thousands of women have remained safe with me. There were many occasions in my life when certain women, in spite of their sexual desire, were saved or rather I was saved by God. I acknowledge it one hundred percent that this was God’s doing. That is why I take no pride in it. I pray daily to God that such a situation should last till the end of my life.
To reach the level of Shukadeva is my goal.c I have not been able to achieve it. Otherwise in spite of the generation of semen I would be impotent and the sheddin
g will become impossible.
The thoughts I have expressed recently about brahamacharya are not new. This does not mean that the ideal will be reached by the whole world or even by thousands of men and women in my lifetime. It may take thousands of years, but brahmacharya is true, attainable and must be realized.
Man has still to go a long way. His character is still that of a beast. Only the form is human. It seems that violence is all around us. In spite of this, just as there is no doubt about truth and nonviolence similarly there is not doubt about brahmacharya.
Those who keep on burning despite their efforts are not trying hard enough. Nurturing passion in their minds they only want that no shedding of semen take place and avoid women. The second chapter of Gita applies to such people.
What I am doing at the moment is purification of thought. Modern thought regards brahmacharya as wrong conduct. Using artificial methods of birth control it wants to satisfy sexual passion. My soul rebels against this. Sexual desire will remain in the world, but the world’s honour depends on brahmacharya and will continue to do so.37
Further self-mortification was one of his responses to what he regarded as an unforgivable ‘lapse.’ Even the ascetic regimen of the ashram now seemed luxurious. Leaving Kasturbai to look after its inmates, he went off to live in a one-room hut in a remote and poverty-stricken, untouchable village. Though he wished to be alone—a wish that for a man in his position was impossible of fulfilment—he soon became the focus of a new community.
Another dark period covers the last two years of Gandhi’s life. The scene is India on the eve of Independence in 1947. A Muslim Pakistan is soon to be carved out of the country, much against Gandhi’s wishes. His dream of Hindus and Muslims living amicably in a single unified state seems to be shattered beyond hope. Gandhi would even postpone Independence if the partition of the country could be averted, but his voice does not resonate quite so powerfully in the councils where the transfer of power is being negotiated. The air hangs heavy with clouds of looming violence. Hindus and Muslims warily eye each other as potential murderers…. or eventual victims. The killings have already started in the crowded back-alleys of Calcutta and in the verdant expanses of rural Bengal, where the 78-year-old Mahatma is wearily trudging from one village to another, trying to stem the rushing tide of arson, rape, and murder that will soon engulf many other parts of the country. The few close associates who accompany him on this mission of peace are a witness to his despair and helpless listerers to the anguished cries of ‘Kya karun, kya karun? (What should I do? What should I do?)’ heard from his room in the middle of the night.38 ‘I find myself in the midst of exaggeration and falsity,’ he writes, ‘I am unable to discover the truth. There is terrible mutual distrust. Oldest friendships have snapped. Truth and Ahimsa (nonviolence) by which I swear and which have to my knowledge sustained me for 60 years, seem to fail to show the attributes I ascribed to them.’39
