Many books, including British historian Zad Adams’ Gandhi: Naked Embracity “(2010) and Librarian Girija Kumar’s” Brahmacharya Gandhi and his female friend “(2006), have raised difficult questions about Gandhi’s unconventional behavior of women.
Adams described Gandhi as a sexually repressed person after 15 years of research, which did experiments of celibacy that can be considered morally problematic today. These included bathing with young women naked gold and even bathing with them to “test” their self-restraint. Kumar listed about 18 women participating in these practices, including Gandhi’s close associates like Manu, Abha Gandhi and Sushila Nair. Allegedly, some were tasked to massage them while naked, a behavior that Gandhi described as part of his spiritual discipline.
According to Adams, when there were riots taking place in Noakhali, Bengal, Gandhi called Manu and said, “If you were not with me, Muslim extremists would kill us. From today, we should both sleep with each other and test our pure and celibacy.”
The book also describes the use of Brahmacharya in Panchgani, Maharashtra, where Sushila Nair bathed and slept with Gandhi. According to Adams, Gandhi himself wrote, “When Sushila is naked in front of me while bathing, my eyes are closed tightly.
Nirmal Kumar Bose, who was close to Gandhi for two decades, has also documented these experiments in his book “My Days with Gandhi”. He mentioned some disturbing events. Nirmal Bose, referring to a special incident of Noakhali, wrote, “One day when I reached Gandhi’s bedroom room, I am watching, Sushila Nair is crying and Mahatma is slamming her head in the wall.” After that Bose started openly opposing Gandhi’s use of brahmacharya. When Gandhi did not listen to him, Bose separated himself from him.
Critics argue that these acts took advantage of the trust of young women in Gandhi’s ashram and damaged their future personal life. Some researchers claim that many of these women never married or then lived a emotionally disturbed life. Political contemporaries like Nehru, Patel and Ambedkar allegedly rejected Gandhi’s personal behavior, although he avoided public criticism.
After Gandhi’s assassination, Manu, one of Gandhi’s female friends, was given a strong instruction to keep his mouth shut. He was sent to a very remote area in Gujarat. Sushila was also always silent on this issue. The most sad thing is that the marital life of almost all the women involved in Gandhi’s use of Brahmacharya was destroyed.
Women like Sarla Devi and Missionary Esther Fairing reveal the emotional intimacy from Gandhi’s letters written which often used to be beyond general spiritual relations. His relationship with Medadeen Slade, which he changed to Miraben, gets further added to the list of intensive female attachment in his life.
This subject remains sensitive. Some people argue that Gandhi not only used celibacy for personal testing, but also as a means of asserting moral rights over his followers. According to the British historian, Jawaharlal Nehru considered him a person with unnatural and unusual habit due to Gandhi’s celibacy. Sardar Patel and JB Kripalani had distanced them away from their behavior.
Despite the ongoing debates, Gandhi is honored globally. However, the revelation of these personal aspects challenges the one-dimensional saint image often associated with the “Father of the Nation” of India.
Disclaimer: This article has been courted and edited from Bhadas 4 Media. News Himachali does not confirm this.