Feb. 2, 1978  - The Canadian India Times - Page 7

Book Review

Gandhi ji and Sex

By 

Jagpal S. Tiwana

 

Ved Mehta: Mahatma Gandhi and His Apostles. New York , Viking, $14.95, p.260

 

Ved Mehta became totally blind at the age of three. His father sent him to best schools in the world – Oxford and Harvard - so that his son might not end up as a cane maker or a basket weaver.

Mehta has already written eight books. Mahatma Gandhi and His Apostles is his ninth book which is certainly going to be more popular and controversial than the others.

Gandhi was a great political figure of the twentieth century. With his fasts and scripture reading, his dedication to non-violence, simplicity and celibacy, he captured the imagination of millions in India . Myths began to develop during his life time and when he died a martyrs’ death there were those who compared him to Christ. His human weaknesses have been obscured by mythologizers fearful of debasing and sensationalizing their martyred hero.

In Mahatma Gandhi and His Apostles, Mehta has sought to separate facts from myths without denying the Mahatma his greatness. Mehta interviewed most of the disciples and relatives of Gandhi and studied his biographies, speeches and writings to discover the real man.

There is a brief description of Gandhi’s childhood, his student days in England , his struggle for Indian rights, in South Africa and leadership of the national movement in India . – Facts which are already well known. What is not known to the average reader, and what Mehta is at pains to reveal is the attitude of Gandhi to sex, although this has been discussed by Nirmal Bose in “My days with Gandhi”, by Erikson in “Gandhi’s Truth”, by Collins and Lapparrie in “Freedom at Midnight” and by Gandhi himself in occasional public utterances.

Gandhi became a brahamchari- a celibate- when he was thirty six. As a brahamchari, he should have eschewed all contacts with women, but, instead, he would take naked women to bed with him. Amongst those who slept with him were Sushila Nayar, Sucheta kriplani, Abha and Manu. Gandhi viewed the practice as an experiment in brahamcharya. For him this was a sure way to test his mastery of celibacy. He believed that if he could succeed in his brahamcharya experiment, he would be able to vanquish Jinnah with his spiritual power and foil his plan for partition.

During his Noakhali tour of 1946, Gandhi used to sleep with the nineteen year old girl Manu. When Nirmal Bose, his Bengali interpreter, saw this, he protested, asserting that the experiments must be having bad psychological effects on the girls. In his Book “My Days with Gandhi”, published in 1953 with great difficulty at his own expense, he gives a Freudian interpretation to the experiments.

Mostly it is believed that Gandhi started sleeping with women towards the close of his life. According to Sushila Nayar, he had started it much earlier, but then he called it “Nature Cure”. She told Mehta in an interview “long before Manu came into the picture I used to sleep with him, just as I would with my mother. He might say my back aches. Put some pressure on it. So I might put some pressure on it or lie down on his back and he might just go to sleep. In the early days, there was no question of calling this a brahacharya experiment. It was just part of the Nature Cure. Later on, when people started asking questions about his physical contacts with women, the idea of brahamcharya experiments was developed. Don’t ask me any more questions about brahamcharya experiments. There is nothing to say, unless you have a dirty mind, like Bose”.

No doubt Gandhi’s interest in women, whether he called it ‘experiments in brhamcharya’ or ‘Nature cure’, was his conscious suppression of sexual feelings which found expression in such acts. It is also confirmed by his close political associate Rajagopalachari who told Mehta “…it is now said that he was born so holy that he had a natural bent for brahamcharya, but actually he was highly sexed,”

Gandhi as convinced like many people that sex diffuses human energy which should be conserved and sublimated. He imposed celibacy on all those who lived in ashram. J. B. Kriplani and Sucheta Kriplani married against his wishes, but they remained brahamcharies after their marriage. The imposition of celibacy did not work in all cases. According to Raihana, a devout disciple of Gandhi, “the more they try to restrain themselves and repress their sexual impulses, the more over sexed and sex conscious they became.”

Gandhi’s ideas on sex are certainly outdated. He believed that women’s interest in sex was submissive and self-sacrificing. He assumed that women derived no pleasure from such activity. When his son failed to live what Gandhi considered a moral life, he felt guilty for the sexual excesses in his childhood marriage. When his first baby died soon after its birth, he felt he was justly punished for the sin. This sin was two fold – he had intercourse with his pregnant wife; he had withdrawn from his ailing father’s side to sleep with his wife and his father had died a few minutes after he left. The guilt haunted Gandhi in his later years till he vowed to lead a brahamcharya life.

Though Gandhi did not lack moral education, he certainly lacked sex education.

There is, however, no reason for putting any construction upon his relationship with women beyond Mehta’s interpretation. Gandhi never concealed his true reasons for his actions.  He did everything publicly and spoke uninhibitedly. Even Bose admitted that there was no question of impropriety in the relationships and “…there was something saintly and almost supernatural about him.”

Every great man had his weaknesses, so Gandhi had his. He was no doubt a Mahatma. His greatness cannot be minimized. He created a political awakening among the masses of India and led them to the doors of freedom. He became one with the poor by living a simple and austere life. He identified with the Untouchables by doing their work with his own hands. He practiced what he preached. He sacrificed the career of his children to his concept of moral education by denying them the academic education which in his view “perpetuated slavery”. His eldest son, Hira Lal, never forgave him for that and did exactly the opposite of what his noble father preached. He became a meat eater, an alcoholic, a gambler and a philanderer, but this could not deter Gandhi from the moral path he had chosen. Albert Einstein once said of him, “Generations to come, it may be, will scarce believe that such a one as this ever in flesh and blood walked upon this  earth.”

Ved Mehta laments the fact that with Gandhi’s death his disciples have withdrawn from the great tasks he had undertaken. According to Mehta, only three genuine Gandhians are left in the field to do battle for his ideas and ideals. They are Vinoba Bhave, Satish Chander Gupta and Abdul Gaffar Khan.

It is, however, surprising that Mehta did not interview two other devout Gandhians, Jai Parkash Narain and Morarji Desai. J.P. ‘s name does not figure at all in the book, though his wife Prabhavati spent seven years in Gandhi’s ashram when J.P. was in the United States. When J.P. returned to India , the poor fellow found her vowed to celibacy. There is only one line in the whole book about Morarji Desai who, with his rigid faith in prohibition and urine therapy, is at times, more Gandhian than Gandhi himself.

Mahatma Gandhi and His Apostles is extremely well written book. Mehta has made it highly readable with his subtle expression and suave sarcasm, particularly when he reproduces his conversations with Gandhians. He has shown courage in unraveling some of the myths woven around Gandhi by his blind followers. These latter will certainly be dismayed by his plain speaking.

The book has already created a tumult in the Indian Parliament, but it will be a great pity if it is banned.

 

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