Hard to digest. Gandhi ‘experimented’ with women’s sexuality.

Being the father of the nation, Mahatma Gandhi had huge responsibilities on his shoulders. And the majority of people feel that he did a great job in fulfilling them, but I don’t think so. It is now that I have discovered that what I read in my history books a few years back was not the complete truth. There is so much more to that man than we already know.

History is always written by winners. The ones who lost, get somewhere lost in history as well and the ones who won, leave a beautiful picture painted about themselves, as if everything which they did was perfect.

The same goes with Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi. Even though people see him as a very simple man with high values, it’s hard to ignore the fact that he had immense power at that time.

Mahatma Gandhi became a Brahmacharya at age 38, but he found it difficult to abide by its norms. In order to attain chastity, he made many complex rules so that he can remain and chaste without compromising on sexual indulgence with women.

It was this power only which he used to make young girls sleep naked with him in his ashram. It’s hard to imagine what those girls must have gone through, considering the fact that they were in their early twenties. This highly sexual nature of his was portrayed as an ‘experiment’, where Mr. Gandhi was practicing to control sexual temptation and refrain from ejaculation.

The level to which Gandhi’s ideologies on sex were exaggerated can be easily judged by the fact that when his father was on deathbed, taking his final breath, Gandhi left his bedside to have sex with his wife Kasturba. His father passed away while he was busy with something less important at that time.

After the death of Kasturba Gandhi, he started having more women around him. These women were not allowed to be with their husbands, but Gandhi enjoyed the privilege of bathing and sleeping naked with them. He had this belief that preserving semen inside the body and not ejaculating it, gives immense power to man.

“One who conserves his vital fluid acquires unfailing power,”

he said. Making no sense at all, right?  To me also it didn’t.

Mahatma Gandhi was highly criticized by politicians and leaders for all this, but he hardly paid any attention to them. Letters were written to him by Parasuram, Kedarnath and Swami Anand, raising questions and concerns that what he is doing is highly inappropriate and he is actually, exploiting human beings like this.

 “He should not allow Manu [Gandhi’s great-niece] to sleep in the same bed with him until he had tried enough to educate the public into his new way of thinking, or the public had got all the fact about him and clearly expressed its disapproval. Then he [can go]…back to his practice with the full brunt of his suffering for the opinion which he held right.”

said N.K. Bose, suggesting Gandhi when it came to his notice that one among those teenagers was Manu Gandhi also, his grand niece.

Sushila Nayar also fell in the same league as Manu Gandhi. She was the sister of Gandhi’s secretary and also a Physician by profession. Gandhi slept naked with her and they also used to bathe together. When Mahatma Gandhi was questioned about all this, his reply was, “While she is bathing I keep my eyes tightly shut. I do not know … whether she bathes naked or with her underwear on. I can tell from the sound that she uses soap.”

With so much going on, N.K. Bose wrote in a letter to Kishorlal G. Mashruwala, a close associate of Mahatma Gandhi,

“When I first learnt about Gandhi’s experiment in which a girl took off her clothes and lay under the same cover with him and he tried to find out if any sexual feeling was evoked in him or his companion, I felt genuinely surprised. Personally, I would not tempt myself like that and more than that, my respect for [women] would prevent me from treating her as an instrument in my experiment…”

What Gandhi did with these young women, shows great similarity with the current situation. We have Gurus using their position to exploit women and their sexuality which now I see happened in the past as well. This clearly shows that what we are seeing today is somewhat an after-effect of past only.

What I also fail to understand is why is this part of Mahatma Gandhi’s life selectively omitted from the school textbooks. If we are teaching about someone then shouldn’t we show all his facets, rather than focussing only on the better things he did. Even Gandhi wrote about some of these things in his book, then why refrain from discussing such aspects? In case, you haven’t read his book till now, then you can check his autobiography on Flipkart too by clicking here.

If exploiting women using his position and power was the biggest mistake which Gandhi made then the second biggest has to be the way he exaggerated non violence.

The only weapon which Gandhi used to fight for independence was non-violence. But it was this very non-violence which he exaggerated to such an extent that it turned to be the reason why our independence got delayed. Mahatma Gandhi called off the Non Cooperation Movement after the Cahauri Chaura incident. The movement was in full swing at that point of time, if it would have continued then complete independence could have been achieved two decades earlier.

I understand that non violence is a good thing but suggesting Jews that they should surrender themselves to death is absolute foolishness. When Hitler was hunting down the Jews, our Gandhi made this comment that Jews should not run away and instead, allow Hitler to murder them. It makes no sense at all to teach non violence to the victims, if it has to be taught then it should be the aggressor who must learn this lesson.

The ideologies of Mahatma Gandhi clashed with revolutionaries like Subhash Chandra Bose and Bhagat Singh. This made it difficult for these people to continue with the fight as Gandhi himself was against them. Mahatma Gandhi could have stopped the execution of Bhagat Singh but he cared very little about it as their paths were different. India lost a huge asset because of Gandhi, I wonder if they would have combined what a great force would that have been.

Excess of non-violence acted as a huge deterrence to the struggle, it took away the sting which was required to achieve independence.

Mahatma Gandhi’s thoughts and ideologies are praised all over the world but if you look at some of the extreme measures which he took, they are flawed to the core. His vision did some irreparable damage to our country which we always hesitate to talk openly. Some things are there which we just have to assume are perfect, because if we start questioning those rules itself then everything else starts looking meaningless too. One among them is Mahatma Gandhi. He has been molded into a perfect figure over the last few decades, but the reality is different and bitter as well.

by Vaibhav Lall