Mohandas: The Unknown

 

 

 

 

 

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© 2010 By Debasis

 

 

 

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Note from the author

 

Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (2 October 1869 – 30

January 1948) was the pre-eminent political and spiritual leader of India during the Indian independence        movement.  He was the pioneer of satyagraha—resistance to tyranny through mass civil disobedience, firmly founded upon ahimsa or total non-violence— which believed by many led India to independence and has inspired movements for civil rights and freedom across the world.

 

Though even with little knowledge of political science and history, one can realise that British left South-east Asia including India not because of Gandhi, Neheru or Subhas Bose, but because of their new economic and political strategy. India did not become independent on 15^th August 1947. It was just a transfer of power. 

 

But that discussion is beyond the scope of this article. What are within the scope are various philosophies and principles of Gandhi. That is why important topics like Simon commission had not been discussed here.

Gandhi as a lawyer never advocated for a client whom he thought was guilty. A man who walked on the truth, a man honest enough to reveal even the darkest side of his life in his autobiography –‘My experiment with truth’. Despite being a rank 1 leader, he served the poor and leapers by his own hand which is unimaginable by today’s politicians and leaders.

Gandhi lived modestly in a self-sufficient residential community and wore the traditional Indian dhoti and shawl, woven with yarn he had hand spun on a charkha. He ate simple vegetarian food, and also undertook long fasts as a means of both selfpurification and social protest. He was determined to live his life as an ascetic, a symbol of a religious man.

 

As the poet Sarojini Naidu, who was known as the “Nightingale of India joked, “it costs the nation a fortune(millions) to keep Gandhi living in poverty.” An entire village including an Ashram was built for him His philosophy privileged the village way over that of the city, yet he was always financially dependent on the support of industrial billionaires like Birla. Birlas were the ones who controlled his every move and were responsible for marketing Gandhi Inc.

“The Indian government contributed $10 million for the movie Gandhi. It is based on a book of fiction called “Freedom at Midnight” by Collins et al. You can see glossed over failures and the perversion in the movie Gandhi but it is not overt and explicitly shown. You have to be smart and familiar with the history to see it embedded in the movie.

For all his vaunted selflessness and modesty, he made no move to object when Jinnah was attacked during a Congress session for calling him “Mr. Gandhi” instead of “Mahatma“, and booed off the stage by the Gandhi’s supporters.

We know that Gandhi borrowed his three great political ideas from the west. He got non-violence from Tolstoy, civil disobedience from Thoreau and Sarvoday (the rise of all) from Ruskin. (Dawn. Sunday, March 22, 2009 -Aakar Patel)

 

Complied from recent books by Dr. Singh, Dr. Watson, and Mr. Mohandas Gandhi ‘s two grandsons –Arun Gandhi and

Rajmohan Gandhi. Additional material and quotes are from Saijorni

Naidu, records from South Africa, Mr. Nirmal Bose and Time

Magazine. A seminal critique of Mr. Gandhi was written Erik Erikson titled “Gandhi’s Truth“. I have also quoted from the reports of the Nobel Peace Committee and the records of the US Congress.

Of course no research paper on Mohandas Gandhi would be complete without references to the Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, Government of India (CWMG). CWMG page numbers have been quoted in the article.

 

Was he a politician or a saint? if both, how did these two Gandhis combine, and in what proportion? Or was he, as criticts have alleged, someone who broke a pledge, that he would rather die than accept Partition? Was not an unfeeling husband and father? A man who did strange things in the name of chastity? Or emasculated India in the name of Nonviolence? Or patronized Dalits without empowering them? –Rajmohan Gandhi on Mohandas Gandhi, Page X, “Gandhi”.

This article discuss the sexual antics of Gandhi, and it sheds light on his political and personal failures. It highlights his strange habits of urine drinking, and love for enemas. He brings out the facts about his consumption of his own urine, and his drinking of Holy Cow urine. The article lists Mr. Gandhis pedophilia incest, adultery, weird fetishes, and sexual perversion. Our article presents solid proof and well research supporting documentation on these and other issues.

This article summarizes the writings of Gandhi’s grandsons, and other authors and contains the following sections:

• “Sexual Antics of Gandhi:” An anthology or research based on the books by Gandhi’s grandsons.
• “Gandhi’s Girls“:- very comprehensive Time Magazine article with blow by blow details of the exploding news about Gandhi’s indiscretions,
• “Was Gandhi a Tantric:” Well researched article on the details of his liaisons.
• The works of Tim Watson and G.B. Singh published in 2008 .

Mohandas (not Mahatma) Gandhi’s Failed Leadership in Politics and Gandhi’s Domestic Violence and weird Sexual Perversion in his private life had been discussed.

 

Not even a single line had been written without studious research and references. Despite, if any one can site any error, misinformation, contradiction or miss-quote, will be highly appreciated.

With warm regards, Debashis .

Bangalore, India

Rationalist_deb@aol.in

 

About the author

 

Debashis is the joint secretary of the Science and Rationalists’ Association of India and Humanists’ Association of India. He is in-charge of rationalist and human rights movement in south India.

He is the author of a number of Bengali language and English language books on human rights and rationalism, disputing supernatural claims. He also exposed several so-called miracles. Being a human right activist, human rights take the prime focus in his write-up.

In his school days itself he started writing in premier Bengali and English magazines and dailies. An avid reader, his interests include anthropology, archeology, history, psychology, sociology and of course, politics. As a result, his understanding of the human mind as an individual and the social human being as a species is vast. With this knowledge of the human mind, his keen sense of politics gives him an insight and a rare understanding of all human problems.

In his books and write-ups, topics like psychology, history, sociology and politics are discussed by way of story-telling in such lucid language that one never loses interest. And the special point of view, which is the trademark of Debashis, never fails to hit the readers’mind.

 

 

 

 

Introduction

Many Indians are doled out the 8th grade version of psychodrama doled out to you in the temple. They never get a chance to read any international appraisals of the man. Obviously not. Read the book by his two grandsons, and by Dr. Singh. A majority of Indians don’t feel the way you do about the man. Making him into a diet doesn’t serve any historical purpose. Not only was he infallible–he was a failure

The progeny of Einstein, the Jewish Defense League (JDL), and the ADL feel disgust for Gandhi. Certainly his cozying up to Hitler didn’t endear him to the Jews. Asking all Jews to commit mass suicide while praising Hitler doesn’t make him popular in Israel or the Jewish world. The 109th Congress of the United States of American condemned him for his racism, and the Nobel Peace prize Committee criticized him for his war mongering, and requesting the Government of Bharat (aka India) to wage war on Pakistan. That telegram according to the Nobel peace prize committee clinched his dumping.

South Africans won’t even tolerate his statue in Durban. There were huge riots in South Africa against him and his fake nonviolence. His various statues in the US (mostly built by Indians) are constantly harasses with graffiti or simply ignored.

Prime Minister Atlee, the last PM of Britain before independence when asked about how important were Gandhi’s significance in forcing the British to leave South Asia–to this question Attlee said Gandhi was not a insignificant.

He supported all British wars–Zulu, Boer, WW1, and WW2–in fact there wasn’t a war he did not support–thus enhancing the ability of England to continue colonization. His greatest achievement—was no achievement at all. The British had decided to leave South Asia. Ghana, Nigeria, Malaysia–all got their freedoms from British colonialism at about the same time.

 

By not giving the Dalits separate electorate, he kept them in slavery. He said that one would have to go over his dead body to abolish the caste system. That is why the 450 million Dalits and Lower Caste hate him so much. Read Ambedaker who disliked Gandhi. His followers detest him also. Dalits hate him for calling them Harijans– a name that they have rejected because it is condescending.

Surely he is disliked  in Pakistan and even Bangladesh for antagonizing with the Muslim leadership and alienating the Muslims–contrary to the propaganda doled out by the Indian National Congress, which thinks that the history of the INC is the history of India. Jaswant Singh an ex-NJP leader writes pretty much what I have said.

Gandhi and Nehru assassinated one of the most important leaders of Independence–Mr Bose (with whose wife, Mr. gandhi was caught sleeping with). Not only that 29000 members of the Indian National Army were murdered in cold blood.

Sairojni Naidu was very critical of Gandhi and said “we have to spend millions to keep Mr. Gandhi in poverty”. Sarawarkar, and Golwalkar surely disliked Mr. Gandhi. His attitude forced the

Muslims out of the Congress

“A man’s success or failure is determined by his accomplishments and his character. Mr. Gandhi it seems–didn’t have either” –Sex Life of Nehru: Menege De trios:-Tryst with Homosexuality:-Love triangle Edwina, Nehru and Lord Mountbatten changed history.

Of course the history of India has been pretty much the history of the Indian National Congress–where all INC leaders are good and all those who opposed the INC are evil. However even withing the INC, there was serious opposition to the old man. Mr. Jaswant Singh in his new book on Jinnah describes how Nehru used to attack Mr. Gandhi.

“Messrs Nehru and Patel were offensively aggressive to Gandhi ji….There was something psychopathic about it. They seemed to have set their heart on something and, whenever they scented that Gandhi ji was preparing to obstruct them, they barked violently.  It is both disheartening and insulting because ‘sons’ are not expected to bark at their Bapu.” – Jaswant Singh in his book India, parition and Jinnah.

The official historical discourse in India has also purposely cultivated a mythical Nehru-Gandhi relationship with Gandhi as the ‘political father’ of Nehru. Jaswant’s research has blown apart this myth. Way back in the 1927 Madras session, these two stalwarts clashed with one another: Gandhi insisting on dominion status whereas Nehru demanding complete independence for India. Moreover, Nehru disagreed with several other Gandhian precepts: “…you expected the Khadi Movement to spread rapidly…our Khadi work is almost wholly divorced from politics….What then can be done?…you only criticise and no helpful lead comes from you…” After reading Gandhi’s articles in Young India, he lamented: “I have often felt how very different my ideals were from yours… You misjudge greatly….I neither think that the so-called Ramaraj was very good in the past, nor do I want it back.” And while disagreeing with his ‘Mahatma’ that Indian poverty could be eradicated by village employment, Nehru lambasted: “You do not say a word against the semi-feudal zamindari system…or against the capitalist exploitation of both the workers and the consumers.” Gandhi could not digest such strictures lightly and shot back: “The differences between you and me appear to me to be so vast and radical that there seems no meeting ground between us.” – Jaswant’s ‘shock therapy’ By Basharat Hussain Qizilbash | Published: October 12, 2009

Mahatma

Mr. Mohandas Gandhi was converted into a “Mahatma” under the auspices of the British in South Africa. Its genesis was started by the white Christian clergy. Rev. Joseph J. Doke, a Baptist Minster was the first to write the biography of M. K. Gandhi.

What started as a ploy became an avalanche under a well planned scheme. Pastor John H. Holmes, a Unitarian “priest” from New York praised Gandhi in his writings and sermons with titles like:

After the Labor Atlee government took over in Britain, the only point of discussion was “when” to dismantle the colonies. Nigeria, Malaysia, Kuwait, Iraq all got their independence without any “Gandhi”. What kind of national leaders sits in a religious “Ashram” and wears a monk like religious uniform? Would this sort of enlightened soul be acceptable to a diverse population? The answer is no.

• “Gandhi: The Modern Christ”,
• “Mahatma Gandhi: The Greatest Man since Jesus

Christ”,

• “Mahatma Ji: Reincarnation of Christ”and
• “Gandhi before Pilate.”

Romain Rolland, the French Nobel Laureate in literature thought of Gandhi not only as a Hindu saint, but also “another Christ”. He wrote Gandhi’s new biography in French which poured praise on the the deity— “Gandhi is the One Luminous, Creator of

All,” “Mahatma.”

At this juncture the Nehru-Gandhi loyalist Hindus were brought in. Muslims and others from the Subcontinent were left aghast when Krishnalal Shridharni elevated Gandhi to the status of twentieth century Hindu god – “The seventh reincarnation of

Vishnu, Lord Rama.”

One of the objectives of colonialism was the “civilize” the “natives” and the “tribes”. According to Rudyard Kipling this was the “White Man’s Burden”. The British machinery and their acolytes, the Christian clergy had an ulterior motive in building the Gandhi myth. Similar schemes had worked in Africa and Latin America. Local deities were “included” in Christian concepts to make it more palatable to the people. Later these “local influences” would be purged.

The Colonial rulers thought that by elevating Gandhi to a 20th century messiah and then converting him would open the flood gate for evangelizing and converting the Hindu and masses. However Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi was not Emperor

Constantine, and was unable to fulfill the wishes of the colonial masters.

[Many believe that this wish of foreign funded Christian

Missionaries is being fulfilled by Christian Sonia Gandhi and her Christian lobby. Many Indians are upset that Glady Stains was awarded Padmshree. Many Indians are upset at the missionary activities of the faith healer Benny Hinn’s organized in Bangalore with the support of Andhra Government to please, Sonia Gandhi, the

Pope and the Vatican City’s its Indian ambassador.]

The biggest Urban Myth is that Mr. Gandhi led a movement for the independence from the British. Gandhi did not bring the British empire to its knees. By supporting the British war effort in

South Africa as well as in the Subcontinent, he actually prolonged Britain’s occupation of the Subcontinent and prolonged the life of the British Empire. In 1945 the tottering “empire” was its knees already. Actually it had been knocked out (KO!).

WW2 with 50 million dead had totally destroyed London and decimated the infrastructure of the country. There was no appetite for empire. British voters threw out Churchill. The exhausted British had already decided to leave all her colonies after the 2nd world war.

 

The “Mahatma” was awarded to Gandhi as a reward for his support for the war.

 

Gandhi was “CREATED” to use the South Africans in the British wars:

Gandhi was a creation of the British and they used him to get the South Africans to fight in the British wars. He also stratified the South African society. From Oct. 1899 to May 31st, 1902 Mahatma Gandhi did not mention in “Non-Violence.”At the beginning of the South African War, Gandhi argued that “Indians must support the War effort in order to legitimize their claims to full citizenship.”

Gandhi, a failure in South Africa

Gandhi was a failure in South Africa and a failed attorney in Bombay. His failure hardened “Apartheid” and it took decades to dismantle it. This created a rift with the Black of South Africa who rejected this. Gandhi urged the colonial authorities to raise a volunteer militia of Indians to fight for the Empire. Gandhi informed the “South African Natal Authorities” that it would be a “criminal folly” if they did not enlist Indians for the war. Mr. Gandhi urged the Indian community to show their loyalty to the British Empire by raising funds for the War. He reminded them that they were in South Africa due to the courtesy of the Empire.

• “A general belief seems to prevail in the colony that the Indians are little better, if at all, than the savages or natives of Africa. Even the children are taught to believe in that manner, with the result that the Indian is being dragged down to the position of a raw Kaffir.” (Reference: The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, Government of India

(CWMG), Vol I, p. 150)

• Regarding forcible registration with the state of blacks: “One can understand the necessity for registration of Kaffirs who will not work.” (Reference: CWMG, Vol I, p.

105)

• “Why, of all places in Johannesburg, the Indian Location should be chosen for dumping down all the Kaffirs of the town passes my comprehension…the Town Council must withdraw the Kaffirs from the Location.” (Reference: CWMG, Vol I, pp. 244-245)
• His description of black inmates: “Only a degree removed from the animal.” Also, “Kaffirs are as a rule uncivilized – the convicts even more so. They are troublesome, very dirty and live almost like animals.” – Mar. 7, 1908 (Reference: CWMG, Vol VIII, pp. 135-136)

The Durban Post Office: One of Gandhi’s major “achievements” in South Africa was to promote racial segregation by refusing to share a post office door with the black natives.

 

 

Gandhi was imported to the subcontinent by the British

The British Empire included many countries in Africa and Asia. In the Subcontinent it included more than 500 states. At the end of the 2nd Tribal War in Europe (WW2), the pillars of the once mighty British Empire were collapsing. In the Subcontinent the War of Independence of 1857 (also known as “Indian Mutiny“) had failed.Gandhi’s arrival in India was a carefully planned and crafted scheme. Some of the biggest millionaires in India devised a marketing plan to construct a leader for a superstitious, illiterate and colonized people. Gandhi was the perfect candidate.

He was imported from South Africa. Special trains were constructed to transport Gandhi in “3rd class” bogeys.

G D Birla’s personal memoirs “‘In the Shadow of the

Mahatma: A Personal Memoir’” reveal that he undertook many visits to England on his own and utilised the opportunity of to sell Gandhi. He acted as the appointed agent of Gandhi to meet Winston

Churchill, Lord Halifax, Sir Samuel Hoare, Lord Lothian, Stanley Baldwin, Ramsay McDonald and several other great English statesmen were G D Birla’s close friends. G D Birla’s was in close touch Lala Lajpath Rai, Pundit Madanmohan Malaviya, Pundit Motilal Nehru, Srinivasa Sastri, Sardar Vallabhai Patel, Rajaji and several others. The racists bigots like Patel, Rai and others were the ones who were advising Birla on how to sell Ram Rajha to the British under the guise of Non-violence.

The British brought Gandhi back to India from South Africa to sabotage the anarchist  movement against British rule. NehruGandhi were imposed on the party which had been set up under the patronage of the British authorities and the Indian capitalists like G.D. Birla.

Gandhi had been extremely loyal to these Indian capitalists. Movements led by Gandhi (salt march, boycott of foreign made goods) was in the interest of Indian capitalists group.

“One of his reason for launching the Civil Disobedient Movement is to contain the violence of revolutionaries.”

 

Gandhi as Counter-Revolutionary in India

Gandhi’s philosophy of non-violence, alike in many respects to that espoused by Russian aristocrat Leo Tolstoy, was intended to guarantee the struggle for national independence in India would not disturb the rule of large propertied interests (the landlords and the big bourgeoisie). As such, to a great and increasing extent, India would be independent in name only, since these same class interests are bound to economic relations that subject Indian national democracy and development to the parasitic requirements of imperialist capital. They were thus in mortal fear of decisive revolutionary mass struggle. Any time the national movement seemed to be heading in a direction whereby it would run outside their control, the right-wing leadership of the Indian National Congress – representing the landlords and the big bourgeoisie – turned to Gandhi. Gandhi had successfully cultivated a reputation amongst the rural Indian masses for advancing traditional Indian values above regional and upper-class sectional interests and was, from that point of view, the perfect figurehead for the reactionary bourgeoisie to place at its head. From the time of the Hartal campaign against fierce and arbitrary British repression in 1919, to the massive wave of proletarian strikes that swept India in 19211922 and right up to the Bombay Naval Mutiny of 1946, Gandhi advocated reform, caution and outright capitulation to “great” Britain (whose Royal Air Force had bombed rebellious parts of the country in 1928) whenever the national movement looked set to achieve its goal. As Comrade Rajani Palme Dutt wrote in 1940:

 

“This Jonah of revolution, this general of unbroken disasters, was the mascot of the bourgeoisie in each wave of the developing Indian struggle. So appeared once again the characteristic feature of modern Indian politics, the unwritten article of every successive Indian constitution – the indispensability of Gandhi (actually, the expression of the precarious balance of class forces). All the hopes of the bourgeoisie (the hostile might say, the hopes of imperialism) were fixed on Gandhi as the man to ride the waves, to unleash just enough of the mass movement in order to drive a successful bargain, and at the same time to save India from revolution.” (Rajani Palme Dutt, ‘Gandhi and the Nationalist Movement: A Marxist View’ in Martin Deming Lewis, ed., Gandhi: Maker of Modern India (Boston, D.C. Heath and Co., 1965/ R.

Palme Dutt, India Today (London, Victor Gollancz Ltd, 1940), 323)

 

Gandhi’s big bourgeois backers worked hand-in-glove with him to ensure the stability of a bourgeois-landlord social compact because they feared that revolution in the countryside would unleash social forces that would threaten their capitalist interests. As Lord Hailey (then Sir Malcolm Hailey), argued in the Indian Legislative Assembly in 1924:

 

“Anything like a real revolution in India would have most disastrous effects on that very class that is now represented in the Legislative Assembly and Provincial Councils; for among the ignorant masses of India, a political revolution would become a social revolution in a very short space of time.”

 

Imperialists like Hailey had nothing to fear on this score from “Mahatma” Gandhi, however. Gandhi expressly reassured his landlord backers, the bloodsuckers of India’s rural poor, in the following terms:

 

“I shall be no party to dispossessing the propertied classes of their private property without just cause. My objective is to reach your hearts and convert you so that you may hold all your private property in trust for your tenants and use it primarily for their welfare…. The Ramarajya of my dream ensures the right alike of prince and pauper. You may be sure that I shall throw the whole weight of my influence in preventing a class war … Supposing there is an attempt unjustly to deprive you of your property. You will find me fighting on your side … Our socialism or communism should be based on non-violence, and on the harmonious cooperation of labour and capital, the landlord and tenant.” (Gandhi, interview to deputation of United Provinces Zamindars, July, 1934, Mahratta, August 12, 1934).

 

Gandhi was a convinced supporter of the rights of property, that is, the right to exploit and oppress the working class. He wrote (and note the racist implications of his placing different skin color in the same category of “natural” disablement as different degrees of intelligence):

 

“My social theory is that, although we are born equal, that is to say, that we have a right to equal opportunities, nevertheless, we have not all the same abilities. By the nature of things, it is impossible that we should all be all of an equal stature, that we should all have the same colour of skin, the same degree of intelligence; and consequently is natural that some of us should be more fitted than others to acquire material gain. Those who are capable wish to acquire more, and they bend their abilities to this end. If they use their abilities in the best spirit, they will be working to the benefit of the people. These people will be ‘trustees’ and nothing more. I should allow a man of intelligence to gain more, and I should not hinder him from making use of his abilities.” (Gandhi, interview to Charles Petrasch, Le Monde, February 20, 1932).

 

The above statement is typical of Gandhi’s vile elitism.

Arguably, it might be acceptable under a “more ideal” capitalism. But in reality, as capitalism becomes a fetter on production, the vast majority of the wealth in the world goes not to people who “earned” it through their allegedly superior endowments but rather to people who simply inherited it through circumstances of birth. That is true of the First World (where the wealth of the entire population is largely the fruit of colonialism and imperialism set up by prior generations), and it is certainly true of India, where the tiny elite inherits its status from its parents (even formally, through the caste system!). How many intelligent Indians never get the opportunity to learn to read? How many elites are by no means intelligent?

 

Gandhi was a dedicated anti-communist and totally opposed to the struggle of the proletariat for emancipation from wageslavery, from his days in southern Africa when he advocated the setting up of an armed volunteer corps amongst Indians for the repression of African workers right to the end of his life. Thus, in the familiar language of every reactionary in all countries, Gandhi expressed his fear of “red ruin.”

 

“It has been suggested to me by a Congressman wielding great influence that as soon as I declared civil disobedience I would find a staggering response this time. The whole labour world and the kisans in many parts of India will, he assures me, declare a simultaneous strike. I told him that if that happened I would be most embarrassed and all my plans would be upset…. I hope I am not expected knowingly to undertake a fight that must end in anarchy and red ruin.”(Gandhi, interview to Charles Petrasch, Le Monde, February 20, 1932).

Gandhi was Counter-Revolutionary in India. We will not extend our discussion on this as the motive of this write-up is not Gandhi as a politician, but his philosophy of life. We had to do a preliminary discussion as one is inter-related to other.

 

Non-Violence and Gandhi

Which war did Mohandas Gandhi support? All of them. There wasn’t a war that the “prophet of non-violence” Gandhi did not support.

Sergeant Major (Retd.) Mohandas K. Gandhi who served in the British Army and won a medal of war for his participation in the Boer War on the side of the British.

There wasn’t a war which Gandhi did not support. He supported all the wars in his time. The prophet of peace Gandhi’s support for the British in the Boer War, the Zulu War, WW1 and WW2—his support extended South African Apartheid, and British colonialism.

Gandhi felt it was his duty to support the British during the Boer War; so he organized and led an Indian Corps to nurse. When three hundred free Indians and eight hundred indentured servants volunteered, the whites were impressed. Gandhi was given a medal for his service in the Boer War. Gandhi also supported the British in their war with the Zulus.

Gandhi’s attitude towards the Africans was racist. In South Africa he never did anything for the blacks. In fact he wanted to create a stratified society with Whites at the top and the Africans at the bottom.

Gandhi wanted to be “Recruiter-in-Chief” for the Viceroy. In the spring of 1918 Gandhi was persuaded by the British to help raise soldiers for a final victory effort in the war. In 1917-18, Gandhi began tramping about India, recruiting men for the British Army.

Charlie Andrews criticized Gandhi for recruiting Indians to fight for the British. Gandhi was still loyal to Britain and to the ideals of the British Constitution, with which he later declared to have “fallen in love.

Charlie Andrews criticized Gandhi for recruiting Indians to fight for the British. Gandhi was still loyal to Britain and to the ideals of the British Constitution, with which he later declared to have “fallen in love.

In his 1949 “Reflections on Gandhi,” George Orwell, regarding the late war, wrote that “one question every pacifist had a clear obligation to answer was: ‘What about the Jews? Are you prepared to see them exterminated? If not, how do you propose to save them without resorting to war?’” Orwell recorded Gandhi’s answer, which was: German Jews should commit collective suicide.

 During a prayer speech: “If we had the atom bomb, we would have used it against the British.” – June 16, 1947

(Reference: Gandhi’s “The Last Phase”, Vol II, p. 326)

To the British during WWII: ” You are losing; if you persist, it will only result in greater bloodshed. Hitler is not a bad man.”(Reference: G.D. Birla’s “In the Shadow of the Mahatma”, p. 276).

His atrocious letters to his friend Hitler

Gandhi wrote letters to Hilter and called his friend. He also told him that he admired him and gave him advice on how to deal with the British. He told him that “friend” was not just a salutation, but he really meant it. He advised the Jews to commit mass suicide.

“We have no doubt about your bravery or devotion to your fatherland, nor do we believe that you are the monster described by your opponents.” Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi of India to

Adolph Hitler of Germany dated 13.07.39

Gandhi used to beat his wife up routinely which we will discuss in the section ‘Gandhi as a family man’.

South Africa: Gandhi joined in the orgy of Zulu slaughter when the Bambata Rebellion broke out.

In 1906, after the British introduced a new poll-tax, Zulus in South Africa killed two British officers. In response, the British declared a war against the Zulus. Gandhi actively encouraged the British to recruit Indians. He argued that Indians should support the war efforts in order to legitimize their claims to full citizenship. The British, however, refused to commission Indians as army officers.

Nonetheless, they accepted Gandhi’s offer to let a detachment of Indians volunteer as a stretcher bearer corps to treat wounded British soldiers. This corps was commanded by Gandhi. On 21 July 1906, Gandhi wrote in Indian Opinion: “The corps had been formed at the instance of the Natal Government by way of experiment, in connection with the operations against the Natives consists of twenty three Indians”. (Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi Vol. 5 Document#393 from Gandhi: Behind the Mask of Divinity p106)

Gandhi urged the Indian population in South Africa to join the war through his columns in Indian Opinion: “If the Government only realized what reserve force is being wasted, they would make use of it and give Indians the opportunity of a thorough training for actual warfare.”  (“Sergeant Major Gandhi”. Gandhism.net.

http://www.gandhism.net/sergeantmajorgandhi.php Retrieved 2009-

03-03.)

In Gandhi’s opinion, the Draft Ordinance of 1906 brought the status of Indians below the level of Natives. He therefore urged Indians to resist the Ordinance along the lines of satyagraha by taking the example of “Kaffirs”. In his words, “Even the half-castes and kaffirs, who are less advanced than we, have resisted the government. The pass law applies to them as well, but they do not take out passes.” (Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi VOL 5 p

410)

In 1927 Gandhi wrote of the event: “The Boer War had not brought home to me the horrors of war with anything like the vividness that the [Zulu] ‘rebellion’ did. This was no war but a manhunt, not only in my opinion, but also in that of many Englishmen with whom I had occasion to talk.” (Gandhi: An Autobiography:

The Story of My Experiments with Truth, trans. Mahaved Desai,

(Boston, Beacon Press, 1993) p313)

 

Gandhi did not help the South Africans at all. He condoned the Zulu massacres, defended the killing of the innocent and defended the British in all their actions.

To understand Gandhi’s politics in South Africa, it is essential to note the three fundamental trends, which all along persisted underneath all his activities. These were: (1) his loyalty to the British Empire, (2) his apathy with regard to the Indian “lower castes”, India’s indigenous population, and (3) his virulent antiAfrican racism.

Gandhi was once thrown out of a train compartment which was reserved exclusively for the Whites. It was not that Gandhi was fighting on behalf of the local Africans that he broke the rule in getting into a Whites’ compartment. No! That was not the reason. Gandhi was so furious that he and his merchant caste Indians (Banias) were treated on par with the local Africans. This is the real reason for his fighting race discrimination in South Africa, and he had absolutely no concern about the pitiable way the Africans were treated by the Whites. On June 2, 1906 he commented in the Indian Opinion that “Thanks to the Court’s decision, only clean Indians

(meaning upper caste Hindu Indians) or colored people other than

Kaffirs, can now travel in the trains.”

During the `Kaffir Wars’ in South Africa he was a regular Gunga Din, who volunteered to organize a brigade of Indians to put down the Zulu uprising and was decorated himself for valor under fire.

Gandhi said on September 26, 1896 about the African people: “Ours is one continued struggle sought to be inflicted upon us by the Europeans, who desire to degrade us to the level of the raw Kaffir, whose occupation is hunting and whose sole ambition is to collect a certain number of cattle to buy a wife, and then pass his life in indolence and nakedness.”

Again in an editorial on the Natal Municipal Corporation Bill, in the Indian Opinion of March 18, 1905, Gandhi wrote: “Clause 200 makes provision for registration of persons belonging to uncivilized races (meaning the local Africans), resident and employed within the Borough. One can understand the necessity of registration of Kaffirs who will not work, but why should registration be required for indentured Indians?” Again on September 9, 1905, Gandhi wrote about the local Africans as: “in the majority of cases it compels the native to work for at least a few days a year” (meaning that the locals are lazy).

Nothing could be farther from the truth that Gandhi fought against Apartheid, which many propagandists in later years wanted people to believe. He was all in favor of continuation of White domination and the oppression of Blacks in South Africa.

In the Indian Opinion of March 25, 1905, Gandhi wrote on a Bill regulating fire-arms: “In the instance of fire-arms, the Asiatic has been most improperly bracketed with the natives. The British Indian does not need any such restrictions as are imposed by the Bill on the natives regarding the carrying of fire-arms. The prominent race can remain so by preventing the native from arming himself. Is there the slightest vestige of justification for so preventing the

British Indians?”

Gandhi always advised Indians not to align with other political groups in either colored or African communities. He was strongly opposed to the commingling of races. In the Indian Opinion of September 4, 1904, Gandhi wrote: “Under my suggestion, the Town Council (of Johannesburg) must withdraw the Kaffirs from the Location. About this mixing of the Kaffirs with the Indians I must confess I feel most strongly. It thinks it is very unfair to the Indian population, and it is an undue tax on even the proverbial patience of my countrymen.”

In the Indian Opinion of September 24, 1903, Gandhi said:

“We believe as much in the purity of races as we think they (the

Whites) do…by advocating the purity of all races.”

Again on December 24, 1903, in the Indian Opinion Gandhi stated that: “so far as British Indians are concerned, such a thing is particularly unknown. If there is one thing which the Indian cherishes more than any other, it is purity of type.”

When he was fighting on behalf of Indians, he was not fighting for all the Indians, but only for his rich merchant class upper caste Hindus!

In the Anglo-Boer War of 1899, Gandhi, in spite of his own belief that truth was on the side of the Boers, formed an ambulance unit in support of the British forces. He was very earnest about taking up arms and laying down his life for his beloved Queen. He led his men on to the battlefield and received a War Medal.

Gandhi joined in the orgy of Zulu slaughter when the

Bambata Rebellion broke out. One needs to read the entire history of Bambata Rebellion to place Gandhi’s nazi war crimes in its proper perspective.

One of Gandhi’s major “achievements” in South Africa was to promote racial segregation by refusing to share a post office door with the black natives.

Gandhi as a family man and his sexual antics

This is what Time Magazine says:

“Where the world sees a saint, Rajmohan Gandhi sees a cruel husband and a mostly absent father, paying scant attention to his children’s schooling and dragging wife Kasturba across continents at will, belittling her desire for the simplest of material possessions, then expecting her to comply when he turns from amorous husband to platonic companion to apparent adulterer.”

PERSONAL FAILURE: The Dark side of the pedophile

• My meaning of brahmacharya is this: “One who never has any lustful intention, who . . . has become capable of lying naked with naked women . . . without being in any manner whatsoever sexually excited.” –M. K. Gandhi
• The greater the temptation, the greater the renunciation. –M. K. Gandhi
• I threw you in the sacrificial fire and you emerged safe and sound.–Gandhi to his grandniece Manu Gandhi
• I can hurt colleagues and the entire world for the sake of truth.–M. K. Gandhi (letter to shila Nayar)
• [Gandhi] can think only in extremes-either extreme eroticism or asceticism. –Jawaharlal Nehru
• The professional Don Juan destroys his spirit as fatally as does the professional ascetic, whose [mirror] image he is. –Aldous Huxley, Do What You Will

If Gandhi was alive today, he would be arrested for sexual abuse and put away for life as a sexual offender.

.

• Gandhi used to beat his wife up routinely.
• Gandhi was having sex when his father lay breathing his last upstairs.
• Gandhi denied sex to his wife for decades
• Gandhi was an adulterer and had a spiritual marriage with two British women who were in the Ashram
• Gandhi slept naked with his niece (and 12 year old girls) and other women to prove that he could control his manliness.
• Gandhi would do enemas twice a day and if he liked you allowed you to enter the piece up his rectum.
• Gandhi used to drink his own urine and also the urine of cows
• Gandhi son left him and converted to Islam

Gandhi took on a magnetic personality in the presence of young women, and was able to persuade them to join him in peculiar experiments of sleeping and bathing naked together, without touching, all apparently to strengthen his chastity. (Whether these experiments were always successful is anyone’s guess.) It is also revealed that Gandhi began a romantic liaison with Saraladevi Chaudhurani, niece of the great poet Rabindranath Tagore—a disclosure that has created a buzz in the Indian press. The author tells us that Gandhi, perhaps disingenuously, called it a “spiritual marriage,” a “partnership between two persons of the opposite sex where the physical is wholly absent.“

 

This bombshell occupies only five pages, but it gives Rajmohan Gandhi enough material for his book’s redeeming feature—namely, the clear depiction of the tensions between

Gandhi’s erratic emotional compass and his unswerving moral one. For despite the occasional salacious lapses, the overarching principle that infused Gandhi’s life was his intrinsic belief in the equality of all souls.

 

Mahatma Gandhi was not shy of speaking about his relationship with his women associates, except in a few cases. He wanted the world to know of his tryst with Brahmacharya in which women constituted an integral part. He kept a meticulous record and tried to make the players keep the records too. Alas! Most of them seem to have either destroyed the records or refused to disclose the intensity of their feelings. A construct, however, is still possible based on Gandhiji’s writings and on basis of writings of some of them, who were involved. Gandhiji persuaded Kanchan Shah, his role model for Married Brahmacharya, and Prabhavati, wife of Jaiprakash Narayan, to practice married Brahmacharya. It was a difficult odyssey and the book tries to analyse why it was difficult.

 

It was the revulsion from sex that forced Gandhiji to take the vow of Brahamacharya in 1906. Then onwards, till the laboratory experiment in Noakhali, Gandhiji kept trying to find out if it was possible to overcome desire and remain a brahmachari. There were more than a dozen women who came to closely associated with him at one time or the other. Some of them were foreigners – Millie Graham Polak, Sonja Schlesin, Esther Faering, Nilla Cram Cook, Margarete Spiegel and Mirabehn. Prabhavati, Kanchan Shah, Shushila Nayyar and Manu Gandhi formed a part of his entourage at various points in time. He called JEKI “the Only Adopted Daughter”. Gandhiji was too found of Saraldevi Chowdharani, Rabindranath Tagore’s niece, and often displayed her as his mannequin for popularizing Khadi. He called her his

“spiritual wife”

 

 

 

His closeness to Saraladevi or arguments on Brahmacharya with Premabehn Kantak created a storm in the ashram and exposed him to public glare. He was undaunted and made a tactical retreat to allow the storm to subside. Soon things were back to normal. While the world was unsure, the Mahatma was sure of his actions.

 

There was a definite attraction in Gandhiji that brought womenfolk to him. It is quite possible that they were looking for glory and he provided the opportunity. Some like Mirabehn were inspired by his ideals and wanted to devote their entire life to his cause. But once they came close, Gandhiji and not his cause became their obsession. They hardly knew this was the next step to losing him, as the Mahatma could not be chained. He had higher goals.

 

 

Excerpts from Gandhi’s grandson’s Book “Mohandas”:

 

“Saraladevi was the topic of discussion in undertones and overtones among his friends, associated and family members. How could Ba not be affected? The years 1919 and 1920 were years of mental torture and agony for her”. (page 220).

 

Gandhiji referred to “small-talks, whispers and innuendos” going around of which he was well aware: “He was already in the midst of so much suspicion and distrust, he told the gathering, that he did not want his most innocent acts to be misunderstood and misrepresented”. (page 339)

 

“The Sarla Devi episode in his life establishes his humanity. To suppress any information on Gandhi would have meant doing injustice to what he stood for all his life – truth. I have only

presented the facts as a scholar not a sensationalist journalist” (Mr

Gandhi the grandson of Mohandas Gandhi)

 

The book “Mohandas” also describes Gandhi’s practice of brahmacharya in his life. He would sleep nude with his niece Manu. It’s a matter of historical record. This has been written about many times. Even Gandhi wrote about it. In doing so, he was surrendering his sexuality and that of his partner’s, after passing a huge test,“

Dr. Sushila Nayar told Ved Mehta that she used to sleep with Gandhi as she regarded him as a Hindu god.

Responding to noted Gandhian Rajmohan Gandhi’s recent claim about Mahatma Gandhi’s fondness for Sarla Devi, his granddaughter Tara Gandhi Bhattacharjee  said as a man of great aesthetic sensibility, if Gandhi felt attracted to a “woman of intellect”it could be natural. Elaborating her point, Bhattacharjee said Mahatma Gandhi also admired the way Rajkumari Amrit Kaur held her pen.

In another book “Mira and the Mahatma”, psychoanalyst Sudhir Kakkar delves deep into the desires that lay buried in the “Mahatma’s” heart. The hero pines for the company of his Mira who is away from him. “You are on the brain. I look about me, and I miss you. I open the charkha and miss you,” (Excerpt from Sudhir Kakkar’s book).

In his book The Sexual Teachings of the White Tigress:

Secrets of the Female Taoist Masters, Hsi Lai writes that Mahatma Gandhi “periodically slept between two twelve-year-old female virgins. …as an ancient practice of rejuvenating his male energy. . . . Taoists called this method ‘using the ultimate yin to replenish the yang.’” Thackeray questions Gandhi’s celibacy:

NEW DELHI, Dec. 27, 2007: Remarks by right-wing politician Bal Thackeray questioning the celibacy of Mahatma Gandhi, father of the Indian nation, have caused a furore.

“Gandhiji was always accompanied by two girls. Yet that was okay with everyone. If we do something, we are criticised. Gandhi’s celibacy was a fraud,” press reports quoted Bal Thackeray, chief of the regional Shiv Sena party.

 

Excerpts from Freedom at Midnight. By Collins and La Pierre:

 

The following are quotes from Collins and La Pierre in

Freedom at Midnight.Chapter 4 (A Last Tattoo For A Dieing Raj)

 

“…at the age of sixty-seven, thirty years after he had sworn his vow of brahmacharya, Gandhi awoke after an arousing dream with what would have been to most men of that age a source of some satisfaction, but was to Gandhi a calamity, an erection.” [Page 81, Freedom at Midnight, Simon& Schuster Edition,1975].

 

“Gandhi saw in Manu’s words the chance to make her the perfect female votary. “If out of India’s millions of daughters, I can train even one into an ideal woman by becoming an ideal mother to you” he told he “I shall have remembered a unique service to womankind”. But first he felt he had to be sure she was telling the truth. Only his closest collaborators were accompanying him to

Noakhali, he informed her,

 

 

 

but she would be welcome, provided she submitted to his

discipline and went through the test which he meant to subject her.

 

They would, he decreed, share each night the crude straw pallet which passed for his bed. He regarded himself her mother; she had said that she found nothing but a mothers love for him. If they were both truthful, if he remained firm in his ancient vow of chastity and she had never know sexual arousal, then they would be able to lie together in the innocence of a mother daughter. If one of them was not being truthful, they would soon discover it.

 

Collins does not mention what Manu said or did, or what the collaborators heard!! Apparently Bose did. He raised Cane, and alerted many around Gandhi.

Erik H Erikson (american psychoanalys) while doing his research in india on Ghandi wrote about Ghandis episodes with other women besides Manu the articles were also published in new yorker of 1996. He gives the reference of a book by Nirmal Bose : My days with Gandhi. It deals with this problem and other, very respectfully in two chapters

On 3.2.1947 he said, as Nirmal Bose quotes :

” What [ he was ?]doing was not for imitation. It was undoubtedly dangerous, but it ceased to be so if the conditions were rigidly observed. ”

GANDHI GETS CAUGHT WITH HIS PANTS

DOWN:-LITERALLY

 

During his Noakhali tour of 1946, Gandhi used to sleep with the nineteen-year-old Manu. When Nirmal Bose, his Bengali interpreter, saw this he protested, asserting that the experiments must be having bad psychological effects on the girl.

In his book “My Days with Gandhi”, published in 1953 with great difficulty and at his own expense, he offers a Freudian interpretation to Gandhi’s experiments. It is generally believed that Gandhi started sleeping with women toward the close of his life. According to Sushila Nayar, he started much earlier. However, at the time he called it ‘nature cure.’ She told Ved Mehta, ‘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 brahamacharya experiment. It was just part of nature cure. Later on, when people started asking questions about his physical contact with women, the idea of brahamacharya experiments was developed. Don’t ask me any more questions about brahamacharya experiments. There is nothing to say, unless you have a dirty mind like Bose.’. Mahatma Gandhi and His Apostles is an extremely well-written book. Ved 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. The latter will certainly be dismayed by Mehta’s forthrightness.

 

A forgotten chapter : Sex Scandal

A discussion based on Gandhi’s girls – sex scandal Washington Monthly, July-August, 1987 by Art Levin and other books.

India, 1942: In the end, the political demise of Mohandas Gandhi came with stunning speed. Until last week, he was the reversed Mahatma–the Great Soul– leader of 400 million Indians in the drive for independence from British colonial rule. With the election of the Labour Government in Britain increasingly likely, chances never seemed brighter for the free India that Gandhi had sought for so long.

But by week’s end, in the wake of newspaper accounts of Gandhi’s sexual peccadilloes, bizarre personal habits and mindbending cult practices, his career–and perhaps Indian nationalism – lay in ruins. Those closest to Gandhi likened it to a Greek tragedy, a giant cut down by his own hands. “Gandhi’s personal life was a political time bomb waiting to explode,’ said one distraught associate. “Now it’s finally blown up in our faces.’

A Spiritual Experience? The trouble began a week ago when the New Delhi Herald published a front page story reporting that Gandhi had spent the weekend with five attractive young women–aides in his nonviolent campaign–at his ashram in Sevegram. Meanwhile, his wife Kasturbai was 2,000 miles away at their mountain retreat in Kashmir recuperating from an illness.

Escorting them was Gandhi’s aide, the movie starhandsome Jawaharlal Nehru. With his urbane charm and stylish taste in jackets, Nehru never had any pretense to celibacy. (His intimacies with Lady Mountbatten are infamous.) Campaign insiders said that they had long been alarmed by Gandhi’s ties to Nehru, and several suggested their time together be cut back. “We told him to dump Nehru,’ said one aide. “But the old man would just sit there and smile. He didn’t see the storm coming.’

It was advice Gandhi must now wish he had heeded. New Delhi Herald reporters and photographers were hiding in nearby bushes, guarding both the front and rear entrances. Except for a breath of fresh air at 3 A.M., the women had spent the entire night with the erstwhile spiritual leader. If the chronology was indicting, the photographs were positively damning. Wielding telephoto lenses, the Herald photographers snapped shots that seem sure to snuff out a political career. The scene: Gandhi and his cabal sprawled on his rope bed– naked.

Late Sunday morning, a weary Gandhi finally spotted the Herald reporters and confronted them. The women were only there as an experiment in self-restraint, he insisted, and nothing sexual transpired between them. “True brachmacharya (celibacy) is this: one who, by constant-attendance upon God, has become capable of lying naked with naked women, however beautiful they may be, without being in any manner whatsoever sexually excited. I have done nothing wrong,’ Gandhi insisted.

The Indian public wasn’t buying it. His explanations had become the issue of the campaign, according to a poll taken two days after the Herald story broke. Only 34 percent of those questioned believed Gandhi’s claim that he hadn’t had sexual relations with the women–and a scant 16 percent believed he hadn’t been sexually excited. A mere 26 percent claimed to be disturbed by the incident itself; what bothered them, said 75 percent of India’s citizens, was the appearance of hypocrisy.

But the questions kept coming. Every stop on his campaign swing turned into a media circus. A protest march in Dandi was cut short by a throng of reporters, barraging Gandhi with questions about his sexual self-control. A new low in political discourse may have been reached when a reporter for the Bombay Post asked during a sit-in, “Did you get an erection last weekend?’ Although Gandhi was well within his rights when he responded, “I don’t have to answer that,‘ some observers felt that the appearance of evasiveness further eroded his credibility.

Matters were only made worse when the Herald was widely rumored to be on the verge of publishing more damaging photos–of nothing less than unmistakable signs of Gandhi’s physical excitement. When a pack of enterprising reporters caught up with her at her sickbed, Mrs. Gandhi stuck by her man. She told them: “Honestly, if Mahatma told me that nothing happened, then nothing happened.’

More Revelations: Still, by week’s end, the prospects for Gandhi’s political recovery looked grim, despite his denials and counter-attacks. In the next few days, there were other newspaper accounts of Gandhi’s celibacy experiments. The Bombay Post ran an insiders’ account of life in Gandhi’s ashram. Contrary to the image he had cultivated of a gentle, loving soul, the two-part series, “The Dark Side of Gandhi,’ detailed the brutal regimen imposed on his followers. His 100-plus disciples, forced to live in primitive mud and bamboo huts, were awakened daily at a A.M. to eat nothing but a few crumbs of unseasoned vegetarian gruel and dry wheat. Weakened, they were subjected to long harangues on arcane religious topics. Eyewitness accounts were gruesome. “We had to spend hours on our knees chanting prayers and spinning cotton,’ said one American follower who defected. “We were like zombies.’ Cult experts say Gandhi had dozens of ingenious schemes to weaken his followers’ ties to their families and strengthen his control over them. Their secret name for their leader: “Bapu,’ or father.

The Post story was the final straw. In his political death throes, Gandhi made a dramatic appearance before his supporters– and stopped just short of abandoning his campaign for a free India. “I intended, in all honesty, to come to you this sunrise and tell you that I was leaving the cause. But, then, after tossing and turning all night, as I have through this ordeal, I woke up and said, “Heck, my goodness, no.”

Instead, Gandhi with his back against the proverbial wall reached deep into his bag of tricks and, like a cat with nine lives, pulled yet another rabbit from his hat: a hunger strike. Over the course of a fifty-year career, Gandhi had turned this familiar strategy into a crowd pleaser that could move the masses or pummel an Empire. “Under certain circumstances, fasting is the one weapon God has given us for use in times of utter helplessness,’ said Gandhi defiantly.

No one doubts that Gandhi can go weeks on end without even a drop of chutney. But political analysts are doubtful that the man, once dubbed “Mr. Hunger Strike,’ could make this latest gambit work. “Gandhi represents the politics of the past,’ said Patreek Chardeli. “A new generation of Indians wants vital, robust leadership. I don’t think a starving old man is well positioned to do it.’ More ominously, other pundits said the political damage was too much to contain– even with a high-profile play for sympathy. Davidahr Garthati, the media consultant credited with Gandhi’s decision to abandon the suit and tie of his early barrister days and “go native’ instead, was equally pessimistic. Garthati noted, “His celibacy shtick was crucial to the saint image he’d cultivated for all these years. The non-violence thing, the spinning wheels, the fasting–that was brilliant. But his celibacy really set him apart, made him genuinely holy. Without it, he’s just another pacifist dogooder.’

Political opponents moved quickly to capitalize on the gaffe. Columnist Robert Novakilli, a longtime Gandhi critic, lambasted Gandhi’s hijinks from his nationally broadcast McRajan Group. “The real perversion is Gandhi’s political agenda. For years, he and his pacifist pals have had two things in mind: tinkering with the salt tax and cozying up to Stalin.’ And his most formidable rival, Moslem leader Muhammed Ali Jinnah, sought to subtly position himself to pick up Gandhi’s fleeing supporters. “Family life has always been sacred to me,’ he told reporters, standing outside his family’s mosque with his wife and daughter. “I don’t think it’s my place to comment on the controversy surrounding some of those in the public eye. It’s up to the Indian people to judge for themselves.’

And their judgment seemed harsh. Within a matter of days, the squalid controversy over Gandhi’s private parts turned him from a national hero into a laughingstock. On his nightly radio program, comedian Charu Carson quipped, “Well, at least we know the Mahatma is big enough for the job of running India.’ He added, to more laughter, “I guess he was really meditating his brains out this weekend.’ Editorial cartoonists had a field day, as a bulging loin cloth quickly became the Mahatma’s new trademark.

In the next few days more revelations came trickling out about other celibacy “experiments’ he had been conducting since his forties, including one report of a pleasure trip down the Ganges with Nehru and two female assistants on the awkwardly named Holy Cow. The Post also revealed that at the end of each day, he had one of his attractive, young female disciples administer an enema, which he insisted was for “health’ and “cleansing’ purposes. “Gandhi gives as much as he takes– even to total strangers,’ said one Gandhi aide.

New Ground rules: Gandhi’s sudden demise triggered an orgy of self-examination in the media. Did the press go too far? “At first, I agonized over whether we should risk tarnishing a great man’s reputation with close-up photos of naked women and speculation about his sex life,’ said Ved Fiedleraba, who led the Herald stakeout. “But then I realized that the public had a right to know.’ Fiedleraba reasoned that if there was the slightest possibility that Gandhi was lying about his celibacy, then that raised serious questions about his candor and his ability to negotiate with foreign leaders were India ever to become independent. “So, naturally, it was my moral obligation to set up camp outside his bedroom.’

Clearly, the ground rules have changed. Historically, the press has had a gentlemen’s agreement with India’s rulers. When Viceroy Lord Lillybottom himself brought a bevy of beauties to the Taj Mahal, the muckrakers of Madras looked the other way. But with the rise of Indian Nationalism and the decline of British sea power, the mores of Indian society have been loosened–and so have those of the press. Today, nothing is off limits, even enemas. Many wondered what’s next: asking Jinnah whether he had violated the Koran’s strictures against amorous relations with pigs or other unholy animals? But for now it was Gandhi who was caught in this whirlwind. This smiling man, from a more polite age, seemed oblivious to the new rules of his beloved India.

Whatever the press’s ultimate responsibility, the longstanding doubts over Gandhi’s character left India’s nationalist movement in disarray. Behind the scenes, some Congress party operatives were privately relieved. “We feel betrayed,’ said one. “Gandhi promised he would remain celibate, at least until India achieved independence. Now that he’s gone, at least we can move on.’

Ultimately, Gandhi’s fate hinged on those questions of character, rather than any moral revulsion. In her essay “Gandhi’s Women Problem, Women’s Gandhi Problem,’ Sukai Lessardai voiced the concerns of many women wary of Gandhi’s apparent philandering. “Whether or not he was celibate, his need to prove his spiritual manhood by lying with five naked women is an affront to the dignity and equality of women everywhere.’ And as Willmed Schneidermanai of the Indian Enterprise Institute points out, “It’s not so much the fact that he slept with these women or regularly indulged in enemas; it’s that he showed such bad judgment in doing so. I think this raises serious questions about Gandhi’s selfdiscipline and insensitivity to the appearances of impropriety –and finally about Gandhi’s ability to lead a successful non-violent movement.’

 

WAS GANDHI A TANTRIC?

The book ‘WAS GANDHI A TANTRIC?’ By Nicholas Gier, Professor Emeritus of Philosophy, University of Idaho (ngier@uidaho.edu), gives us  a lot of information on this. There are various other sources that discuss whether Gandhi was a tantric. (see reference)

 

 

• My meaning of brahmacharya is this: “One who never has any lustful intention, who . . . has become capable of lying naked with naked women . . . without being in any manner whatsoever sexually excited.” –M. K. Gandhi
• The greater the temptation, the greater the renunciation. –M. K. Gandhi
• I threw you in the sacrificial fire and you emerged safe and sound. –Gandhi to his grandniece Manu Gandhi
• I can hurt colleagues and the entire world for the sake of truth. –M. K. Gandhi (letter to Sushila Nayar)
• [Gandhi] can think only in extremes-either extreme eroticism or asceticism. –Jawaharlal Nehru
• The professional Don Juan destroys his spirit as fatally as does the professional ascetic, whose [mirror] image he is. –Aldous Huxley, Do What You Will

Some scholars believe that it is unseemly to write about the sex lives of great thinkers. William Bartley, for example, has been criticized for documenting, quite successfully in my opinion, Ludwig Wittgenstein’s homosexual encounters, information that helps us better understand his life and work. If we use this information in an ad hominem attack against these thinkers’ worldviews, then we have indeed erred and done them an injustice.

Full and accurate biographies, however, are essential for those of us who wish to capture the full measure of a person’s life and character. It is therefore unfortunate that D. K. Bose, Gandhi’s faithful secretary and interpreter in Bengal, was forced to self publish his book My Days with Gandhi. He only thought that he was being truthful, but many considered him an apostate, and Sushila Nayar, one of Gandhi’s female intimates, thought he had “a dirty mind.”

Most people would rather not hear about Martin Luther King’s extramarital liaisons, but they remain embarrassing facts, along with the plagiarized passages in his doctoral dissertation, that must be integrated into our understanding of this great saint of nonviolence. King confessed that what he did was wrong and he sought forgiveness from his wife and sought repentance. Sadly, I do not think that we can say that same thing about Gandhi’s response to those who criticized his intimate relations with young women. Furthermore, King did not defend his actions by saying that they were part of his spiritual development, something that Gandhi of course did.

It is now widely known that Gandhi shared his bed with young women as part of his experiments in brahmacharya, a Sanskrit word usually translated as “celibacy,” but generally understood as the ultimate state of yogic self-control. Gandhi believed that Indian ascetics who sought refuge in forests and mountains were cowards, and he was convinced that the only way to conquer desire was to face the temptation head-on with a naked female in his bed.

I take Gandhi at his word that he did not have carnal relations with these women-his sleeping quarters were open to all to observe-so he was not among the left-handed Tantrics who engaged in ritual sex with their yoginis. At the same time, Gandhi’s Tantricism cannot be right-handed kind because this school proscribes intimate contact with women.

As would be expected, we will find that Gandhi was a very distinctive Tantric. Perhaps it can be said that Gandhi was somehow simultaneously a left-handed and right-handed Tantric. Raihana Tyabji, a close associate with a Tantric past, thought that Gandhi’s position straddling right-handed and left-hand Tantra was untenable, and that the only way to free himself and his women from sexual desire was “to give free rein to it-to indulge it and satiate it. But he wouldn’t listen.”

It is not widely known that Gandhi subscribed to Shakta theology, one that puts skakti, the power of the Hindu Goddess, at the center of existence. Shakta theology is the foundation of Hindu Tantricism. Scholars have warned us that not all Shaktas are Tantrics, but Gandhi’s sexual experiments with young women definitely suggest some association with Tantra. It is also possible that that Gandhi’s sexual experiments may have been an abuse of personal power rather than a practice of Hindu spirituality.

One defense that could be made for Gandhi’s actions is that he experienced intimate relations with men as well. Hermann

Kallenbach, a South Africa associate, was very close to the Mahatma. Kallenbach promised that he would travel to the “ends of the earth in search of [Gandhian] Truth,” and he also promised Gandhi that he would never marry. Gandhi reciprocated by declaring unconditional love and a declaration that they would always be “one soul in two bodies.”

Gandhi was also very close to Pyarelal Nayar, Sushila Nayar’s brother, and boasted that Pyarelal slept closer to him than his sister did. For Gandhi, however, sleeping with men was different from sharing a bed with women. Abha Gandhi’s husband Kanu once objected to his wife sleeping with the Mahatma and offered himself as a “bed warmer.” Gandhi rejected his proposal by making it clear that brahmacharya tests required young women as bedmates. Finally, if someone makes an appeal to the Indian custom and necessity of intimate Indian family sleeping arrangements, Girja Kumar is not convinced: “Not even in India do grown-up daughters sleep with their fathers.”

I

In his book My Days with Gandhi Bose does mention in passing that Gandhi’s techniques are “reminiscent of the Tantras,” and Gandhi himself said that he read the books on Tantra written by Sir John Woodroofe, but, as far as I know, only Gopi Krishna has argued at any length about Gandhi’s Tantricism.

In his on-line essay “Mahatma Gandhi and the Kundalini Process,” Krishna argues that the only way that we can explain Gandhi’s actions with these young women is to assume he was a kundalini yogi. Krishna speculates that “upward flow of reproductive energy [shakti]” started as soon as he committed himself to brahmacharya in 1906. Gandhi was 37, “the usual time,” from Krishna’s own experience, “for the spontaneous arousal of the

Serpent Power.”

As evidence that Gandhi had perfected this state, Krishna cites this passage from Gandhi’s Key to Health: “[the brahmachari‘s] sexual organs will begin to look different. . . . He does not become impotent for lack of the necessary secretions of sexual glands. But these secretions in his case are sublimated into a vital force pervading his whole being.” Krishna claims that this passage makes it “patently clear” that Gandhi had attained the state of brahmacharya, but it is not clear that Gandhi is writing about himself, and that, except during the crisis with Manu, he rarely ever claimed spiritual perfection.

As the kundalini yogi matures, Krishna states that he “needs constant stimulation to increase the supply of reproductive juices. . . . The Tantras and other works on kundalini clearly acknowledge the need of an attractive female partner in the practices undertaken to awaken shakti.” Gandhi does in fact say that “my brahmacharya . . . irresistibly drew me to woman as the mother of man. She became too sacred for sexual love.”

Krishna admits that Gandhi himself most likely “had no inkling of the transformative process at work in him,” even though he claims that Gandhi noticed that his male organ had shrunk. Krishna brushes aside criticism of Gandhi’s actions and also concern for the young women’s mental health, because “nature accomplishes her great tasks in her own way and leaves shortsighted mortals wondering how it could happen.” Apart from the speculative nature of Krishna’s theory, we should be most concerned about his disregard for the women’s well being, as well has the implication that Gandhi was driven by forces over which he had no control.

II

For Gandhi the virtues of patience, self-control, and courage were absolutely essential to defeat the temptation to retaliate and respond with violence. Gandhi made it clear that each of these virtues were found most often in women. Gandhi once said that he wanted to convert the woman=s capacity for “self-sacrifice and suffering into shakti-power.” Gandhi describes womankind as follows: “Has she not great intuition, is she not more selfsacrificing, has she not greater powers of endurance, has she not greater courage?” He also claimed that nonviolence is embodied in the woman: she is “weak in striking. . . strong in suffering.”

The women around Gandhi were amazed how comfortable they felt in his presence and how much of a woman he had become to them. Millie Polak observed that “most women love men for [masculine] attributes. Yet, Mohandas Gandhi has been given the love of many women for his womanliness.” His orphaned grandniece Manu considered Gandhi as her new mother, and she simply could not understand all the controversy surrounding their sleeping together.

The fact that women felt no unease in his presence was proof to Gandhi that he was approaching perfection as a brahmachari. Indeed, Bose contends that Gandhi attempted to “conquer sex” was “by becoming a woman.” Gandhi told Pyarelal Nayar that he once tore the burning sari off a woman in his ashram, but “she felt no embarrassment, because she knew I was a brahmachariand so almost like a sister to her.” Alternatively, Gandhi says that his goal was the state of “complete sexlessness” recommended by Jesus and that this condition could be achieved by becoming a eunuch by prayer not by an operation.

Gandhi is no doubt referring to shakti when he states that “all power comes from the preservation and sublimation of the vitality that is responsible for the creation of life.” Gandhi may very well be indicating a Tantric process of empowerment that involves the preservation and sublimation of a male vitality that has its source in shakti. When Gandhi did his first radio broadcast on November 12, 1947, he declared that the phenomenon of broadcasting demonstrated “shakti, the miraculous power of God.”

When Gandhi once described himself as “half a woman,” an alternative view of masculine and feminine power suggests itself. The Chinese/Jungian view of complementary yin (anima) and yang (animus) energies is found in this passage: “A man should remain man and yet should learn to become woman; similarly, a woman should remain woman and yet learn to become man.” Hsi Lai uses the yin/yang model to explain Gandhi’s sexual experiments: “He didn’t do this for the purpose of actual sexual contact, but as an ancient practice of rejuvenating his male energy. . . . Taoists called this method ‘using the yin to replenish the yang.”

The source of Gandhi’s dipolar views of male and female may have been Christian rather than Asian. While a young man in England, Gandhi came into contact with the Esoteric Christian Union, whose interpretation of the image of God meant that the individual “must comprise within himself the qualities Bmasculine and feminineB of existence and be spiritually both man and woman.” When he confessed to Kedar Nathji and Swami Anand that his sexual experiments were “unorthodox,” Gandhi says that his views on this subject had been influenced by “Western writers on this subject.”

III

It is the male who is active in Tantric rites. Only males undergo initiation, and the only instruction females receive, if they get any, is that they “should not even mentally touch another male.” Gandhi’s Tantricism definitely follows this androcentric approach. Gandhi also takes the defiant stance of the Tantric who says that he cares nothing for what others thinks of his practice: “The whole world may forsake me but I dare not leave what I hold is the truth for me.” Gandhi once admonished a critic that he would sleep with a thousand women if that is what it took to reach spiritual purity. Gandhi’s experiments in truth took on the value free aspects of the scientific method, and left-handed Tantrics believe that their actions are above conventional law and morality.

Normally Tantric practices are tightly structured, highly ritualized, and the initiation procedures, guided by a guru, are esoteric. The only bona fide guru in Gandhi’s spiritual development was Raichandcharya, a Jain saint, not a Tantric, with whom Gandhi corresponded during his formative South Africa period. Gandhi officiated at daily worship and hymn singing, encouraged the chanting of the Ramanama (the god Rama’s name), and followed an unconventional diet, but these practices are not Tantric in any way. The chanting of the Ramanama is said to have magical properties, but its use is so widespread in India it may not indicate any special Tantric associations. Nevertheless, Gandhi does connect the chanting of Rama’s name with “an alchemy [that] can transform the body” that leads to “the conservation of vital energy.”

Gandhi’s experiments with truth were highly personalized but not spiritually esoteric as are Tantric practices. Only after the sexual experiments came under public scrutiny did Gandhi started telling his female associates to keep their activities secret. Not until his last days, when his sleeping with Manu became public, did Gandhi confess that this secrecy was actually a sign of untruthfulness. Gandhi’s secrecy was simply expedient and not spiritually required.

IV

Before Gandhi started his brahmacharya experiments in

1938, he had a string of intimate relationships with European and Indian women. While he was in South Africa, Gandhi fell in love with Millie Polak, the wife of Henry Polak, both of whom lived with Gandhi at Phoenix Farm. Kumar describes their first contact as follows: “Gandhiji and Millie started conversing through their eyes. They made a pact between them immediately. Poor Henry was left stranded.” As with all of his female friends, Gandhi insisted that he and Millie be sisters or alternatively that he be her father, but after they were together in London in 1909 without Henry, Gandhi dared to suggest that he was a substitute husband.

Even though Millie was smitten by him, she stood up to Gandi’s controlling nature and argued against his absurd dietary ideas and his goal to force chastity on all his coworkers. This independent spirit that defines most of his female intimates of this early period stands in instructive contrast to the passive participants in the later brahmacharya  experiments. For example, Kumar describes Manu as a devotee who “was prepared to sacrifice her life at the altar of her personal God.” Gandhi controlled every aspect of Manu’s life, and when she once forgot his favorite soap at their last stay, he made her walk back through a dark jungle to retrieve it.

When Millie finally broke off their 3-year affair, Gandhi’s attentions turned to Maud Polak, Henry’s sister. Maud worked with Gandhi at Phoenix Farm as his personal secretary until 1913. In a letter to Henry, Gandhi described Maud seeing him off at a railway station: “She cannot tear herself from me. . . . She would not shake hands with me. She wanted a kiss. [This incident] has transformed her and with her me.”

Esther Faering, a young Danish missionary, was the next major love in Gandhi’s life. From her very first visit at the Satyagraha Ashram in 1917, Kumar describes Faering as “completely hookedon” Gandhi, and as with Millie Polak, “an instant chemistry developed” between them. Gandhi “experienced an intensely personal passion for Esther,” and she praised him as the “Incarnation of God in man.”

The other ashramites were alarmed at Gandhi’s obsession with Faering, and Kasturba Gandhi was particularly cool to her husband’s new love interest. Gandhi made matters worse by siding with Faering against his wife. While he was away from the ashram, he wrote daily letters to Faering, which Kumar describes as having the passionate intensity of the poets of Hinduism and Sufi Islam. He hazards a guess that “Esther must have stirred,” as young beautiful women are supposed to do in the Tantric yogi, “the serpent resting uncoiled in [Gandhi’s] kundalini.“

One would expect Gandhi to have at least been serially monogamous in his relationships, but that was not the case. While Faering was struggling against Kasturba and other ashramites, and receiving Gandhi’s constant support from afar, he was conducting what Kumar calls a “whirlwind romance” with Saraladevi Chowdharani, a Bengali revolutionary married to a Punjabi musician. Her father was a secretary of Indian National Congress in Calcutta, and by virtue of her singing and activism, Saraladevi was celebrated as Bengal’s Joan of Arc and as an incarnation of the Goddess Durga. She rose to the challenge and wrote that “my pen reverberated with the power of Shiva’s trumpet and invited Bengalis to cultivate death.”

After the Jallianwala Bagh massacre in 1919, Gandhi stayed at Saraladevi’s home in Lahore and then toured India together during 1920. Her husband, R. D. Chowdhary, was in jail for the first eight months this period, but he was content, as was Henry Polak, to share his wife with the Mahatma. Gandhi agreed with Chowdhary that Saraladevi was the “greatest shakti of India.”

Gandhi called Saraladevi his “spiritual wife” after “an intellectual wedding,” and he reported that he bathed “in her deep affection” as she showered “her love on [him] in every possible way.” Kasturba Gandhi had refused to wear khadi-the homespun and hand woven garments that Gandhi made famous-but Saraladevi became the Mahatma’s most elegant khadimodel. Kumar describes them as “lovelorn teenagers with stars in their eyes,” and depicts Saraladevi as “aristocratic, gorgeously dressed, sensuously beautiful, and imperious. In short, she had everything that [Kasturba] lacked.”

In contrast to his later brahmacharya mistresses, Saraladevi, just as Millie Polak before her, did not bow to Gandhi’s authority in any way. For example, as the quotation above implies, she agreed with fellow Bengalis, such as the young Aurobindo, that independence required violent revolution. Following her Goddess, Durga’s shaktiwas always accompanied by violence, and Saraladevi eventually broke with Gandhi over this very issue.

Kumar concludes that just as his relation to Faering, while “full of sensuality,” was asexual, Gandhi’s romance with Saraladevi was “probably . . . entirely platonic.” There was, however, a “large component of eroticism” and the “line of demarcation between sexual, sensuous, erotic and platonic was only of degree and not of kind.”

Kumar’s phrasing is unfortunate and logically incoherent, because “degree” means a slippery slope and not a strict line between the intellectual/spiritual and the physical. In letters to Saraladevi in July, 1920, Gandhi insists that being “spiritually” married means that the “physical must be wholly absent,” but he then admits that he is “too physically attached to” her for there to be a true “sacred association.”

In his conversations with Margaret Sanger, Gandhi refers to a “woman with whom I almost fell,” and “the thought of my wife kept me from going to perdition” Writing to Rajkumari Amrit Kaur, a later bedmate, he admitted the he, “with one solitary exception,” had never “looked upon a woman with lustful eyes.” These two references must have been to Saraladevi Chowdharani.

Madeleine Slade, who became Gandhi’s beloved Mirabehn, was the daughter of a British naval officer who was once stationed in Bombay. Mirabehn first learned of Gandhi through Romain Rolland, who was then writing a Gandhi biography. She wrote to

Gandhi requesting that she become a member of the Sabarmati Ashram, but he required that she live as an ascetic for one year before coming to India. More than any of his disciples, Mirabehn eagerly took to the austerities that Gandhi demanded. As opposed to Kasturba, who disliked latrine duties, Mirabehn eagerly took charge of the toilets, even those for all the delegates to a meeting of the Indian National Congress.

At their first meeting in November, 1925, Mirabehn found Gandhi “divine,” and she was able to confirm Roma Rolland’s claim that he was indeed the second Christ. They fell in love with one another and Kumar says that “Mira was Saraladevi . . . all over again.” Once again, because of Gandhi’s fascination for her, Mirabehn was shunned by the ashramites. Gandhi soon discovered that Mirabehn’s emotional instability caused his blood pressure to rise, so he frequently sent her away on other tasks. They did, however, keep in contact with weekly self-described “love letters,” and Gandhi wrote that she haunted his dreams.

Mirabehn agreed with Gandhi’s depiction that their passion was like a “bed of hot ashes,” a veritable ascetic-erotic rhapsody of yogic tapas .Gandhi also shared with Mirabehn agonies about his spontaneous erections, daytime ejaculations, and wet dreams, for which he castigated himself unmercifully, and they even discussed the causes and cures of constipation.

V

Of the women closely associated with Gandhi, at least ten were said to have slept in his bed. They can be identified as follows:

• Sushila Nayar was only 15 when she came to the Sabarmati Ashram and then became Gandhi’s intimate companion, with some periods of alienation and remove, for the rest of his life. Gandhi claimed that Nayar was a natural brahmachari, having observed it from childhood. They bathed together and even used the same bath water, but Gandhi assured everyone that he kept his “eyes tightly shut.”
• Lilavati Asar, associated with Gandhi from 19261948, slept in his bed and gave him “service,” which meant bathing and massaging.
• Sharada Parnerkar slept “close” to Gandhi and rendered “service.” She was very ill in October, 1940, and Gandhi gave her regular enemas.
• Amtul Salaam, whom Gandhi called his “crazy daughter,” was a Punjabi from Patiala. She was also a bedmate and masseuse. Gandhi once wrote about the joy he gave Salaam when she received a massage from him.
• Prabhavati Narayan, a Kashmiri, lived in an unconsummated marriage with Jayaprakash Narayan, Indira Gandhi’s most famous political foe. Because of her lack of sexual interest or desire, Gandhi thought that Prabhavati would be a perfect married brahmachari. In addition to sleeping with

Gandhi, she also gave him “service.”

• Raj Kumari Amrit Kaur, married to a Rajasthani prince, was India’s first health minister and was a Gandhi associate for 30 years. Although older, she slept right along with the younger women in Gandhi’s quarters. She also helped with baths and massages.
• Sucheta Kriplani, a member of Parliament and professor at Benares Hindu University, was a member of Gandhi’s Peace Brigade in East Bengal in 1947. She maintained a brahmachari-marriage with J. B. Kriplani, a famous socialist. Gandhi fought their union tooth and nail. Although Gandhi invited Mrs. Kriplani to his bed on a regular basis, he insisted that married couples in his ashrams always sleep in different quarters.
• Abha Gandhi was a Bengali who accompanied the Mahatma in East Bengal. She started sleeping with Gandhi when she was 16; she also bathed him and washed his clothes.
• Kanchan Shah, also a married woman, had a “one night stand” with Gandhi and was banned from brahmacharya experiments because she reputedly wanted to have sex with him. Gandhi gave the following instructions on brahmacharimarriage to Shah and her husband: “You should not touch each other. You shall not talk to each other. You shall not work together. You should not take service from each other.” But Gandhi of course received “service” from his women on a daily basis. On the hypocrisy of taking what he denied to others, Kumar has this to say: “The vow of brahmacharya was a revenge he took upon everyone else.”
• Manu Gandhi was his brother’s granddaughter and she was his constant companion for the last eight years of his life. Interestingly enough, there is a temple to Manu, a powerful rain goddess, in Gandhi’s home city of Porbandar.

Most accounts of Gandhi’s spiritual experiments focus on those with Manu in 1946-47 in East Bengal. Although he conceded at the time that it “may be a delusion and a snare,” and although he seemed to be recalling his earlier experiments at Sevagram-”I have risked perdition before now”-he was still confident that he had “launched on a sacrifice [that] consists of the full practice of truth” and the development of a “non-violence of the brave.” He said that these tests were no longer an experiment, which could be seen as optional, but a compulsory sacred duty (yajna). His hut where he slept with Manu was called “holy ground,” and Manu’s father had to sleep elsewhere when he visited.

There is some confusion about whether the women simply slept next to him or shared the same cover, or whether they slept clothed or unclothed. The scenario appeared to be that they first slept next to him, then slept under the same cover without clothes. Significantly, Gandhi admitted that “all of them would strip reluctantly. . . and they did so at my prompting.” As to the reason for complete nakeness, Sushila Nayar recalls Gandhi’s explanation to Manu: “We both may be killed by the Muslims at any time. We must both put our purity to the ultimate test. . . and we should now both start sleeping naked.”

Gandhi described his sleeping with Manu as a “bold and original experiment,” one that required a “practiced brahmachari” such as he was, and a woman such as Manu who was free from passion. Confessing as she even might have done with her own mother, Manu told Gandhi that she had not ever experienced sexual desire. Presumably because of these ideal conditions, Gandhi predicted that the “heat would be great.” It is not clear whether Gandhi was speaking of the yogi heat of tapas, or the heat of the negative reactions that he anticipated.

One has to admire Manu because it was she, not Gandhi, who suggested that they not sleep together any longer. It is harder to credit Gandhi, particularly when he said that the experiments ceased because of Manu’s “inexperience,” not because of any failing on his part. As Kumar states: “Just five days before Gandhiji was assassinated, he charged her with failing to realize the potential of mahayajna.” So it was Manu’s fault, not his.

Controversy about the practice continued during the summer of 1947, but Gandhi was pleased when two editors of his journal Harijan, who had resigned in protest about the experiments, confessed that they had misjudged Gandhi. It is not clear that the experiments stopped because Pyarelal notes that “the practice was for the time being discontinued”; indeed, after returning to Delhi, Manu and Gandhi resumed sleeping together and “continued right till the end.”

Gandhi’s “sacred associations” actually began at his Sevagram ashram as early as 1938, when his wife Kasturba was still alive. Sushila Nayar not only slept with him there, but also gave him regular massages, sometimes in front of visitors, and they, as I have noted, bathed together. About his relations to Nayar, Gandhi states: “She has experienced everything I have in me. . . . She is more absorbed in me. Hence I would even make her sleep by my side without fear.” Nayar told Ved Mehta that “long before Manu came into the picture, I used to sleep with him just as I would with my mother. . . . In the early days there was no question of calling this a brahmacharya experiment. It was just part of a nature cure. Later

on, when people started asking questions about his physical contact with women, the idea of brahmacharya experiments was developed.” The fact that Gandhi changed the justification for these experiments after closer public scrutiny suggests that his motivation for these actions may not have been as pure as he wanted people to assume.

In an extremely candid confession, Gandhi admits that at Sevagram he had made a grave mistake:

I feel my action was impelled by vanity and jealousy. If my experiment was dangerous, I should not have undertaken it. And if it was worth trying, I should have encouraged my co-workers to undertake it on my conditions. My experiment was a violation of the establishment norms of brahmacharya. Such a right can be enjoyed only by a saint like Shukadevji who can remain pure in thought, word and deed at all times of day.

Gandhi, however, could not maintain his resolve, because shortly thereafter (as soon as 12 hours!) intimate contact with women of the ashram resumed. According to Mark Thomson, “Gandhi explained that he could not bear the pain and anguish suffered by women devotees denied the opportunity to serve him in this fashion.” Gandhi confessed that he “could not bear the tears of Sushila and fainting away of Prabhavati.” In February, 1939, there was another crisis. Gandhi admitted that four women at Sevagram did not like “giving service” and they were ordered to sleep “out of reach” of his arms.

When Gandhi spoke of the dangers of his sexual experiments in 1938, he must have realized that he was not ready for the test. While he did claim that he “can keep [sexual desire] under control,” he admitted he had not “completely eradicated the sex feeling,” a criterion that he had honored from the traditional rules of brahmacharya. Gandhi openly admitted that there were some “black nights,” presumably sleeping with his women, in which God “saved me in spite of myself.”

One of these dark nights must have been May 9, 1938. In a letter to Nayar’s brother, Gandhi admitted that he may have had “a dirty mind” and may have played “the role of Satan.” His “diseased mind” might have “aroused him” and thereby compromised Nayar, causing her “untold misery.” Gandhi was obviously wrong when he claimed previously that Nayar’s natural purity could “forestall any mistake I may make,” and that “contact with her has brought greater purity to me.” Although he took all the blame upon himself, Gandhi appears incredibly obtuse in assuming that Nayar had no reason to feel disturbed or unhappy about the psychological effects of her intimate relations with him.

Sushila Nayar was away from the ashram for long periods for her medical education. When she finished, Gandhi begged her to return as the ashram’s doctor. He was upset that she now refused to be called his daughter, and he urged her, without her preconditions, to “rush to me and become one with me.” Reading the dozens of letters exchanged during this time, it is clear that Nayar was still very troubled about what happened at Sevagram. She wrote that she would return only on “conditions,” which were that she would not have to give Gandhi “service.” Nayar reluctantly submitted to Gandhi’s indomitable will in September, 1940. While he was in Delhi, she did give him a massage, but she came to him “with great difficulty.” She also sent him a letter beforehand, which he described as “hurtful.” While describing himself as unhappy, he acknowledged that Nayar was suffering “deep misery.”It looked as if Nayar could have succeeded in tearing herself away from Gandhi’s possessive domination, just as his earlier intimates had, but she did eventually return to him and was with him and Manu in East Bengal.

Although Gandhi declared that he, compared to other men, could take greater liberty” with women, and that no woman “has been harmed by contact with me or been prey to lustful thoughts,” there is sufficient evidence to prove that Gandhi’s experiments had a deleterious effect on his female intimates’ mental health. There was intense competition among the women for Gandhi’s attention. For example, Lilavati Asar and Amtul Salaam were very jealous of Sushila Nayar, and Gandhi promised Asar that he would stop sleeping with Nayar because of her anger.

Gandhi was always inclined to blame others for not understanding the unique nature of his experiments. In 1940 Gandhi admitted that the “atmosphere here [Sevagram] cannot be said to be natural for anyone,” but nevertheless the conflict was caused by those who were not properly “absorbed” in it. Those who had learned “master the atmosphere” could live at Sevagram

“comfortably and grow.” Several visitors attested to definite signs of psychological turmoil among Gandhi’s women companions. In 1947 Swami Ananda and Kedar Nath, two visitors with substantial spiritual credentials, queried Gandhi as follows: “Why do we find so much disquiet and unhappiness around you. Why are your companions emotionally unhinged?” The former Tantric Raihana Tyabji observed that the more Gandhi’s young women “tried to restrain themselves and repress their sexual impulses . . . the more oversexed and sex-conscious they became.”

After learning of the experiments, Bose wrote that he would “never tempt [himself] like that; nor would my respect for a woman’s personality permit me to treat her as an instrument of an experiment undertaken only for my own sake.” He was also concerned about the women’s emotional health: “Whatever may be the value of the [experiment] on Gandhiji’s own case, it does leave mark of injury on the personality of others who are not of the same moral stature as he himself is, and for whom sharing in Gandhiji’s experiment is no spiritual necessity.”

Bose was also concerned about Gandhi’s own emotional state, observing that Sushila Nayar’s presence brought him out of his normal “unruffled” composure. On December 17, 1946 at 3:20 AM, Bose heard two loud slaps and “deeply anguished cry” from

Gandhi’s sleeping quarters. He went in to find both Nayar and Gandhi in tears. Bose had assumed that Gandhi had slapped Nayar, but she insisted that Gandhi had hit himself on the forehead twice, a physical form of Gandhi’s “self-suffering” that Manu had witnessed as well. Bose also mentions an unnamed woman “Z,” who “was not always disinterested in her relations with” with Gandhi, and who also upset him and distracted him from his political work.

VI

In conclusion, if we can call Gandhi a Tantric, then it is a very unique nonritualistic, nonesoteric practice combining aspects of both left- and right-handed Tantric schools. It also must be said, no matter how much we want to hold Gandhi in the highest esteem, that there is sufficient evidence to conclude that Gandhi was inconsistent in his justifications for his sexual experiments and not completely sincere in carrying them out. This would then lead one to question whether these experiments were a spiritual necessity or simply a personal indulgence and abuse of power.

If the goal of the true Tantric is to transform desire into something sacred, then personally I am less and less certain that Gandhi achieved this goal. As Aldous Huxley once said: “The professional Don Juan destroys his spirit as fatally as does the professional ascetic, whose [mirror] image he is.”

 

Gandhi’s philosophy: A Socio-economic view point.

Gandhi’s “non-violent” method of liberating India proved to be anything but. The country split into three pieces, at least two of which are constantly at war. Tens of millions of people were forced to migrate because of their religious background. Instead of uniting the people around class interests, Gandhi was responsible for advocating the traditional feudal Indian caste system which would leave India’s millions of Muslims as second-class citizens in a Hindu-dominated polity. He therefore bears major responsibility for the violence surrounding partition. Leaving this issue aside, however, what has Gandhi’s “non-violent” and bourgeois elitist approach to national liberation given India’s people in comparison to what communist violence achieved in China?

As mentioned above, Gandhi was staunchly loyal to India’s landlords and the system of capitalist serfage which was in place during his lifetime. Gandhi professed a totally primitivist and anarchist belief in the superiority of small-scale farming in India. Despite the fact that he pragmatically took the side of India’s (re)burgeoning industrial bourgeoisie in the last years of Brutish rule, Gandhi expressed such “spiritual” nonsense as the following to his followers in 1909:

“It is not the British people who are ruling India, but it is modern civilisation, through its railways, telegraphs, telephone, and almost every other invention has been claimed to be a triumph of civilisation … Medical science is the concentrated essence of black magic … Hospitals are the instruments that the Devil has been using for his own purpose, in order to keep his hold on his kingdom … If there were no hospitals for venereal diseases or even for consumptives, we would have less consumption, and less sexual vice amongst us. India’s salvation consists in unlearning what she has learnt during the past fifty years or so. The railways, telegraphs, hospitals, lawyers, doctors and such like all have to go.”

 

This contempt for modern “civilization” is misplaced. Gandhi may have confused colonial-capitalism with modern industry – forgetting “great” Britain’s ruination of India’s own in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries – which enables the production of an economic surplus capable of being shared equally by the masses for their own benefit. Gandhi, who was educated at Oxford and was a recipient of big-bourgeois funding, of whom one astute Indian observer remarked that it was costing India millions to keep him in poverty, rejected free social healthcare for the working masses.

Gandhis high-faluting asceticism is not just words. It has a real-life impact. In 1949, when the People’s Republic of China was declared and two years after India was declared a sovereign state, both countries were at comparable levels of development, with China being generally poorer than India. Yet the subsequent historical record of both countries demonstrates that socialism brings wealth, health and culture to the masses, thereby saving millions of lives, whilst capitalism (particularly the private ownership of land) brings, disease and starvation leading to millions of unnecessary deaths.

 

The following data is derived from UNICEF reports, 1984, 1986 and 1987 :

 

Population in 1949

China: 540 million

India: 510 million

Population in 1979

China: 800 million

India: 672 million

Under age 5 child mortality rate, 1945

(Figures per 1000)

India: 430

China: 520

Infant mortality under 1, 1945

(Figures per 1000)

India: 203

China: 280

Infant mortality rate under 1, 1985

(Figures per 1000)

India: 105

China: 36

Life expectancy at birth, 1949

India: 32

China: 32

Life expectancy at birth, 1985

India: 57

China: 69

Daily per capita calorie supply as percentage of daily requirements, 1983

India: 96%

China: 111%

 

These figures demonstrate that perhaps one hundred million lives were saved in China. Thanks to communism. Let us not afraid to admit, we prefer the violent suppression of a portion of recalcitrant exploiters and oppressors – unwilling to peacefully retire their property and privilege – to the misery, hopelessness and mass death occasioned by “non-violent” capitulation to capitalism and imperialism. Gandhi’s bourgeois morality of “non-violence” has translated in practical terms since Indian independence was declared to a massive pile of millions of people starved to death or left to die of preventable diseases, because his politics of bourgeois rapprochement with imperialism left the social structures intact which cause these terrible things to occur. It has ultimately led to thousands of farmers committing suicide in rural India in the past few years and to widespread illiteracy, hopelessness and pig repression and the strengthening of imperialism on a world scale.

 

The Maoist-Third Worldist Position on Revolutionary Violence

 

It is not for nothing that the bourgeoisie trumpets M. K. Gandhi and M. L. King: their turn-the-other-cheek politics plays right into the hands of the oppressor. The bourgeoisie wants “nonviolence” only from the oppressed. As US boxer Muhammad Ali is reported to have suggested, the oppressor only calls for peace when he has already taken possession of everything by force. If the United States were really serious about “non-violence,” would it invest so much in armaments? Would it occupy Korea? Would it facilitate the overthrow of elected leaders in Honduras? Would it finance its proxy armies in the Democratic Republic of Congo? Would it rampage around the Muslim world like a mad dog killing, torturing and maiming men, women and children?

The United States, The United Kingdom, and the Zionist entity demand that the oppressed disarm themselves, that demand should immediately set off howls of laughter from the world’s oppressed, and for that matter from any right-thinking person. How can disarmament possibly be on the agenda when the oppressors, armed to the teeth, are going to keep their arms?

In a world dominated by western monopoly capitalism, war and violent international conflict are inevitable. To condemn any particular armed intervention by imperialism is to miss the point that the entire capitalist system today rests on militarism and the armed repression of the Third World masses by imperialism. Maoist-Third Worldists detest any social system that imposes war as a necessity of life on humanity. We are advocates of the abolition of war. As Mao said:

“War, this monster of mutual slaughter among men, will be finally eliminated by the progress of human society, and in the not too distant future too. But there is only one way to eliminate it and that is to oppose war with war, to oppose counterrevolutionary war with revolutionary war, to oppose national counter-revolutionary war with national revolutionary war, and to oppose counterrevolutionary class war with revolutionary class war…. When human society advances to the point where classes and states are eliminated, there will be no more wars, counter-revolutionary or revolutionary, unjust or just; that will be the era of perpetual peace for mankind. Our study of the laws of revolutionary war springs from the desire to eliminate all wars. Herein, lies the distinction between us humanists and all the exploiting classes.”

With sorrow, we have seen what happens, from Chile to Nepal and from India to Palestine, when the people lay down their arms in the face of imperialism. Imperialism takes its chance and falls to feeding on its hapless victims. Therefore we say to

Palestinians and to all other exploited Third World nations:

“The seizure of power by capitalist force, the settlement of the issue by war- brain war, cultural revolution, revolution in intellect-thought process and also arms struggle at times when you are attacked by armed forces, is the central task and the highest form of revolution. This neo-rationalist principle of revolution holds well universally, for China and for all other countries.”

 

Long Live Indian Liberation!

Long Live Palestinian Liberation!

Long Live the Victory of People’s War!

 

References:

1. Letter to R. A. Kaur, March 18, 1947.
2. Ved Mehta, Mahatma Gandhi and His Apostles(Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penquin Books, 1976), p. 213. I rely heavily on Mehta for two reasons: (1) his book was well received and republished by Yale University Press; and (2) he sought out all the living Gandhian associates and interviewed them extensively.
3. Girja Kumar, Brahmacharya: Gandhi and His

Women Associates(New Delhi: Vitasta Publishing, 2006)

4. The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi (New

Delhi: Government of India Publications, 1958), vol. 93 5. Jawaharlal Nehru, Selected Works (New Delhi:

Orient Longman, 1974)

6. Aldous Huxley, Do What You Will (New York:

Doubleday, 1928),

7. William Bartley, Wittgenstein (Chicago: Open Court, 2^nd, 1985).
8. Jeffrey Kripal, Kali’s Child (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993).
9. Gandhi, Young India 8 (January 21, 1926),
10. Nirmal Kumar Bose, My Days with

Gandhi(New Delhi: Orient Longman, 1974),

11. Pyarelal Nayar, Mahatma Gandhi: The Last

Phase(Ahmedabad: Navajivan, 2^nd ed., 1966), vol1

12. Gopi Krishna, “Mahatama Gandhi and the Kundalini Proces” (Institute of Consciousness Research, 1995) at http://www.icrcanada.org/gandhi.html (accessed on June 11, 2009). All the citations are from the second section of the essay.)
13. Gandhi, Key to Health, trans. Sushila Nayar (Ahmedabad: Navajivan Trust, 1948), ( Krishna’s English translation differs significantly from this one, so I wonder if he

is citing the same text. He himself gives no reference.)

14. Gandhi, Womans’s Role in

Society(Ahmedabad: Navajivan Publishing, 1959),

15. Gandhi, Harijan (November 14, 1936), p. 316). “Woman is the incarnation of ahimsa. Ahimsa means infinite love, which again means infinite capacity for suffering” (Harijan [February 24, 1940], p. 13.
16. Cited in Martin Green, Gandhi: Voice of a New Revolution (New York: Continuum, 1993), p. 261.
17. Bose, p. 177. Mrs. Polak noted a Atrait of sexlessness@ even in his South Africa days (Gandhiji as We Know Him, ed. Ch. Shukla [Bombay, 1945], p. 47). A Mrs. Shukla said that Athere are some things relating to our lives that we women can speak of . . . with no man . . . . But while speaking to Gandhiji we somehow forgot the fact that he was a man@ (C. Shukla, Gandhiji=s View of Life [Bombay, 1951],
18. 199). See also The Last Phase, vol. 1, p. 595; 2^nd ed., vol. 1, bk. 2, p. 234.
19. Brian K. Smith, “Eaters, Food, and Social Hierarchy in Ancient India,” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 58:2 (Summer, 1990), pp. 177, 178.
20. Gandhi, Harijan (July 23, 1938), p. 192.
21. S. Gupta, “Gandhi and the Mass Media” at http://mkgandhi-sarvodaya.org/mass_media.htm, visited on May 30, 2009.
22. Gandhi’s Letters to Ashram Sisters, ed. K. Kalelkar and trans. A. L. Mazmudar (Ahmedadbad: Navajivan, 2^nd ed., 1960), p. 94.
23. Hsi Lai, The Sexual Teachings of the White Tigress: Secrets of Female Taoist Masters(Rochester, VT: Destiny Books, 200), p. 16. Lai states that he became interested in “the matter of transformational sex” by reading about Gandhi’s experiments.
24. Agehananda Bharati, The Tantric Tradition (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1965), p. 202.
25. Brahmavaivarta Purana, RakritiKhanda87, trans. Tracy Pintchman, The Rise of the Goddess in the Hindu Tradition(Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1994), p. 164.
26. Bharati, p. 236.
27. Collected Works, vol. 87, p. 13. Compare this with the Tantric yogi who said “Let my kinsmen revile me. . .

let people ridicule me on sight . . . .” (cited in Bharati, p. 238).

27. “Thousands of Hindu and Moslem women

come to me. They are to me like my own mother, sisters, and daughters. But if an occasion should arise requiring me to share the bed with any of them I must not hesitate, if I am the bramacharya that I claim to be. If I shrink from the test, I write myself down as a coward and a fraud” (Collected Works, vol. 87, p. 15).

28. See Bharati, pp. 200, 202, 203. Other exceptions were an active Shiva in Tamil Shaivism and a static female in the Markandeya Purana (p. 213).
29. Hevajra Tantra, trans. D. L. Snellgrove, excerpted in The World of the Buddha, ed. Lucian Stryk (New York: Grove Press, 1968), p. 311.
30. See Buddha’s Lions: The Lives of the EightyFour Siddhas, trans. and ed. James B. Robinson (Berkeley: Dharma Publishing Co., 1979).
31. Mark Thomson, Gandhi and His Ashrams (Columbia, MO: South Asia Books, 1993), p. 202.
32. See Hugh Urban, Tantra: Sex. Secrecy, Politics, and Power in the Study of Religion (Berkeley, CA:

University of California Press, 2003), p. 67.

33. Mahanirvana Tantra13, 22, cited in Urban,
34. 65.
35. Wendy Doniger, Foreward in Edward C. Dimock, Jr., The Place of the Hidden Moon(Chicago:

University of Chicago Press, 1989), p. xiii; cited in Kripal, p.

117.

35. Kripal, p. 118.
36. Ramkrishna Kathamrita62; 5.140-41 (trans., Kripal); see The Gospel of Ramakrishna, p. 701.
37. B. Saint-Hilaire, The Future Evolution of Man(Pondicherry: All India Press, 1963), p. 148.
38. Nallaswami,Shivajñana Siddiyar3.2.77; cited in R. C. Zaehner, Evolution in Religion: A Study in Sri Aurobindo and Pierre Teihard de Chardin (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971), p. 104.
39. Naresh Majhi, Gandhi and African Blacks http://www.trinicenter.com/oops/gandhi2.html
40. Richard Grenier, The Gandhi Nobody knows,

Commentary march 1983, p. 59-72

41. Sudarshan Kapur, Raising up a prophet: The

African-American Encounter with Gandhi (Boston, Beacon

Press, 1992)

42. Fazlul Huq, Gandhi: Saint or Sinner?

(Bangalore, Dalit Sahitya Academy, 1992)

43. Kamran Shahid, Gandhi and the partition of

India (Oxford University Press, 2005)

44. Rajani Palme Dutt, Gandhi and the Nationalist Movement: A Marxist view’ in Martin Deming Lewis, ed., Gandhi: Maker of Modern India (Boston, D.C.

Health & Co., 1965)

45. Rajani Palme Dutt, India Today (London, Victor Gollancz Ltd., 1940)