We know Gandhi as ‘Mahatma,’ a ‘Great
soul’ and the Father of the Nation of India. We ascribe freedom won from foreign
yoke to him. He led the independence movement in India against the British,
using non-cooperation, and non-violence, which influenced the world over.
The question is what was he as a
husband to his wife Kasturba, as a father to his five children and to his grandchildren?
Did he practice at home the democratic ideologies he learned from the British,
which he used against them? Or was he a tyrant and impatient teacher and an
insensitive human being to the emotional and other needs of his family? Did his
family got subsumed in his passion for his ideologies?
Gandhi describes his early days in
his autobiography. His violating vegetarianism creed of his family and eating
beef to gain strength as a boy; repenting that sin and confessing to his father
about the whole episode and seeking his pardon; his excessive sexual urge, which
made him spend that night in bed with his young wife, when his father lay dying
and feeling guilty about it for a long time thereafter and so on.[1]
What made me question Gandhi as a
family man was the book I read recently, written by Neelima Dalmia Adhar, from
the viewpoint of Kasturba, his wife.[2]
It is then I realized that despite all the adulations he had received from all
over the world as a Mahatma, to his own family he was a heartless tyrant,
imposing his will on them, with little heed to how it could be affecting them.
Briefly to narrate a few incidents,
he forced his wife, who had come from an orthodox family background, not only
to clean her own toilet, but also those of his guests at the Ashram. It
revolted her and she fought against such imposed discipline and service without
much success. Gandhi had his way and the children watched the wretched fight
between their parents, and it affected them, especially the eldest boy,
Harilal.
He refused to give his children
proper school education and forced on them his own education at home whenever
he found time. The children were all inducted into the ashram life and duties
one by one, without any education. Harilal resented this all his life, as he
wanted to be a barrister like his father and wanted to be do his law course
abroad just like his father had done.
Instead when an opportunity arose and
a wealthy man offered to send one of the boys of Gandhi abroad for studies,
Gandhi refused to give that privilege to his own eldest son Harilal, for he did
not want to be seen as taking advantage of such an offer for his personal family
and sent another boy related to him.
This broke the heart of Harilal and
he left his father’s Ashram. Thereafter he became a vagabond and a drunkard
and a useless man. He never forgave his father for what he did to him, not that
Gandhi ever realised the harm he had done to his own sensitive son.
The next son Manilal also would feel
the heat of the strict disciplinarian father. As a teenager Manilal had an infatuation
for a young girl in the Ashram and was mesmerised by the long hair she had and
had embraced her once after she got out of the pool where they were all
bathing. When then next time he did it, it happened to be the wrong girl and
the complaint went to the Ashram head, Gandhi.
After finding out what happened and
the reason for his son’s infatuation, Gandhi not only ordered the beautiful
long tresses of the two piteously crying girls to be chipped off mercilessly,
but also forced a 12 year brahmacharya’s (to be a pure bachelor) vow on his
helpless son and banished him to another Ashram far away from his present one. Manilal
underwent the punishment for he couldn’t have gone out like his elder brother
and suffer, for they were neither educated nor equipped to stand on their own
to face the world.
Principle is good to hold, but it should
be tempered with compassion, which Gandhi repeatedly refused to show on his own
family. His own youth was plagued by sexual excesses and at the age of 45 he
took the vow of brahmacharya, without the consent of his wife and partner
Kasturba and thereafter the whole world, especially his own sons had to be
strict brahmacharies (bachelors).
He had fathered five children in
quick succession, but would talk ill of his elder son, who also gave birth to
five children. Was there any understanding of human frailties? Not at all. He
expected his sons of 18 and 25 years old to be what he was, when he was 45
years old. Unreasonable expectations.
Later when Manilal fell in love with
a Muslim girl and wanted to marry her, the Father of the Nation, who spoke of
integrated India, an India for both Muslim and Hindu, refused to give
permission and made the son renounce his love.
On return to India, when ancestral
property was to come to him, Gandhi stood on his principles and refused to take
his share, which if he had accepted, would have helped his elder son, who was struggling
financially in his life. The same Gandhi had no compunctions to accept
hospitality from Birlas and other wealthy merchants, later in his public life.
Where did the principle go that time?
Gandhi also tried very hard to make
Kasturba literate and imposed lessons on her unwilling self, which ended
abruptly when Kasturba put her foot down and refused to undergo this torture
any longer.
Devdas, the fourth and youngest son
of Gandhi fell in love with the daughter of C. Rajagopalachari, another famous
leader of independence struggle, and Gandhi refused to give his blessings, because
she was a Brahmin and Gandhi belonged to Baniya caste.
Finally, it was decided that both
will wait for five years and even after that they felt they were in love, they
can marry, which they did. So, Gandhi was never against caste system or worked
towards its abolition, but wanted to preserve it as it was and imagined that Dalits
would be safe within this rigid caste system, an unrealistic stand.
Lastly, a man who had excess of
libido as a young man, and who gave up sex at the age of 45, taking a vow of
brahmacharya, and expected strict morality from his sons, would undertake sex-experiments
at the age of 60, to check whether his vow was truly being followed by him or
not. And this was done publicly in front of the eyes of everyone, young and
old, Indian and foreigner.
He would lie naked on his bed in the
nights as he went to sleep, with two young girls lying on either side of him,
both naked, to check if he had really realised his goal of brahmacharya or not.
To his despair, he found that he had arousal and felt convicted that the
problem the country faced was because he had failed in his brahmacharian vows.[3]
Well, less said the better of this
quirky little man, who is the Father of the Nation of India. Politically also
many of his decisions delayed independence and led India towards partition and the
subjugation of Dalits under the upper caste Hindus for a long time to come,
even in the independent India.
The very fact that independence of
India was won by him is disputable. Had it not been that the Indian army
(British army of Indian soldiers) refusing to obey the British, after the three
INA[4]
leaders were hanged, independence would have been delayed still further.
So much for the Mahatma and the
Father of the Nation.
[1]
M.K. Gandhi, An Autobiography or The Story
of My Experiments with Truth, Navajivan Trust, 1927.
[2]
N.D. Adhar, The Secret Diary of Kasturba, Tranquebar Press, 2016.
[3] Claude
Markovits, The Un-Gandhian Gandhi: The
Life and Afterlife of the Mahatma, Permanent Black, 2003.
[4] Indian
National Army of Subhas Chandra Bosh.
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