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Thrill of the chaste: The truth about Gandhi's sex life - Features - Books - The Independent

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Thrill of the chaste: The truth about Gandhi's sex life

With religious chastity under scrutiny, a new book throws light on Gandhi's practice of sleeping next to naked girls. In fact, he was sexmad, writes biographer Jad Adams
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Is this the Y ear of DEVolution?

It was no secret that Mohandas Gandhi had an unusual sex life. He spoke constantly of sex and gav e detailed, often prov ocativ e, instructions to his followers as to how to they might best observ e chastity . And his v iews were not alway s popular; "abnormal and unnatural" was how the first Prime Minister of independent India, Jawaharlal Nehru, described Gandhi's adv ice to newly weds to stay celibate for the sake of their souls. But was there something more complex than a pious plea for chastity at play in Gandhi's beliefs, preachings and ev en his unusual personal practices (which included, alongside his famed chastity , sleeping naked nex t to nubile, naked women to test his restraint)? In the course of researching my new book on Gandhi, going through a hundred v olumes of his complete works and many tomes of ey e-witness material, details became apparent which add up to a more bizarre sex ual history .

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Much of this material was known during his lifetime, but was distorted or suppressed after his death during the process of elev ating Gandhi into the "Father of the Nation" Was the Mahatma, in fact, as the pre-independence prime minister of the Indian state of Trav ancore called him, "a most dangerous, semi-repressed sex maniac"? Gandhi was born in the Indian state of Gujarat and married at 1 3 in 1 883; his wife Kasturba was 1 4, not early by the standards of Gujarat at that time.

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Thrill of the chaste: The truth about Gandhi's sex life - Features - Books - The Independent
The y oung couple had a normal sex life, sharing a bed in a separate room in his family home, and Kasturba was soon pregnant. Two y ears later, as his father lay dy ing, Gandhi left his bedside to hav e sex with Kasturba. Meanwhile, his father drew his last breath. The y oung man compounded his grief with guilt that he had not been present, and represented his subsequent rev ulsion towards "lustful lov e" as being related to his father's death. Howev er, Gandhi and Kasturba's last child wasn't born until fifteen y ears later, in 1 900. In fact, Gandhi did not dev elop his censorious attitude to sex (and certainly not to marital sex ) until he was in his 30s, while a v olunteer in the ambulance corps, assisting the British Empire in its wars in Southern Africa. On long marches in sparsely populated land in the Boer War and the Zulu uprisings, Gandhi considered how he could best "giv e serv ice" to humanity and decided it must be by embracing pov erty and chastity . At the age of 38, in 1 906, he took a v ow of brahmachary a, which meant liv ing a spiritual life but is normally referred to as chastity , without which such a life is deemed impossible by Hindus. Gandhi found it easy to embrace pov erty . It was chastity that eluded him. So he worked out a series of complex rules which meant he could say he was chaste while still engaging in the most ex plicit sex ual conv ersation, letters and behav iour. With the zeal of the conv ert, within a y ear of his v ow, he told readers of his newspaper Indian Opinion: "It is the duty of ev ery thoughtful Indian not to marry . In case he is helpless in regard to marriage, he should abstain from sex ual intercourse with his wife." Meanwhile, Gandhi was challenging that abstinence in his own way . He set up ashrams in which he began his first "ex periments" with sex ; boy s and girls were to bathe and sleep together, chastely , but were punished for any sex ual talk. Men and women were segregated, and Gandhi's adv ice was that husbands should not be alone with their wiv es, and, when they felt passion, should take a cold bath. The rules did not, howev er, apply to him. Sushila Nay ar, the attractiv e sister of Gandhi's secretary , also his personal phy sician, attended Gandhi from girlhood. She used to sleep and bathe with Gandhi. When challenged, he ex plained how he ensured decency was not offended. "While she is bathing I keep my ey es tightly shut," he said, "I do not know ... whether she bathes naked or with her underwear on. I can tell from the sound that she uses soap." The prov ision of such personal serv ices to Gandhi was a much sought-after sign of his fav our and aroused jealousy among the ashram inmates. As he grew older (and following Kasturba's death) he was to hav e more women around him and would oblige women to sleep with him whom according to his segregated ashram rules were forbidden to sleep with their own husbands. Gandhi would hav e women in his bed, engaging in his "ex periments" which seem to hav e been, from a reading of his letters, an ex ercise in strip-tease or other non-contact sex ual activ ity . Much ex plicit material has been destroy ed but tantalising remarks in Gandhi's letters remain such as: "V ina's sleeping with me might be called an accident. All that can be said is that she slept close to me." One might assume, then, that getting into the spirit of the Gandhian ex periment meant something more than just sleeping close to him. It can't, one imagines, can hav e helped with the "inv oluntary discharges" which Gandhi complained of ex periencing more frequently since his return to India. He had an almost magical belief in the power of semen: "One who conserv es his v ital fluid acquires unfailing power," he said. Meanwhile, it seemed that challenging times required greater efforts of spiritual fortitude, and for that, more attractiv e women were required: Sushila, who in 1 947 was 33, was now due to be supplanted in the bed of the 7 7 -y ear-old Gandhi by a woman almost half her age. While in Bengal to see what comfort he could offer in times of inter-communal v iolence in the run-up to independence, Gandhi called for his 1 8-y ear-old grandniece Manu to join him and sleep with him. "We both may be killed by the Muslims," he told her, "and must put our purity to the ultimate test, so that we know that we are offering the purest of sacrifices, and we should now both start sleeping naked." Such behav iour was no part of the accepted practice of bramachary a. He,

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Thrill of the chaste: The truth about Gandhi's sex life - Features - Books - The Independent
by now, described his reinv ented concept of a brahmachari as: "One who nev er has any lustful intention, who, by constant attendance upon God, has become proof against conscious or unconscious emissions, who is capable of ly ing naked with naked women, howev er beautiful, without being in any manner whatsoev er sex ually ex cited ... who is making daily and steady progress towards God and whose ev ery act is done in pursuance of that end and no other." That is, he could do whatev er he wished, so long as there was no apparent "lustful intention". He had effectiv ely redefined the concept of chastity to fit his personal practices. Thus far, his reasoning was spiritual, but in the maelstrom that was India approaching independence he took it upon himself to see his sex ex periments as hav ing national importance: "I hold that true serv ice of the country demands this observ ance," he stated. But while he was becoming bolder in his self-righteousness, Gandhi's behav iour was widely discussed and criticised by family members and leading politicians. Some members of his staff resigned, including two editors of his newspaper who left after refusing to print parts of Gandhi's sermons dealing with his sleeping arrangements. But Gandhi found a way of regarding the objections as a further reason tocontinue. "If I don't let Manu sleep with me, though I regard it as essential that she should," he announced, "wouldn't that be a sign of weakness in me?" Eighteen-y ear-old Abha, the wife of Gandhi's grandnephew Kanu Gandhi, rejoined Gandhi's entourage in the run-up to independence in 1 947 and by the end of August he was sleeping with both Manu and Abha at the same time. When he was assassinated in January 1 948, it was with Manu and Abha by his side. Despite her hav ing been his constant companion in his last y ears, family members, tellingly , remov ed Manu from the scene. Gandhi had written to his son: "I hav e asked her to write about her sharing the bed with me," but the protectors of his image were eager to eliminate this element of the great leader's life. Dev das, Gandhi's son, accompanied Manu to Delhi station where he took the opportunity of instructing her to keep quiet. Questioned in the 1 97 0s, Sushila rev ealingly placed the elev ation of this lifesty le to a brahmachary a ex periment was a response to criticism of this behav iour. "Later on, when people started asking questions about his phy sical contact with women with Manu, with Abha, with me the idea of brahmachary a ex periments was dev eloped ... in the early day s, there was no question of calling this a brahmachary a ex periment." It seems that Gandhi liv ed as he wished, and only when challenged did he turn his own preferences into a cosmic sy stem of rewards and benefits. Like many great men, Gandhi made up the rules as he went along. While it was commonly discussed as damaging his reputation when he was aliv e, Gandhi's sex ual behav iour was ignored for a long time after his death. It is only now that we can piece together information for a rounded picture of Gandhi's ex cessiv e self-belief in the power of his own sex uality . Tragically for him, he was already being sidelined by the politicians at the time of independence. The preserv ation of his v ital fluid did not keep India intact, and it was the power-brokers of the Congress Party who negotiated the terms of India's freedom.

Gandhi: Naked Ambition is published by Quercus (20). To order a copy for the special price of 1 8 (free P&P) call Independent Books Direct on 08430 600 030, or visit w w w .independentbooksdirect.co.uk

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