Opinion Mahatma’s sexuality

Ignorance and prejudice are a lethal combination with pretensions of defeating the truth. However,their alliance is completely powerless when it comes to the truth about Mahatma’s life,from which he never tried to hide anything. As someone,who recently had to do extensive research on this subject for a book on Gandhiji that I have just completed,I can categorically state,based on my understanding,that he was not homosexual. I do so without passing any value judgment on homosexuality—which is a natural mode of sexuality for some people. Gandhiji’s relations with his close associates,male or female,had highest levels of goal-oriented intensity and spiritual intimacy. Precisely for that reason,these relations can be easily misunderstood. For example,when Maganlal Gandhi,his chief comrade-in-arms from his South African days and the ‘soul’ of the Sabarmati Ashram suddenly died in 1928,a grief-stricken Gandhiji remarked,‘I have been widowed’. This does not mean that the two had a homosexual relationship. Gandhiji was also light years away from being a hypocrite or a pervert in sexual matters. No other personality of global stature comes anywhere close to him in terms of the unimaginable levels of transparency and honesty that he brought to bear on discussing his sexual life,with not only his close associates but also with readers of his journals. He regarded secrecy as a sin. Indeed,the dividing line between the private and the public had become non-existent in his case,as is evident from a remarkable passage in the chapter on ‘Brahmacharya’ in his secretary Pyarelal’s magnum opus Mahatma Gandhi: The Last Phase—by far the finest book on the final heroic years of Gandhiji’s life. Pyarelal writes: “There were no ‘walls’ in his Ashram. He had no ‘private life’. His most intimate functions were performed not in privacy. Thus,he had his massage (an important component of nature cure) practically naked,with young girls very often as masseurs. He often received visitors and even members of the (Congress) Working Committee while stretched on the massage table. Similarly,while having hydropathic treatment,he allowed both men and women to assist him and any and almost everybody had free access to him in his bath. In his celebrated letter to Churchill,while appropriating as a compliment the disparaging epithet of the ‘half-naked fakir’,which the Tory leader had applied to him,he went on to say that it was his ambition to become completely naked—literally as well as metaphorically—the latter being of course more difficult” (emphasis mine).

Constraints of space in this column do not allow me to comprehensively elucidate Gandhiji’s experiments in Brahmacharya,which he embraced in 1906—incidentally,the year when he took the path of Satyagraha. Brahmacharya for him meant total purity of the body,mind,heart and soul,and was an inseparable part of his larger ‘Experiments with Truth’ to achieve the goal of God-realisation. But,unlike a yogi in a Himalayan cave,absolute Brahmacharya was not something he wanted for his own personal spiritual elevation. Rather,he endeavoured to gain the enormous powers of a true Brahmachari so that,by becoming a perfect slave and instrument of God,he could use those God-given powers to prevent India’s tragic partition and the inferno of Hindu-Muslim riots that preceded and followed it. His experiments in celibacy—including those that involved sleeping in a naked state with naked women—were never a means of sexual gratification for him. They were part of his sustained effort to attain a state of absolute sexlessness,indeed a yajnya for divinisation of sex,so that he could become a more effective “warrior” of nonviolence. What tormented him was his awareness that he had not attained perfection in his pursuit. Nobody in modern human history has ever dared to do something as super-ambitious as this.

For a proper understanding of Gandhiji’s purpose,precept and practice of Brahmacharya,readers may pick up Pyarelal’s gem of a book,because no other writer has dealt with this ‘sensitive’ matter with greater authenticity,sensitivity,understanding and empathy. For a far less competent exposition of this subject,you may await my own book Music of the Spinning Wheel: Mahatma Gandhi’s Prophetic Thoughts on Science,Technology and Development for Tomorrow’s Nonviolent World,to be published by Amaryllis in a few months.