Visionaries or Oddballs?
Why were
western women attracted to Gandhi?
Imagine
Europe of the nineteen twenties and thirties. The Great War had ended, wiping
away an entire generation of young men. Add to this, the misery of a deadly
epidemic (1918 Spanish flu), economic recession (the 1929 recession was still a
few years away), and the growing militarism of all the nations preparing for
the next conflagration, which in hindsight came to be known as the Second World War. Europe was in its most vulnerable state ever in its history.
Into this
moral vacuum, step in two individuals- one in flesh and bone, and the other
through the printed word of a hagiography. Rabindranath Tagore, the globe-trotting
Nobel prize winning bard, undertook three European tours in 1921, 1926, and
1930. Tagore ‘dressed in flowing white robes, the mystical-looking long bearded
sage’ (author’s words page 306) came closest to the image of Christ, albeit one
better fed when compared to the familiar figure on the Cross. Mahatma Gandhi
was heralded into European consciousness by a biography written by Romain
Rolland, and published in 1924. The portraiture of the Mahatma as an embodiment
of peace, nonviolence, truth, eastern religion, spirituality, mysticism,
enlightenment, social reform, and liberty made a deep impression on the
European people. In these vulnerable times, Europe lacked the intellectual
strength to properly dissect the confusing concatenation of images conjured by
Rolland. Gandhi emerged as “a Jesus-like Hindu” (Author’s words Page 307) with
“the only thing lacking is the cross” (Rolland’s words). Europe fell for this,
and Rolland’s book had a dream run selling lakhs of copies in repeated reprints.
Let us look
at this situation from the eyes of the European women. What options did they
have? Despite the adverse gender ratio, they were expected to marry young,
raise children, and work in their homes and in factories. They had to do all
this in the face of shortages, hyperinflation, growing antisemitism, amid many
other sundry evils (see Richard Overy, The Morbid age). Some among the women,
especially those with means, conflated violence with masculinity, and feminism
with pacifism. They rejected both sex as an act, and marriage as an
institution. For these women, Rolland’s book promised an ideal in Gandhi, who
had put into practice similar notions in his Ashram. These women made a beeline
to Gandhi who welcomed them at Sabarmati, Wardha, and Sewagram before sending some
of them onward to Shantiniketan. (An out-of-work author could profitably write
a similar book on Tagore’s relationship with western women!)
The
difficulty with these notions was the rejection by Gandhi and his women
followers of (i) militant feminism of British suffragettes, (ii) birth control
activism of Margaret Sanger, and (iii) the constructive work of sexually active
volunteers. It is not known if Gandhi read Rolland’s book, but he seems to have
taken his role as a proto-Christ seriously, with tragi-comic consequences. He
embraced (figuratively) the highly sexed Nilla Cram Cook, and saw in her his Christ-like
potential to bring about a Mary Magdalene-like miracle. Towards this end he
falsely introduces Cook as “a prostitute” (page 245). He suspects her of being
pregnant, merely because she does not have her periods for three months.
Actually she had stopped menstruating due to weakness brought on by one of
Gandhi’s dangerous experiments with diets. Under Gandhi’s influence (he even
goes on an unexplained three week long penitential fast), Nilla turns into a
saint. She shaves her head, establishes an Ashram, cleans the streets, and does
‘Harijan work’, but nevertheless manages to seduce men of all races in her
Ashram!
She is then
deported back to the United States for other reasons. If all this creates in
the minds of readers an impression of Nilla Cram Cook as a “fallen woman”
(Gandhi’s words) with the odium attached to sexual promiscuity, just examine
her post Gandhi life. Back in the United States, she puts “on a series of well–received
Greek dance performances”, goes to Europe as a war correspondent, is appointed
the United States Cultural Attaché in the US embassy in Iran. She heads the
Department of Theatres, National Ballet and Opera. She translates the Koran and
founds a studio for the revival of classical arts in Iran. But for the Gandhi
interlude and its various distortions, she led a long, normal, productive and
creative life.
Margarete
Speigel, fled antisemitism in Germany. She merely wanted to find a lucrative
job to care for her family. Gandhi discourages her from finding a job, and
draws her into his inner circles. She too, after a distracting interlude
eventually finds a job in Mumbai, and leads a normal life with her mother and a
pet dog.
Peace
Armies. Let us
examine the other great Gandhian idea of a peace army comprising tens of
thousands of unarmed men, women and children, who were expected to throw
themselves in the path of an invading army. One of Gandhi’s followers, a
certain Maude Royden took on the task of calling for volunteers in Europe. With
strenuous effort she could manage the enrollment of barely 1000 volunteers.
Nevertheless this exceeds by a factor of ten, Gandhi’s own efforts to enroll
volunteers to support Britain’s war efforts during the Great War. He managed to
enroll a 100, a list in which Sardar Patel and he made the top two! (see Graham
Turner, Catching Up with Gandhi). Needless to say, Royden’s peace army would
have had a tremendous success if it had come upon Gandhi’s regular army.
Unfortunately for Royden, 1.5 million Indians had enrolled during the Great
War, and a staggering 2.5 million Indians had enrolled for the Second World War,
in what would be the largest ever mercenary force ever assembled in human
history. With such numbers arraigned against her, Royden recanted, and invited
Gandhi’s chastisement!
Much has
happened in the decades since the end of the Second World War. So what about
the idea behind peace armies? This idea it appears is alive and well, albeit in
a slightly distorted form. If the original aim of the peace army was to get the
unarmed civilian population embroiled in a war waged with dangerous weapons,
this idea has been subsumed in the tactics of all global terrorist organizations
like the LTTE (in Sri Lanka), the ISIS (in Syria and elsewhere), and more
recently by the Hamas (in Gaza). All these organizations use the unarmed local
population as a human shield and interpose unarmed men, women
and children between armed combatants as originally envisaged by Gandhi and Royden.
Gandhi
& Madeleine Slade Alias Mirabehn. Of all the cringing, clinging women around Gandhi,
Madeleine Slade (named Mirabehn by Gandhi) was the worst. She spent twenty three
years with Gandhi. While she claims to have learnt a lot from Gandhi- generally
“discipline and training”, but “it also undermined my self-reliance and
self-expression, and I became unable to do any sustained or independent work.
Before I came to Bapu I was a person of free energy, enterprise and self-reliance.
All this I somehow lost.” (page 210, Madeleine Slade’s words). In exchange for
this debilitation she claims to have gained her “real self coming back to life”,
“new strength and freedom” and “spiritual riches”. Overall, her appraisal of
her personal life is inconsistent to say the least. She falls in love with a retired
revolutionary and Gandhi for the first time ever, encourages the infatuation, presumably
to get rid of her. Gandhi even goes back on his earlier advise that he, the
revolutionary, look upon Mirabehn as his sister. One does not become a former
revolutionary unless one has impeccable survival skills. These skills come to
the fore and the object of her infatuation evades her and “married another who
he had lured away from her fiancé” (page 211).
For all her
willing enslavement to Gandhi’s cause as much as to his person, when it came to
money matters, Mirabehn lapsed back to being Madeleine Slade. The Ashram had
been deducting her living cost from the deposit she had made with the Ashram
authorities when she had first joined as an inmate. She had expected the Ashram
to bear her living expenses as she toiled like any other paid employee. On
discovering what the Trustees of the Ashram had been doing, she demands that
the Ashram deduct no more than Rs. 20,000 towards her living expenses over 20
years, and return the rest of her money as she intended to set up an independent
Ashram in the Himalayas to do constructive work. Gandhi disapproves of her plan
and threatens to publicly disown her, but relents later. But as with the other
women, her pioneering work on conserving the forests and environment of
Himalayas came after dissociating herself from Gandhi (Gandhi had died by then).
The Government of independent India was more supportive of her venture than
Gandhi had ever been. She sowed the seeds of the Chipko movement of Sunderlal
Bahuguna, before leaving India for good in 1959.
Of what
use were these western women? As typical with so many institutions to this day, Gandhi was always
surrounded by fawning men (and women), “admirers hanging on his every word”
(page 87). These Western Women although
they were of a similar persuasion, were more objective than the native
disciples.
(1) Madeleine Slade observed that all
was not well with the Ashram. Some were thieving from the supplies, some were
using bhang, others were breaking their vows, and the funds were in the hands
of creative accountants.
(2) Nilla observed that for all their
protestations of voluntary poverty, the Ashramites lived so much better than
the people they worked with, that one had to lock up one’s room even while
going to the prayer hall.
(3) While Gandhi declared that
Saraladevi Chaudhurani was his “spiritual wife” (whatever that meant), he could
not countenance Nilla declaring the Ashram doctor to be her “spiritual husband”.
Yet others did not mince their words of criticism.
(4) Sonja Schlesin, one of his early
South African associates refers to his “wretched autobiography”, his “breaches
of confidence”, “unholy misrepresentations” and “caddishness” (page 65). Schlesin
further states, “it (the Autobiography) rather detracts from the good opinion
one might have of the author, because it is not honourable” (emphasis of
Schlesin). Schlesin also remarks that Gandhi has become somber and gloomy, and
cast away merriment as a cardinal offence.
(5) Florence Winterbottom observing the
increasingly strident tone of Gandhi’s writing calls him out for “becoming a
little fanatical and lacking balance in his ideas about nonviolence, which were
once seen as a weapon of the weak but which Gandhi now characterized as
requiring strength” (page 54). She goes on to wonder if the increasing bitterness
in his writings is a result of his denying himself of the physical needs
required “to keep your spiritual nature serene and happily balanced”. This is
thinly veiled reference to Gandhi’s observation of celibacy in his marriage.
(6) Another associate Olive Schreiner
refused to visit him as he had taken up the task of enlisting men to assist
Britain in the Great War in violation of his commitment to non-violence.
(7) Gandhi had this irritating habit of giving
Indian names to the western women in his orbit. One of them leaves a will leaving
all her money to Gandhi just before dying, and rather disingenuously appends
her Indian name ‘Tara’ to it. Needless to say her family claims her money and
Gandhi gets nothing!
In
conclusion, only Mary Barr and her colleagues in Khedi, and those who came to
India after Gandhi’s demise were useful workers who trod the difficult path of
rural reconstruction. As for the rest, what they needed most was a therapist.
If only Gandhi’s Ashram, in addition to the resident doctor (Pyarelal’s sister)
also had a resident therapist, the sum total of gloom in the Ashram would have considerably
reduced. Gandhi himself was eminently qualified to be the First Patient.
