Going Native: Gandhi’s Relationship with Western Women, Thomas Weber

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.