Gandhi's Experiments Of Celibacy -
Sexual Obsession, Manipulation & Pedophilia
When it comes to the experiments of celibacy, Mahatma Gandhi's experiments are widely discussed as they were not the part of Hindu's experiments of Celibacy. Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi had strong views on sex, and he often gave detailed instructions to his followers on this subject. His views on sex were not very popular, but also described as “abnormal & unnatural” by India’s first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru.
Gandhi was married with Kasturba at the age of 13, not unusual for his time. They led a normal married life, who had four sons. Later in life, Gandhi had written how he had lustful feelings for his wife. “Even at school I used to think of her and the thought of nightfall and our subsequent meeting was ever haunting me,” he wrote in his autobiography. He had written that he always wanted to teach his illiterate wife but he could not find time due to his lustful love. When his father was ill, and he was still in school. “Every night whilst my hands were busy massaging my father’s legs, my mind was hovering about the bed-room – and that too at a time when religion, medical science and commonsense alike forbade sexual intercourse,” he wrote. When his father was dying, Gandhi left him bedside to have sex with Kasturba. After his father's death, Gandhi compounded his grief with guilt that he had not been present and represented his subsequent revulsion towards "lustful love" as being related to his father's death.
At the age of 38, in 1906, he took a vow of brahmacharya, which meant living 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 poverty. It was chastity that eluded him
In the year 1946, Gandhiji asked his 19-year-old great-niece Manu to sleep in his bed in order to test his sexual desire and vows of celibacy and told her "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." He was in his 70s then.
The Indian historian Ramachandra Guha has written in his biography of Gandhi that after Gandhi's wife, Kasturba died in 1944, Gandhi began his experiments of celibacy. He began the habit of sharing his bed with naked young women: his personal doctor, Sushila Nayar, and his grandnieces Abha(his great-nephew's wife) and Manu, who were then in their late teens and about 60 years younger than him. Eighteen-year-old Abha, the wife of Gandhi's grandnephew Kanu Gandhi, rejoined Gandhi's entourage in the run-up to independence in 1947 and by the end of August he was sleeping with both Manu and Abha at the same time.
* (All of the women were younger than him)
He also set up ashrams in which he began his first "experiments" with sex; boys and girls were to bathe and sleep together, chastely, but were punished for any sexual talk. Men and women were segregated and Gandhi's advice was that husbands should not be alone with their wives and when they felt passion, should take a cold bath. The rules did not, however, apply to him. Sushila Nayar, the attractive sister of Gandhi's secretary, also his personal physician used to sleep and bathe with Gandhi. When challenged, he explained how he ensured decency was not offended. "While she is bathing I keep my eyes 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."
As he grew older he was to have more women around him and would forced women to sleep with him whom – according to his segregated ashram rules – were forbidden to sleep with their own husbands. Gandhi would have women in his bed, engaging in his "experiments" which seem to have been, from a reading of his letters, an exercises which included strip-teasing or other non-contact sexual activity. Much explicit material has been destroyed but some remarks in
Gandhi's letters remain such as: "Vina'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 experiment meant something more than just sleeping close to him. Gandhi had never hidden his unusual experiments with women. He had disclosed the same to his close associates, many times through letters. In a letter written to his Ashram manager Munnalal Shah, Gandhi had written, “Abha slept with me for hardly three nights. Kanchan slept one night only. Vinas sleeping with me might be called an accident. All that can be said is that she slept close to me.” It may be noted that Kanchan was Munnalal’s wife.
He went on to write, “what Abha and Kanchan told me was this; that she had no intention whatever of observing brahmacharya, but wished to enjoy the pleasure of sex. She, therefore stayed very reluctantly and undressed only for fear of hurting me.
* (He himself told that he was forcing women to sleep and undress)
If I remembered rightly, she was not with me for even an hour. I then stopped both the women from sleeping with me, for I realised that Kanu and you were upset.” Gandhi than added that these three women were excluded from the experiment. He then added, “I have deliberately included Pra. in the experiment. Maybe I should not. She often used to sleep with me to keep me warm even before I was conscious that I was making an experiment. I used to draw her to me when she lay on the floor, shivering, for my sake." In a letter to Krishnachandra he had wrote, “What I mean is that I have done naturally. I have written— haven’t I?—that they did so at my prompting. If I wish to be a brahmachari under all circumstances and want the women also to be such, this is the one way. Now leave this matter alone and watch what happens.”
Why was this so important to Gandhi at that time?
He told his purpose in inviting naked women to share his bed was to avoid having sex with them. They were there as a temptation: if he wasn’t aroused by their presence, he could be reassured he'd achieved bramhacharya a Hindu concept of celibate self-control. According to Gandhi, a person who had such control was “one who never has any lustful intention, who by constant attendance upon God has become proof against conscious or unconscious emissions, who is capable of lying naked with naked women, however beautiful they may be, without being in any manner sexually excited”. Such a person, Gandhi wrote, would be incapable of lying or harming anyone. Because he believed – fantastically, egotistically – that the Hindu-Muslim violence then sweeping India had some connection to his own failings. He had come round to the view, as Guha writes, “that the violence around him was in part a product or consequence of the imperfections within him”. And those imperfections, which he scrupulously recorded and publicised, included the “nocturnal emissions” (wet dreams) that had occurred in the years 1924, 1936 and 1938 to spoil a record of celibate living that began in South Africa in 1906, and which led each time to bouts of self-disgust. He had an almost magical belief in the power of semen: "One who conserves his vital fluid acquires unfailing power," he said.
Such behaviour was no part of the accepted practice of bramacharya. He, by now, described his reinvented concept of a brahmachari as: "One who never has any lustful intention, who, by constant attendance upon God, has become proof against conscious or unconscious emissions, who is capable of lying naked with naked women, however beautiful, without being in any manner whatsoever sexually excited who is making daily and steady progress towards God and whose every act is done in pursuance of that end and no other." That is, he could do whatever he wished, so long as there was no apparent "lustful intention". He had effectively redefined the concept of chastity to fit his personal practices.
So, when India was fighting for then independence he took it upon himself to see his sex experiments as having national importance: "I hold that true service of the country demands this observance," he stated.
Gandhi was obsessed with his own sexuality and celibacy, which is hugely problematic. He wanted to make sure he was not a sexual predator. He was doing these experiments to test his celibacy and libido. But, those experiments cannot be defended. They were an imposition on young people and an exercise in power, because he is the great Mahatma and she’s just a young follower. It seems that Gandhi lived as he wished, and only when challenged did he turn his own preferences into a cosmic system of rewards and benefits. Like many great men, Gandhi made up the rules as he went along.
While a large number of women slept naked with Gandhi and some women were willing partner of his experiments, most of them did so as Gandhi forced them to and not out of free will. He had a strong personality, and it was very difficult to say no to him. It was revealed by Gandhi himself. Gandhi used his position to sexually exploit young women and used his power to manipulate them.
R. P. Parasuram who worked at Gandhi's Aashram wrote in his letter to Gandhi -
Apart from the question of any affect on you, what about the effect on girls?
There is something of other wrong with them [the women who sleep naked with Gandhi]. [The] Punjabi girl who lived opposite my room in Matunga. She used to weep unrestrainedly and that not caring whether others saw her or not. She laughed also unrestrainedly. And then here is Dr. Sushila-behn [the 24-year-old in-house physician at the ashram who Gandhi also used for his ‘experiments’]. How many are the days when she has not wept? She is a doctor and yet she is always a patient, always is ill. Who has heard of a doctor who cries out at night?
Even then the whole thing is considered wrong by the world. I do not like it. Nirmal babu [Bose] does not. Sucheta-behn [Kriplani] did not like it and said, “However great he may be, he cannot do such things. What is this?” You must admit that there is something in our objection. You cannot waive it aside.
As for blood relations [this is in reference to Manu Gandhi]. The world is sceptic even there. There have been cases of immorality between father and daughter, brother and sister.
I object to your having massage done by girls. When I was studying in college, I read a report saying you were being massaged by Dr. Sushila-behn. And now I find you do get yourself massaged by girls.
Those people who know that you are naked during massage time say that you could at least put a cover over it [his genitals].
The same objection I hold against girls coming to the bathroom when you go there. Ramachandran saw you like that and said you had fallen a little from his estimation. However great you may be,
It can clearly seen from his letter that Gandhi used to force women to sleep with him and those girls were having trauma. Gandhi was a sexual predator who used girls for his unusual sexual experiments. Also, rather than sleeping with the women of his age, he used to sleep with teenagers which shows that he was a pedophile who abused and harrassed teenagers.
Gandhi was an adulterer & had a spirtual marriage with british women who were in his Ashram. He would do enemas twice a day and if he liked you allowed you to enter the piece of his rectum.
Gandhi led a very unusual life which will not be acceptable in today’s era, and legal action will taken if someone tries such ‘experiments’ today. Actually, it was not acceptable in that era also, many people had criticised it. Gandhi's stenographer R. P.Parasuram left his ashram when Gandhi refused to stop these “experiments.” Two editors of his newspaper refused to print parts of his sermons on these unusual sleeping arrangements and subsequently resigned. Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel had called it a “terrible blunder”, and had asked him to stop it. But he was Bapuji and Mahatma. So, he was allowed to continue with the experiments.
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