In July this year, the British government announced that by the summer of 2015, a statue of Mahatma Gandhi would be installed in London’s Parliament Squa-re, alongside that of Winston Churchill. There is already a statue of Gandhi in London’s Tavistock Square, near King’s Cross, installed in 1968. However, installing the statue of the father of our nation at London’s Parliament Square has a greater symbolic value. Gandhi, an apostle of non-violence, dismantled the yoke of British imperialism by non-violent struggle. And it is a delicious irony that archimperialist Winston Churchill, who had declared that “we have no intention of casting away that most truly bright and precious jewel in the crown of the King, which more than all our other Dominions and Dependencies constitutes the glory and strength of the British Empire”, will soon find himself in close proximity to the Mahatma who successfully snatched away “the bright and precious jewel” from the crown of Britain’s king.
Churchill could not stomach the parity between the Viceroy and Gandhi when he saw the Viceroy of India, Lord Irwin, carrying on negotiations with Mahatma Gandhi for a political truce after the latter had launched a countrywide campaign of civil disobedience. He fulminated bitterly against the Mahatma as well as the Viceroy in an address to the Council of the West Essex Unionist Association on February 23, 1931: “It is alarming and also nauseating to see Mr Gandhi, an Inner Temple lawyer, now become a seditious fakir of a type well known in the East, striding half-naked up the steps of the Viceregal Palace, while he is still organising and conducting a defiant campaign of civil disobedience, to parley on equal terms with the representative of the King-Emperor… I am against these conversations and agreements between Lord Irwin and Mr Gandhi... The truth is that Gandhiism and all it stands for will have to be grappled with and finally crushed.” It was no surprise that Churchill refused to meet Gandhi when he went to England later the same year as a delegate to the Second Round Table Conference.
However, Gandhi, as per his nature, did not take it to heart. Thirteen years later, after his release from detention from the Aga Khan Palace, Gandhi wrote a letter to Churchill, who was then Prime Minister of Great Britain, on July 17, 1944, from Panchgani, where he was recuperating: “You are reported to have a desire to crush the simple ‘Naked Fakir’ as you are said to have described me. I have been long trying to be a fakir and ‘naked’ — a more difficult task. I, therefore, regard the expression as a compliment though unin-tended. I approach you then as such and ask you to trust and use me for the sake of your people and mine and through them those of the world.” He signed off, “Your sincere friend, M.K. Gandhi”.
The opposition to the proposed installation of Gandhi’s statue has come from an unexpected quarter. Kusoom Vadgama, the founder of the Indo-British Heritage Trust, has said that a statue of Mahatma Gandhi is unacceptable because of his sexual exploitation of young women. Vadgama, 82, says that she revered the Mahatma when she was a schoolgirl, unaware that he used to sleep with naked teenage girls in self-designed tests of his celibacy. “I can’t see this statue of a man who used women for his experiment. It’s despicable. Go and sleep with a prostitute or another woman, not your niece, who’s barely out of her teens... What about the girl who is going through puberty? How does she feel about it?”
She clarified that she has spoken out now because the recent spate of gang-rapes and hangings of rape victims in India suggest that women are still disrespected and used as objects in India. This is nothing but profane. The Mahatma never exploited anyone, much less a woman. Gandhi took the vow of brahmacharya (celibacy) in 1906, at the age of 36. And in Noakhali, in 1946, at a time when the country was engulfed in the fire of rabid communalism, he began his experiment — testing his vow of brahmacharya. Convinced that a true brahmachari has the moral and spiritual power to control situations, there were serious doubts in his mind about the efficacy of his own brahmacharya. His faith in himself was shaken as he felt that brahmacharya emits spiritual energy which can subsume all violence.
In some mysterious way, Manuben, his grandniece, became part of this experiment which was, indeed, a search for God. Nirmal Kumar Bose, his interpreter at Noakhali, was baffled when, on December 12, 1946, he entered Gandhi’s room early in the morning and found Gandhi and Manuben in the same bed talking. According to Robert Payne, “Later Gandhi explained that they had been discussing a bold and original experiment, whose ‘heat will be great’. He said he had reached the end of one chapter in his life, and a new one was about to begin. If anyone opposed the experiment, then he should leave, for he could only work with people who were loyal to him.”
Two persons strongly opposed this practice — Nirmal Bose and his typist Parshuram who, in fact, wrote to him. Parshuram left him in disgust. Gandhi sent those letters to many of his associates, but only two of them replied — J.B. Kripalani verbally told him that he found nothing wrong in it, while Khan Abdul Gaffar Khan wrote back that if he could not trust Gandhi, he could not trust himself. Gandhi even asked Manubehn how she felt when she slept with him, and she replied that she felt as if she were sleeping with her mother. She also wrote a book Bapu: My Mother.
The experiment of sleeping naked with women was unique which an ordinary mind cannot comprehend.None of his women companions ever complained of any transgression on his part or insensitivity to their problems. In fact, his approach to women was quite positive, and it was primarily because of the influence of his mother, Putalibai, whom he adored, that he made arduous efforts for the empowerment of women.
Opposition to his proposed statue in London from a woman activist is surprising as Mahatma Gandhi did a lot for women’s empowerment. He opposed purdah, supported remarriage of child widows and even the right to divorce for those women who were not happy with the marriage even though he felt that marriage is sacrosanct.
The writer is a senior TV journalist and author
