Gandhi's girls - sex scandal

Washington Monthly, July-August, 1987 by Art Levine

Gandhi's Girls

India, 1942: In the end, the political demise of Mohandas Gandhi came with stunning speed. Until last week, he was the reversed Mahatma--the Great Soul-- leader of 400 million Indians in the drive for independence from British colonial rule. With the election of the Labour Government in Britain increasingly likely, chances never seemed brighter for the free India that Gandhi had sought for so long.

But by week's end, in the wake of newspaper accounts of Gandhi's sexual peccadillos, bizarre personal habits and mind-bending cult practices, his career--and perhaps Indian nationalism --lay in ruins. Those closest to Gandhi likened it to a Greek tragedy, a giant cut down by his own hands. "Gandhi's personal life was a political time bomb waiting to explode,' said one distraught associate. "Now it's finally blown up in our faces.'

Ironically, Gandhi set the stage for his demise through his own pronouncements on sex. His obsession began in 1885 when he learned of his father's death while in bed with his wife. By 1906, he had taken a much celebrated vow of celibacy. An extraordinary commitment, but even then Gandhi was angling for moral loopholes. "If for want of physical enjoyment,' he wrote, "the mind wallows in thoughts of enjoyment, then it is legitimate to satisfy the hungers of the body.' For years, supporters now admit, Gandhi had pushed the outer limits of propriety. "The man in the loin cloth, it seems, has thought a good deal about loins,' said one observer.

After years of such rumors, it was the specific nature of the latest charges, followed by other damaging revelations, that undermined his political base. The shock waves were felt throughout the British empire--and new questions were raised about how relevant a politician's character was to his work, and whether in the case of Gandhi, the Fourth Estate went too far.

A Spiritual Experience? The trouble began a week ago when the New Delhi Herald published a front page story reporting that Gandhi had spent the weekend with five attractive young women--aides in his nonviolent campaign--at his ashram in Sevegram. Meanwhile, his wife Kasturbai was 2,000 miles away at their mountain retreat in Kashmir recuperating from an illness.

Escorting them was Gandhi's aide, the movie star-handsome Jawaharlal Nehru. With his urbane charm and stylish taste in jackets, Nehru never had any pretense to celibacy. (His intimacies with Lady Mountbatten are infamous.) Campaign insiders said that they had long been alarmed by Gandhi's ties to Nehru, and several suggested their time together be cut back. "We told him to dump Nehru,' said one aide. "But the old man would just sit there and smile. He didn't see the storm coming.'

It was advice Gandhi must now wish he had heeded. New Delhi Herald reporters and photographers were hiding in nearby bushes, guarding both the front and rear entrances. Except for a breath of fresh air at 3 A.M., the women had spent the entire night with the erstwhile spritual leader. If the chronology was indicting, the photographs were positively damning. Wielding telephoto lenses, the Herald photographers snapped shots that seem sure to snuff out a political career. The scene: Gandhi and his cabal sprawled on his rope bed-- naked.

Late Sunday morning, a weary Gandhi finally spotted the Herald reporters and confronted them. The women were only there as an experiment in self-restraint, he insisted, and nothing sexual transpired between them. "True brachmacharya (celibacy) is this: one who, by constant-attendance upon God, has become capable of lying naked with naked women, however beautiful they may be, without being in any manner whatsoever sexually excited. I have done nothing wrong,' Gandhi insisted.

The Indian public wasn't buying it. His explanations had become the issue of the campaign, according to a poll taken two days after the Herald story broke. Only 34 percent of those questioned believed Gandhi's claim that he hadn't had sexual relations with the women--and a scant 16 percent believed he hadn't been sexually excited. A mere 26 percent claimed to be disturbed by the incident itself; what bothered them, said 75 percent of India's citizens, was the appearance of hypocrisy.

But the questions kept coming. Every stop on his campaign swing turned into a media circus. A protest march in Dandi was cut short by a throng of reporters, barraging Gandhi with questions about his sexual self-control. A new low in political discourse may have been reached when a reporter for the Bombay Post asked during a sit-in, "Did you get an erection last weekend?' Although Gandhi was well within his rights when he responded, "I don't have to answer that,' some observers felt that the appearance of evasiveness further eroded his credibility.

Matters were only made worse when the Herald was widely rumored to be on the verge of publishing more damaging photos--of nothing less than unmistakeable signs of Gandhi's physical excitement. When a pack of enterprising reporters caught up with her at her sickbed, Mrs. Gandhi stuck by her man. She told them: "Honestly, if Mahatma told me that nothing happened, then nothing happened.'