KASTURBA GANDHI: A BIOGRAPHY

By B.M. Bhalla

Born in Dinga district of Gujrat in what is now Pakistan, Prof. B.M. Bhalla has had a long and distinguished teaching career in Delhi University. His works have been published in various national and international journals and his translation of the Punjabi poet Shiv Kumar Batalvi’s celebrated verse epic Luna won him the prestigious Delhi State Sahitya Academy Award in 2003.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Roli Books
• Release date: Mar 20, 2020
• ISBN: 9788194566106

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My Parents

Soma Devi & Chetan Singh

The Kasturba – it’s in the family –

Swadesh, Kiran, Vandana, Mona.

Contents

Introduction

I. Thinking of Kasturba

II. Family Background and Marriage

III. The Early Years of Self-Discovery

IV. The Uncharted Sea: Kasturba’s African Odyssey [part 1]

V. Kasturba’s African Odyssey [part 2]

VI. Kasturba and Women around Gandhi

VII. Kasturba in India, 1915–1944

Notes

Bibliography

Index

About the Author

Introduction

Kasturba belonged to an opulent business family with properties at different locations. She had a comfortable, secure, and affectionate upbringing in the Kapadia joint family, where deep and abiding Vaishnava religious and cultural values prevailed. At the age of thirteen, she was married to a schoolboy – of the same age, the same caste, and the same Vaishnava religious persuasion – belonging to the well-known Gandhi family, which was reputed for its integrity, high public service and administrative and diplomatic competence. The Gandhi family was not rich; it was middle class. At the time of Kasturba’s marriage, its political and financial status was on the decline. The Gandhi joint family was cramped in a small dark house, to which Kasturba was brought.

Kasturba brought a rich endowment into the Gandhi family, not of wealth, but of character, courage, and commitment. Her character had been moulded by the Hindu cultural tradition where a woman’s personality and identity are shaped by great iconic mythic characters like Sita and Savitri. She was absolutely committed to her husband and his family – not to the control of her husband but to the values of Hindu wifehood. She was quite confident of her standing, calm in wholeheartedly accepting the conditions in the Gandhi family and confident in dealing with her husband. She was uneducated, but mature and intelligent in judging situations and not afraid of anything.

Kasturba’s father was a rich trader and one-time mayor of Porbandar, and Mohandas Gandhi’s father was the dewan (chief minister) of the state of Porbandar, and later of Rajkot and Vankaner. The two families had known each other for years and Kasturba was received with great affection. She started performing the household chores under the direction of her mother-in-law. She was well liked by everybody and was soon happily integrated in her new family.

But Kasturba’s marriage was actually a journey from the realm of calm to a zone of perpetual storm, all through more than six decades of her married life. The story of her life is one of how she weathered one storm after another and how successfully she fared in facing unexpected challenges, which she could never have dreamed of at that tender age.

On the occasion of the gruesome murder of the Mahatma, Jawaharlal Nehru had said:

As he grew older, his body seemed to be just a vehicle for the mighty spirit within him. Almost one forgot the body as one listened to him or looked at him, and so where he sat became a temple and where he trod was hallowed ground.

The surprising thing about India about this period was not only that the country, as a whole, functioned on a high plane, but also that it functioned more or less continuously for a lengthy period on that plane. That, indeed, was a remarkable achievement. It cannot easily be explained or understood unless one looks upon the astonishing personality that molded this period. Like a colossus he stands astride half a century of India’s history – a colossus not of the body but of the mind and spirit.¹

This exalted lighthouse of spirit which illumed the whole world for half a century was not built in a day. It involved a long, lonely voyage of great penance, relentless experimentation and superhuman discipline in the stormy sea of private and public domains, where there was only one constant – the never-failing companion of Gandhi. It was his loyal wife Kasturba who provided her own light of courage and conviction and proved to be a great support. Constant as the Pole Star, she proved to be a great example, an ideal model, a supportive mentor and the perfect co-voyager to Gandhi.

But Kasturba did not step only into the domain of storm but also into the kingdom of spirit, which was a compound of values defined with great originality by Gandhi. But the domain of spirit opened up gradually. The storm, however, was imminent soon after her marriage. She was married to a diffident, below-average, confused boy who was a strange amalgam of cowardice, negativity, ambition, assertion, truthfulness, and reformist zeal. At that stage she expected nothing more than a normal middle-class family life. Her early trial was nothing compared to the later challenges of coping with Gandhi’s grand civilizational mission. But even at that early stage they were kindred spirits in many ways. Both had imbibed certain values from their traditional upbringing and their deep religious moorings. For instance, both were deeply religious and had unflinching faith in God; both had sweet springs of compassion in their hearts; and a strong tendency and capacity of rendering service to others.

Gandhi claimed that his basic mission was religious and his involvement in politics was incidental. He therefore placed moral–ethical value at the centre of his political action and the Bhagvad Gita became his grammar of action, a daily guide to direct his mind and enforce his spirit. It is in this domain of moral–ethical values that Kasturba – an uneducated, ignorant, home-bound woman – became his equal, in some ways, and at different stages, his superior, mentor and role model. Kasturba’s situation did not allow her to initiate any action outside her home, not even within her little niche inside the four walls. All initiatives and innovations were initiated by her husband and obeying his dictates became her opportunities to learn, react and resist. It was the moral–ethical values of her traditional training that guided her in confronting her husband or in remaining steadfast in following him faithfully as part of her ‘dharma’ that ultimately made her husband realize what Kasturba stood for.

Gandhi breathed his last with the name of Rama on his lips. Ramdhun: Raghupati Raghav Raja Ram/ Patit Pavan Sita Ram, became his sheet anchor throughout his life. What sort of inspiration did he receive by this invocation every morning and evening? First of all, the compassion of Rama for the ‘patit’, the downtrodden, the marginal, the poor and helpless became his fundamental concern. His basic struggle in South Africa and India was directed to providing succour and service to the dispossessed millions, and his politics became an epic fight against the exploitative structures and systems that suppressed vast populations with the help of brute force at their command. This humanistic mission was well understood by Kasturba, though it was difficult for her to overcome her deep-seated aversion to scavenging. But once she crossed that bridge, she herself offered to serve the poor and afflicted Indian labourers during epidemics and undertook campaigns for sanitation, health education and looking after the sick, besides taking part in political action, which sent her to jail in South Africa.

In the Ramdhun, the ‘Patit Pavan’ is Sita Ram – not only Rama is the refuge of the poor and the helpless; he is joined by his consort Sita in this mission. She is his equal partner. The women as mothers are the embodiment of service and compassion and their place in Hindu iconography is well established. Raja Rama is also worshipped as Maryada-purshottam – the super-man, founder, law-giver and upholder of moral–ethical order and Ram Raj, the kingdom and reign of Rama thought to be a realm of peace, welfare and morality. Gandhi always said that he wanted to establish Ram Raj in India. Not that he blindly accepted Rama’s moral code, but he followed Rama’s ethical principles. He defined his own code suited to the contemporary situation. He swore by truth, non-violence, vegetarianism, brahmacharya, non-possession, and other difficult vows that he took. He staked everything for the upliftment of the untouchables.

Kasturba could easily understand these values, as they came from our ancient traditions, though by nature she neither liked nor perhaps believed in such hard, almost impossible, conditions that Gandhi imposed on everybody in his ashrams. His methodology of keeping fasts, days of silence and daily prayers were also derived from ancient practices, and so was his idea of brahmacharya. Kasturba gradually grasped and accepted not only the hard conditions of her life but also the immensity, influence and moral grandeur of her husband’s mission. She became an ardent follower, a faithful supporter and participator in his campaigns, but she jealously guarded her dignity as an individual and as a woman, and her independent judgment. She retained the capacity to stand up to him if the occasion so demanded. She was not overawed by her husband even when he stood tall as a colossus on the world stage, because she was an integral part of him. Kasturba’s capacity to patiently suffer, to adopt and adjust in changed conditions and circumstances, her courage to face adversity, loss and dangers could easily match her husband’s. She was not only equal but, by Gandhi’s own confession, his ‘better half’. Her conduct and behaviours compelled him to think deeply about his psychic drives and forced him to modify his view not only of Kasturba and gender relations, but also the values and the spirit she embodied. Kasturba was emotionally strong and could bear a lot of strain. She was not afraid of death. Neither was she so meek and docile and helpless as some cynical commentators have made her out to be. She could be quite assertive and her retorts could be quite devastating. Gandhi refers to her bad temper in a letter, warning one of his sons to be careful about it. But Gandhi himself could also be quite cross and angry with her.

Kasturba was also a very hard taskmaster. She would not tolerate any shoddy work or casual attitude. G. Ramachandran in his reminiscences of ‘Ba’ states:

I spent the whole of 1925 as a member of Ba’s community kitchen in the Satyagraha Ashram in Sabarmati. The house was Bapu’s, but his writ did not run in the kitchen. It was Ba who ruled it. There were some 20 Ashramites eating in her kitchen including some grand-children. It was mostly a crowd of people from different parts of India. There was a Telugu doctor who swallowed chillies. I, in secret and one or two others slipped away occasionally to eat other food in the Ahmedabad city. But Ba ruled the kitchen with a measure of stern discipline and a large measure of maternal love. We were three or four of us helping Ba in cooking and serving. She was a hard taskmaster, particularly to herself. It was not as though Ba was simply supervising the little community kitchen… But she cooked and cleaned and swept and served like the rest of us working with her. She demanded punctuality, scrupulous cleanliness, good manners and participation in some work or other from everyone eating in her kitchen.²

Neither was Kasturba so helpless that she had no choice but to stick to her husband. She had to do it because it was part of her ‘dharma’, the cardinal principle of her ideology. Gandhi loved his wife and she knew it. He never abandoned his family. He only adopted a harsh and extremely hard way of life and wanted the members of his family to undergo the same rigorous discipline. He sacrificed his family at the altar of India’s freedom and neglected them as individuals and their aspirations. He neglected the education of his sons and made his wife face difficult challenges that he created for himself. From the viewpoint of modern-day individual rights, he was guilty. Gandhi, however, viewed his family differently.

Nobody knew Kasturba more than Gandhi himself. All we know about Kasturba is what he tells us in his Autobiography and in a few letters that he wrote to her and to other members of his family.

The following comment by Gandhi reveals what he thought of her:

It seems to me that the root cause which attracted the public to Kasturba was her ability to lose herself in me. I never insisted on this self-abnegation. She developed this quality on her own. At first I did not even know that she had it in her. According to my earlier experience she was very obstinate. In spite of all my pressure she would do as she wished. This led to short or long periods of estrangement between us. But as my public life expanded, my wife bloomed forth and deliberately lost herself in work. As time passed, I and my service of the people became one. She slowly merged herself in my activities. Perhaps Indian soil loves this quality most in a wife. Be it as it may, to me this seems to be the foremost reasons for her popularity.

What developed the self-abnegation in her to the highest level was our Brahmacharya. The latter turned out to be more natural for her than for me. She was not aware of it at first. I made a resolve and Ba, as she was affectionately called, accepted it as her own. Thence forward we became true friends. From 1906, really speaking from 1901, Ba had no other interest in staying with me except to help me in my work. She could not live away from me. She would have had no difficulty, if she had wished in staying away from me. But as a woman and wife she considered it her duty to lose herself in me ever after. She did not cease looking after me till her last breath.³

Kasturba’s life and work, therefore, can’t even be imagined or assessed independently; it was enmeshed in the day-to-day engagements of her husband and the alchemy of his life. We will, therefore, have to discuss all the twists and turns of Gandhi’s novel experiments in his public and private life and all the sociopolitical developments to unfold Kasturba’s story. But then there is an apprehension that Kasturba and her heroic struggle may get dwarfed in the shadow of the colossus that her husband was, and is even today.

Kasturba herself has left no record of her thoughts, feelings, struggles, associations, experiences or any details of events. She never thought of it, nor was she intellectually equipped for it. It was not part of her mental or emotional culture. Besides, she was very humble. So we don’t have Kasturba’s version of the events in which she was involved. Moreover, not many detailed accounts or reminiscences have been left by the members of her family or friends in public life, nor has any organization gathered significant new material on her life in the last seventy years. Unfortunately that generation is no more and the valuable resources, if any, have been lost forever.

As a person, Kasturba had deep faith in God, her husband and in turn his mission. She had immense capacity for love, compassion and service; to reduce herself to nothingness so that nobody could inflict any further punishment on her. Her power, like that of her husband, was the power of the spirit, the real ‘power of the powerless’.

Ved Mehta, in 1977, noted that the two bibliographies then available on Gandhian writings, one by Jagdish Sharma and the other by Dharam Vir, had 3,485 numbered entries, either by or about Gandhi. ‘For Kasturba, however, there were only eleven entries, three of them mentioned by Western writers. Gandhi’s wife according to him was neglected in life and seemed to have been all but overlooked after death.’⁴

Forty-one years after that, one can safely say that Gandhi’s industry has expanded worldwide, but any bibliography dealing with Kasturba would not list more than a dozen entries even today. However, in the last few decades, Gandhi has been rescued, to some extent, out of myths, legends and apotheoses, and dealt with more critically. The hindsight of history is now more pointedly focused on specific events, issues and situations. Postmodern assessment of Gandhi has, however, not diminished the relevance of his life and philosophy for most people.

Kasturba’s life and work call for the same critical approach. I will read her story in terms of the struggle of Indian women for identity, equality, and self-empowerment. Gandhi helped open a door for them to achieve equality by bringing them forward to participate in the struggle for Indian independence and social development. Kasturba had herself volunteered to become an active participant in the struggle against oppression and injustice in South Africa, and after that for the independence of India. She also worked for the social and cultural regeneration of the country. She achieved a personality and identity which set an example for the common Indian women of her time to emulate her.

Kasturba represented the brightest face of womanhood during our struggle for Indian independence. According to Pyarelal Nayar:

When the full history of India’s non-violent freedom struggle comes to be written, the contribution made to it by the brave woman such as Gomti Behn (wife of Kishori Lal Mashruwala), Durga Behn (Shrimati Chhagan Lal Gandhi) and others – with Kasturba Gandhi at the head, who Gandhiji had filled with the power of the basic Ashram disciple – will be accorded a fitting place. None of them were ‘educated’ in the sense in which the expression is generally understood these days, but it is my firm conviction that on our capacity to evolve that type of womanhood depends India’s destiny and her future place in the world.⁵

I

Thinking of Kasturba

Thinking of Kasturba, the most poignant scene that flashes across the mind is Gandhi keeping watch over the lifeless body of his wife at Aga Khan Palace in Pune, where he and Kasturba were imprisoned during the 1940s for leading the Quit India Movement, the last struggle against the Raj, and where she died on 22 February 1944. This is an immortal photograph of one of the greatest men of the age sitting mouse-like at his dead wife’s feet, ruminating in grief at the end of more than six decades of moral and spiritual voyages undertaken together with rare determination and courage.

Gandhi was a man of God. He could perhaps look upon grief and joy with equal detachment and equanimity. However, Sushila Nayar, Kasturba’s close confidante and supporter, who was part of these momentous happenings, tells us that Gandhi experienced great pain on parting with his wife. As the grief sank in, he remarked, ‘I cannot imagine life without Ba. I had always wished her to go in my hands so that I would not have to worry as to what will become of her when I am no more. But she was an indivisible part of me; her passing away has left a vacuum which will never be filled.’¹ Again in his reply to Viceroy Wavell’s message of condolence, Gandhi said:

I send you and Lady Wavell my thanks for your kind condolences on the death of my wife. Though for her sake I have welcomed her death as bringing freedom from living agony, I feel the loss more than I had thought I should.

We were a couple outside the ordinary. It was in 1906 that after mutual consent and after unconscious trials we definitely adopted self-restraint as a rule of life. To my great joy this knit us together as never before. We ceased to be two different entities. Without my wishing it, she chose to lose herself in me. The result was she became truly my better half.

She was a woman always of very strong will, which, in our early days, I used to mistake for obstinacy. But that strong will enabled her to become, quite unwittingly, my teacher in the art and practice of non-violent non-cooperation.²

Gandhi’s grief sank deep and his loneliness grew more acute, which he himself did not realize. Three years after her death, Gandhi said to a visitor from South Africa:

Ba was in no way weaker than I; in fact she was stronger. If I had not had her cooperation, I would have been sunk. It was that illiterate woman who helped me to observe all my vows with the utmost strictness and kept me ever vigilant. Similarly in politics also she displayed great courage and took part in all the campaigns...

She was a devout Vaishnavi, used to worship the tulsi religiously, observed sacred days and continued to wear the necklace of holy beads right up to her death. I have given that necklace to [Lakshmi]. But she loved [this] Harijan girl as much as she loved Manu or Devadas’s Tara.

She was a living image of the virtues of a Vaishnava described by Narsinha Mehta in his bhajan. It is because of her that I am today what I am... In the fast of 1943... I was nearly at death’s door, but she never cried or lost courage but on the contrary kept up other people’s courage and prayed to God. I can see her face vividly even today.³

Kasturba won these tributes from her husband at the end of her life, for which she had continuously done tapasya. It was not always smooth sailing, but in the end she had the satisfaction of fulfilling her mission of life by dying in detention as a satyagrahi in the Quit India Movement, lying in the lap of her husband, after a painful and protracted illness. She also had the satisfaction of dying a suhagan (i.e., her husband was still alive), thus fulfilling her dream of being a ‘true’ Hindu wife. She was particular that she be cremated in the same sari that was woven out of the yarn spun by her husband and gifted to her by him.

The above picture gives the impression that Mohandas Gandhi and Kasturba made an ideal couple who lived a life of harmony, happiness and fulfilment of marital bliss. But the truth was far from it. The mutual understanding and fellowship in misery and pain in the later years were nowhere to be seen during the early years. This journey of the Gandhi couple from suspicion, fear, doubts and bickerings to complete faith, understanding and harmony makes a story of epic proportion.

But before we discuss how Kasturba and Gandhi managed their lives, we have to take note that both Kasturba and her husband were born 150 years ago. Young people today will have to imagine the lives of their great-great-grandmothers to understand Kasturba and her extraordinary life. Both Kasturba and Gandhi were born in the coastal city of Porbandar, in the small state of Saurashtra, which was ruled by a chieftain and according to old traditional rules and conventions. Both came from similar backgrounds, belonging to the elite Modh Bania families living in adjoining streets and well known to each other.

Unlike Gandhi, Kasturba, of course, never went to school, as there were hardly any schools for girls and their