Mahatma & Manuben – Gandhi’s experiments with celibacy

Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi was a compulsive letter writer. The most exciting portions of his writings (and responses to those) concern his women associates. Mahatma Gandhi’s Letters on Brahmacharya, Sexuality and Love deals with his cardinal principles of brahmacharya on par with satyagraha.

A definitive work on human relations, celibacy, sexuality and love, the book reads like a confessional on the scale of St Augustin and Rousseau. It deals with controversial experiments in brahmacharya.

There were more than a dozen women who came to be closely associated with Gandhi at one time or the other; that included Millie Polak, Nilla Cram Cook, Mirabehn, Sushila Nayyar and Manu Gandhi. This is his biography as well as the life-stories of all his associates. Not to be mixed are the chapters relating to Sarla Devi, whom he claimed to be his “spiritual wife” and the failed romance of Mirabehn and Prithvi Singh Azad. Also to be found in the Appendix is the exciting story of his association with ‘soul-mate’ Hermann Kallenbach, breaking entirely new grounds. Finally, Gandhi comes out as a contemporary as well as the timeless mahapurush.