Significant Others - Kasturba Gandhi

Episode Date: July 27, 2022

Mohandas Gandhi helped India win independence from Britain through nonviolent resistance but little know that he credits the inspiration for his tactics to his wife, Kasturba. So, who was the wife of this renowned saint?Starring Dipika Guha as Kasturba Gandhi and Samrat Chakrabarti as Mohandas Gandhi. Source List:The Woman Beside Gandhi: A Biography of Kasturba, Wife of the Mahatma, by Sita KapadiaGandhi on Women, by Madhu Kishwar, Economic and Political Weekly, vol. 20, no. 41Why Mahatma Gandhi Said Kasturba Stood Above Him, Prabhash K Dutta, New Delhi, October 2, 2018The Truth About Gandhi, The Harvard CrimsonPetty, Bad-Tempered Kasturba - What Gandhi Said While Courting Sarladevi and Esther Faerling, B.M. Bhalla, March 19, 2020The Story of My Experiments With Truth, by Mohandas Karamchad GandhiMAHATMA, In Eight Volumes, by D.G. TendulkarKasturba: A Biography, By B.M. BhallaGandhi Was a Racist Who Forced Young Girls to Sleep in Bed With Him, by Mayukh Sen, December 3, 2015, ViceKasturba Gandhi, The Feisty Woman Whose Patience Inspired Gandhi's Call For Satyagraha, by Simrin Sirur, April 11, 2019, The Print  

Welcome to Significant Others, a podcast that takes a look at the less familiar side of history. I'm Liza Powell O'Brien, and in this episode, we get to know a woman who spent her life being a dutiful wife to a demanding saint. Together, they freed their country from colonial rule. And yet, outside that country, her name is hardly known at all, while his is practically a household word. This time, on Significant Others, meet Kasturba Gandhi. A note about pronunciation. Please excuse me if the name does not sound exactly correct. We found that pronunciation of Kasturba varies depending on the accent of the person who is saying it, so I may be all over the map here. Everyone knows that Mohandas Gandhi

helped India win independence from Britain through non-violent resistance. What fewer people know is that he credits the inspiration for his tactics to his wife, Kasturba. Married for 62 years and herself one of India's most valuable collaborators in the struggle for freedom, Kasturba died in prison with her head in Gandhi's lap. But what are we to make of Gandhi as a husband? The man so devoted to non-violence against all living things that he would not allow a venomous snake to be killed on his property, caused his own wife much suffering. He said her face reminded him of a dumb cow, but also that she stood above him in every way. He dictated all the terms of her existence,

imposing extreme conditions on her that ultimately led to her death. And yet when that death finally came, she asked to be wrapped in a cloth he had woven with his own hands. What kind of love story is this? Not a Western one, that's for sure. Gandhi's philosophies were so rooted in Hindu beliefs that many of the choices he and Kasturba made don't add up to someone raised outside those traditions. So we enter this story as outsiders, seeking only to imagine what it might have been like to live the life of this woman who, when she was a girl, married the boy who would grow up to be a saint. Kasturba was actually named Kastur. The ba was added later when she found fame alongside her

husband. It means mother. That all of India called this woman Mother Kastur may give some indication of her place in the history of her people, but how she found that place was completely arbitrary. She was born into a Hindu family that, as Vaishnavas, or worshippers of Vishnu, sought to serve God through regular fasting, vegetarianism, daily temple worship, and, for a woman, complete devotion to her husband. Dharma, the Hindu word for the moral order of the universe, is defined by the scriptures and observed, for Vavas, at least in part, through domesticity. A good wife, which Kasturba was bred to be, serves God by serving her husband.

But she had no idea when she and Gandhi were married at the age of 13 what this service would ultimately entail. Kasturba's family was conventional, relatively well-off and highly religious. Her new in-laws, also Hindu, were aligned with her in both faith and social status. And in most ways, though the Gandhi family had less money and a busier, more chaotic home, Kasturba's new life was very similar to the one she had left behind. Her job was to serve her husband and help with the household chores, which she did to perfection. The custom for adolescent marriages was that they could not

speak to one another in front of the elders, and the elders were always around. So the only time these two were alone together was at night. By day, while her husband was off at high school, By day, while her husband was off at high school, Kasturba, hidden beneath a veil, prepared food, cleaned house, did laundry, went to temple, and occasionally visited family friends. By night, she and her 13-year-old groom got to know each other. Gandhi wrote in his autobiography, My brother's wife had thoroughly coached me about my behavior on that first night. I do not know who coached my wife. Did anyone?

Well, according to Gandhi, it didn't really matter because... The impressions of the former birth are potent enough to make all coaching superfluous. And so he said... Two innocent children all unwittingly hurled themselves into the ocean of life. But the other innocent child recorded no thoughts on the matter because she was illiterate. Gandhi decided right away that she would be his pupil and that he would teach her how to read and write in addition to everything else. But they never really got around to that. I was very anxious to teach her, but lust never really got around to that. I was very anxious to teach her, but lustful love left me no time. He frames her illiteracy, which was only marginally improved

in adulthood, as a failure of his. Because he couldn't master his lust, because his love for her wasn't pure enough early on, she did not learn to read and write, which is noble but also kind of self-centered. The truth is that Kasturba had little interest in book learning. She would, however, come to regret this later in her life. Gandhi wrote that he was passionately fond of his wife in the early days. Even at school, I used to think of her, and the thought of nightfall and our subsequent meeting was ever haunting me. Separation was unbearable. After all, she had a beatific face, knee-length ringlets, was utterly devoted to him, and in his bed every night. Hard for any 13-year-old boy to resist that. But their compatibility was, in fact, a source of conflict.

It marked the beginning of Gandhi's deep internal struggle against his own sexual urges. His father, who had been injured in a carriage accident on the way to Gandhi's own wedding, had been bedridden ever since. Determined to be a dutiful son, Mohandas spent hours each night caring for his father and listening to him recite scripture. But knowing Kasturba was waiting for him in his own bed, he was distracted. Every night whilst my hands were busy massaging my father's legs, my mind was hovering about the bedroom. In fact, the moment his father died, Gandhi was having sex with Kasturba, who was very pregnant at the time. His guilt over having not been by his father's side at the exact moment the old man slipped his mortal coil was profound. And when the baby died a few days after

its birth, Gandhi took it as God's confirmation that he had done something wrong. Gandhi's lust for his wife caused friction within the marriage as well. Just after the wedding, he read a pamphlet that taught him that bossing his wife around was his spousal duty. Plus, he had a friend, let's call him Iago, who tried to stir up trouble by suggesting Gandhi couldn't be sure Kasturba was being faithful to him while he was out of the house. Gandhi became very possessive and tried to limit Kasturba's movements. He said she should be waiting for him to get home from school every day, not out in the world where other men could have access to her. Kasturba did not understand. She would never do anything improper or immoral.

She was not spending time with men outside the house, and temple visits were mandated by a higher power than some jealous teenage boy. It did not make any sense for her to stop going out, so she didn't. Instead, she questioned the logistics. You don't expect me to ask you every time, do you? She also pulled rank on him. Are you suggesting that I should obey you and not your mother? She also pulled rank on him. They were at a stalemate.

Meanwhile, Iago, the friend, was still causing trouble, peer-pressuring Gandhi into smoking and eating meat. He even took him to a sex worker who ultimately kicked Gandhi out for just sitting there and not doing anything. The whole reason Gandhi had made friends with Iago, supposedly, was to try to reform him. But it had clearly backfired. And now it was Kasturba's turn to propose a limit. She asked her husband to stop spending time with the bad influence. He is not a good boy.

How do you know? I can tell. His eyes are not clear. Now, a quick note. Because Kasturba could not write, we have no record of her own words in her own voice. All her dialogue here has been reported secondhand, and so is likely a paraphrasing of what she actually said. So please take this and all her dialogue as the gist of what happened, as opposed to the literal truth. Anyway, when Old Iago caught wind of Kasturba's disapproval, he doubled down, saying,

Dude, your woman's super out of control. So Gandhi told Kasturba she was no longer allowed to leave the house. At all. Again, she did not fight with him, but she also did not obey. In response, Gandhi took the nuclear option. He sent her back to her parents' home. This was not only a huge flex on his part, it was tantamount to slander. Girls who were returned to sender like this had clearly done something terribly wrong and shameful. It was not uncommon for wives in this position to commit suicide or some other grand gesture of self-harm as a kind of public display of repentance. But again, Kasturba knew she had done nothing wrong, and she refused to accept the mark of shame with which her husband was trying to intimidate her.

She insisted on her innocence and said she would not return to him until he admitted he had been wrong. would not return to him until he admitted he had been wrong. Eventually, Gandhi relented, ashamed of himself for distrusting her for no reason, and Kasturba returned to his home with her honor and reputation intact. This is one of the episodes that informed Gandhi's most important work. 24 years later, when he founded a movement to protest the unjust treatment of Indians by the South African and British governments, he would employ strategies just like this, strategies he had only come to know because they had been used against him by his wife. After high school, Gandhi wanted to study medicine. But his brother said, as a Vaishnava, one who worships

compassion, he couldn't be cutting up bodies in med school. Collectively, the extended family and some trusted friends decided he should go to England instead and study law. The trip there would be expensive, and Gandhi financed it partially by selling most of Kasturba's wedding jewelry, which technically that's what it's for, to contribute to the support of the family like a dowry, but it might have been possible Kasturba had thought they'd use it to maybe buy land or educate their children. London was generally regarded within India as a hotbed of temptation and vice, and even though Gandhi's mother made him promise to

be abstinent and good while he was away, his going there did cause trouble. Some of the leaders of the caste looked down on Gandhi's going to London and kicked him out. It wasn't permanent, but it did mean that while he was away, Kasturba lost the privileges she should have had as his wife to participate in festivals and other social events. Also, she had no way to correspond with him because she could neither write him letters nor read any of his on her own. Three years after leaving, Gandhi came home. Having passed the bar and become a barrister, he came to her with a very serious look on his face. passed the bar and become a barrister, he came to her with a very serious look on his face. She braced herself to be bossed around again, but instead he confessed that while he was in London,

he had pretended not to be married. It was apparently what many young Indian men did when they went abroad for school. Some did it to fit in, others did it to take advantage of women. Gandhi almost didn't know why he had done it, but he knew it had been wrong. It did not seem to bother her. He asked if she forgave him, and she said there was nothing to forgive him for. She laughed and said she had already forgotten it. Now, there are a number of ways this scene could be read. Gandhi could have been manipulating the truth yet again in order to play down his transgression. Kesterba, having very little power of her own, could have had no other choice but to quote-unquote absolve him and keep the peace. She might have been one of those spouses who sort of says, do what you do, just don't tell me about

it. But it seems reasonable to take the scene at face value. Even though they had lived together for fewer than half of their nine years of marriage at this point, she knew her husband well enough to know that what he was most enamored of was truth. Purity was paramount to him, and he was particularly unforgiving with his own flaws. And she apparently never brought this episode up to him or anyone else again. So maybe it really wasn't a big deal to her that her husband was away for three years in a foreign country with very different values, and he lied about his relationship status. Very soon after he returned from London, Gandhi was called to South

Africa to help with a legal case. In some ways, he had never quite been cut out to be a lawyer. He was terribly shy and really hated asking his clients for money. But when he arrived in South Africa, he quickly became aware that life for the Indian population there was one of overt oppression and abuse. population there, was one of overt oppression and abuse. Even he, a British-educated barrister, was not called a lawyer, but a lawyer with a qualifying slur attached. Famously, when he was kicked out of a first-class train compartment, even though he had a ticket for it, he asked himself, Should I go back to India, or should I go forward with God as my helper, Should I go back to India or should I go forward with God as my helper and face whatever was in store for me?

I decided to stay and suffer. My active nonviolence began from that date. A while later, he went home to India to retrieve his wife and their two young sons. Kasturba, who had said farewell three years earlier to her newly minted lawyer husband, was expecting his return to bring, perhaps, a more solidly middle-class existence, but instead found herself sailing halfway around the world trying to get used to the feeling of shoes on her feet, no veil over her face, and the sound of the English language in her ears. Her experience of the discrimination they would face in their new home began before they had even left the ship. They were detained in harbor for more than three weeks because Gandhi's pro-Indian

agitation had already caused blowback among some South African whites, and there was an attempt to reject not only the entire ship full of passengers he was sailing with, but also another ship that just happened to have sailed from Bombay at the same time. There were threats to throw all Indians on board both ships into the sea if they did not turn around and sail home immediately. When this finally got sorted out, Kasturba and the boys had to disembark separately from her husband for the sake of everyone's safety. Not only was Kasturba greeted by a sea of white faces, but many of them were furious with her husband.

When Gandhi finally joined his family, Kasturba's biographer Sita Kapadia writes, His body was bruised in many places, and blood was oozing out of a head wound. He had been pelted with stones, brickbats, and rotten eggs and was saved only by the timely and providential intervening of the police superintendent's wife, who held her parasol open to protect him from the rain of anger. The house was surrounded by violent protesters who threatened to burn it if Gandhi

were not handed over to them. Finally, Gandhi was smuggled back out of the house in a policeman's uniform. Back in London, the Secretary of State for the Colonies called for prosecution against the aggressors, but Gandhi refused to identify them. Kasturba responded in kind, refusing to harbor hatred in her heart for the country in which she would now be living. This was not only a product of their faith as Vaishnavas, it was also at the core of the freedom movement Gandhi would found in the coming years. He would call it Satyagraha, meaning soul force, and with it he, Kasturba, and their followers would topple a government. But that was yet to come. For now, he was honing his personal practices, which meant new rules for Kasturba, too. Their lives would now be dedicated to service and humility. Their new home in South

Africa would be open to anyone who needed shelter and would not have anything fancy in it, even curtains. Laundry was to be done impeccably. Food was to be served at exact times. Kindness was to be shown to everyone, whether it was a leper who needed constant care or a racist hurling hate and violence. Whether or not Kasturba resented all this, she never complained. Her job was to devote herself to her husband, and that is exactly what she was doing. But in 1898, the evolution of Gandhi hit a hard stop with his wife. Gandhi no longer subscribed to the rigid caste system still in place in India at the time. He found it absurd to consider any group of Indians untouchable, or to separate their food and water.

And while the practice in the Gandhi home was for each person to empty his or her own chamber pot, one of the lodgers was not aware of this policy. And this lodger happened to have been low lowborn in India, so would have been considered an untouchable back home. Kasturba, who had been taught it was part of her devotion to God to keep herself clean by staying separate from such people, thought she was well within reason to tell Gandhi she would never empty this man's chamber pot. Gandhi's response? If you won't, I will. But she was far too proud to fail in her duty to her husband this way. A little while later, Gandhi happened to see her as she was carrying the chamber pot out of the man's room, and what he saw made him furious. Kasturba was

wrinkling her nose as if in disgust. This offended Gandhi to his very core. Service was leading his wife closer to God. The service itself should make her happy. Why was she not smiling? I will not stand this nonsense in this house. But Kasturba had had enough. Keep your house to yourself and let me go. Tears streamed down her face, but Gandhi was unmoved. Calling her bluff, he grabbed her by the wrist, dragging her to the front gate. She broke down. Have you no sense of shame? Must you so far forget yourself? Where am I to go? I have no parents or relatives here to harbor me. Because I am your wife, do you think I must put up with your cuffs

and kicks? For heaven's sake, behave yourself and shut the gate. Let us not be found making scenes like this. Gandhi writes about this moment as the birth, in his mind, of Satyagraha. Deeply ashamed of his behavior, he reflected on what had led him to it. He knew this kind of violent confrontation was not what he was looking for. It would not get him where he wanted to go. His life of service would need to be done peacefully. But it would still be a number of years before the idea would fully coalesce into a movement. Kasturba and her husband did not fight often,

but when they did, they squared off like longtime rivaled chess masters trying to outmaneuver one another. When the local community gave them a bunch of gifts, including an expensive necklace meant for Kasturba, Gandhi said they must decline all the gifts and donate them instead. Kasturba really wanted that necklace, and it was a gift for her. Shouldn't she be able to do with it what she wanted? As reported by biographer Kapadia, Kasturba said, Our children will be married someday, and we'll have to have something to give our daughters-in-law. When the time comes, you can come to me and ask for something new to give.

Come to you? She had learned her lesson about what he would do with jewelry. Besides, we would not want a woman so concerned with material things to be married to her sons. She then tried a different tack. What right have you to give away something that was given to me? It was given to you because of my service. Service rendered by you is as good as rendered by me. I have toiled and moiled for you day and night. Is that no service? It was a big fight. But in the end, she gave up the necklace,

and Gandhi counted it as a victory. Not because he had won the argument, but because his student had finally come up with what he saw as the right answer. Later in their life, when he left India again to serve in South Africa, Gandhi was sold a life insurance policy, and Kasturba was quite happy about it. They had long since taken a vow of poverty and he was a highly divisive figure heading back to a place where many people actively wanted him dead. If he were to die, she would have had nothing. Their poverty, as it has been noted, was successful only because it was financed. And that financing was far from secure if the leader of the movement were suddenly to be gone. But Gandhi had second thoughts, and he cancelled the policy, saying it signaled weakness

and a lack of faith in God. But very occasionally, Kasturba was able to get the upper hand. In 1918, when Gandhi nearly died of dehydration after a prolonged bout of dysentery, he was struggling to get his strength back. Everyone around him was freaking out because his dangerously thin body needed fortification, but he wouldn't allow vitamin injections, which he later said was ignorance on his part, and he refused to drink milk because he had taken a vow against it. his part, and he refused to drink milk because he had taken a vow against it. When the doctor asked why, Gandhi explained how immoral the beef industry was and how he refused to participate in it. In moments like this, one can imagine how frustrating it must have been to love a person so committed to self-denial. Kasturba, who had been standing quietly beside him, finally piped up.

But you have no objection to goat's milk then, right? Check and mate. He drank the goat's milk and recovered. Begrudgingly. He knew he had maintained his vow only on a technicality, and he didn't like it. In his autobiography, he wrote, The memory of this action even now rankles in my breast and fills me with remorse. And I'm constantly thinking how to give up goat's milk.

But I cannot yet free myself from that subtlest of temptations, the desire to serve, which still holds me. When pushed to its limit, Gandhi's life philosophy turned his actual existence into a paradox. He said the whole episode was a triumph of his will to live over his devotion to truth. Somehow, including goat's milk in his diet, which otherwise consisted only of fruit juice and nut butters at that point, only of fruit juice and nut butters at that point, constituted some kind of moral failure, like he was putting his finger on the scale,

not trusting enough in God. In other words, by perpetuating his own survival, he believed he was acting in direct conflict with his life's purpose. After Kesterbaugh delivered her third son in 1897, she hemorrhaged a lot. Over the next 10 years, including the birth of yet another son, she never truly healed, and the hemorrhages plagued her regularly, leaving her anemic, exhausted, and severely depleted. In 1908, things were so bad, she agreed to a cauterization of the lining of her uterus to see if it might help.

But because her heart had been so weakened by her condition, she could not receive chloroform and so had to undergo the operation with no anesthesia. After the operation, her health was so fragile and her weight was so low, the doctor insisted she needed beef tea in order to recover. Gandhi said, I would rather she died. Now, he was looking out for her here, really. It would have been a contamination of her body and spirit to consume a cow. As a Vaishnava, this was her belief.

And while some Vaishnava did occasionally break that vow for medical reasons, and even though Gandhi himself reportedly begged her not to abstain for his sake, she had been living by his example for 26 years by this point. Whether or not she would have maintained such strict religious observance in this moment, had it not been for the way her husband decided they would live their lives, we cannot know. Regardless, at this moment, she too was ready to die rather than consume beef. So the doctor kicked her out. He said, she can't stay in my hospital because I won't have her die on my watch. And if she won't have

beef tea, she is definitely gonna die. So they moved her to their commune out in the country, gonna die. So they moved her to their commune out in the country, and Gandhi took over her medical care himself. He treated her with mud baths and hydrotherapy, but she was not getting better. Finally, he decided a new diet would help, and that she must give up both salt and pulses, like lentils. This was too much for the poor woman who had already given up every other earthly comfort and whose diet was already quite restricted. She summoned her strength to protest. Even you couldn't give up those things. According to Gandhi's autobiography, they then had the following exchange. You're mistaken. If I was ailing and the doctor advised to give up these or any other articles, I should

unhesitatingly do so. But there, without any medical advice, I give up salt and pulses for one year, whether you do so or not. Pray forgive me. Knowing you, I should not have provoked you. I promise to abstain from these things, but for heaven's sake, take back your vow. This is too hard on me. I cannot retract a vow seriously taken. And it is sure to benefit me for all restraint, whatever prompts it, is wholesome for men. One striking thing in the story of this marriage is the theme of competition that seems to be threaded all the way through it. Author Kapadia claims that when Gandhi watched Kasturba undergo her surgery

without anesthesia, suffering excruciating pain without making a sound, he was so inspired that 30 years later, he insisted on foregoing anesthesia himself during an appendectomy, insisted on foregoing anesthesia himself during an appendectomy, though it cannot be confirmed that he actually did so. Maybe competition is a thing that exists in all couples, or maybe it's just the ones who meet in adolescence, or maybe it's a product of the personalities involved. In this case, both these people were so stubborn,

they ultimately redrew the global map. But when it comes to suffering, the competitiveness led to a bizarre kind of feedback loop. Because suffering was, of course, Gandhi's superpower. He said, All self-denial is good for the soul. And he trained himself to find the most extreme versions of it possible. But every time he did, extreme versions of it possible. But every time he did, Kasturba was often in a position to suffer more than he was. So inviting suffering was his thing. It's where he got all his power. But when he caused himself pain, he also caused her pain. Then he'd see her suffering get, like, jealous, and invite more suffering for himself. Wash, rinse, repeat.

Gandhi wrote, We have had numerous pickerings, but the end has always been peace between us. The wife, with her matchless powers of endurance, has always been the victor. Always? Maybe not. The Salt and Pulses episode ends with Kasturba in tears. And yet, Gandhi says it is one of the sweetest recollections of his life.

I was delighted in that I got an opportunity to shower my love on her. Gandhi was at his most alive when he was pushing his own limits, like an elite athlete. Only, for better and for worse, he wasn't just running a race of his own. The first time Kesterbaugh went to prison, it was practically on a dare. Gandhi and his followers had, at that point, been getting arrested on purpose by the South African police for six years in order to protest bigoted laws. As the movement, and Gandhi himself, gained popularity, the white supremacist system reacted by coming up with more laws to try to squash the Indian population even further. In 1913, a law was passed in South Africa that annulled all marriages made outside the Christian church. Gandhi said to his wife, All children of such marriages are bastards.

That makes you not my wife, but my concubine and our boy's illegitimate offspring. What are you going to do about it? Then I must oppose the government. And how will you do that? By satyagraha, as you do. But we go to jail. May women go to jail? Yes. If men go to jail, so can women. If you want

to fight for your self-respect, if you want to be free of the stain on your wifely status, get ready to go to jail. So you want to send me to jail, is that it? That's the only thing left now. Well, all right. But what food will they give in prison? This was a concern not for her quality of life, but her religious principles. I am not asking you to go to jail. Go only if you're zealous in defending your self-respect. And if the food provided there is unsuitable, live on fruit. And will the rulers give fruit in prison? Fast until they give it.

All right. You have shown me the sure way to die. I feel that if I go to jail, I shall certainly die there. Yes, yes. If you did, I would worship you as mother of the universe. Gandhi knew that women would be a powerful and necessary addition to the movement. Gandhi knew that women would be a powerful and necessary addition to the movement. Unlike other men, who thought having women on the front lines would make themselves look weak, Gandhi saw it as a strength. They could bring shame on the government for openly persecuting peacefully protesting mothers and grandmothers. He needed his wife to take part, anything less would be terrible PR. But he also knew Kasturba.

She would do whatever he asked, but that wasn't enough. He needed her to have her own motivation. So he employed middle school tactics and quietly rallied a few other women in the commune to agree to commit to serving their full sentences in jail without showing weakness. When Kasturba found out, she said, You're not telling me about this hurts me.

What defect is there in me that I cannot go to jail? There is no question of my distrust in you. I would only be too glad if you went to jail, but I cannot entertain even a suggestion that you would go at my insistence. And then if you began to tremble in the law court or were terrified by hardships in jail, I could not find fault with you. But how would it stand with me?

How could I then harbor you or look the world in the face? If you can endure hardships, and so can my boys, why cannot I? I am bound to join the struggle. And so Kasturba, along with three others, became the first women to go to prison in South Africa in the struggle for freedom. There was no fruit, as she had feared, and she did fast in protest as her husband recommended. After four days, the prison matron was so worried that this already tiny and frail martyr would die on her watch, she got the fruit they were asking for.

But Kasturba had already done damage to her digestive system. When she was released, she vomited up everything she ate and had swelling in her arms and legs. Gandhi treated her like a queen, massaging her body and scalp with neem oil and doing all the dishes for her. It was far from the last time she would go to prison as a non-violent protester.

She had successfully kicked off the women's movement and was being called a heroine in India. Gandhi was immensely proud of his student and she was, more importantly, proud of herself. But there would still be times when her husband would hurt and humiliate her. In 1915, when they were living on their ashram in India, he caught her separating her drinking water from a girl who belonged to the untouchable caste. It made him so angry, he smashed Kasturba's bowl and yelled at her, Don't you understand anything?

You have brought untouchability into this ashram. She did finally see his point about that. But then in 1929, Gandhi called his wife a thief in front of the entire ashram because she had essentially kept 50 cents in her pocket overnight by mistake and was rumored to have stashed away a few dollars in addition to that. The family had recently endured a massive scandal

in which their nephew was found to have embezzled thousands of dollars from the movement. So it's clear why Gandhi would want to make a show of coming down hard against that kind of thing. But still, to reduce 60-year-old Kasturba to tears in front of her entire community and accuse her of disloyalty and immorality? To quote Alicia Silverstone as Cher in Clueless, way harsh, Ty. Of course, what Gandhi had to say about this was, I would not have done this if I did not love her.

Among the things Gandhi renounced that Kasturba was then expected to give up too were wealth, comfort, food, attachment to her children, oh, and sex. In 1906, he came to her to announce that he had decided to become a brahmachari, or one who is celibate. He wanted to funnel all his energies, physical, emotional, and psychic, into satyagraha, into the struggle. Kasturba, by all accounts, joined him in this without protest. Aside from the many jokes that could be made here about marriage and sex in middle age, it's possible this was not a big sacrifice for her. Her hemorrhaging made pregnancy and childbirth quite dangerous, and she already had plenty of people to take care of. She could hardly have been anxious for more babies, and who knows if sex was ever something she enjoyed in the first place. But still, a 37-year-old

couple giving up that connection to one another? The fact that it did not lead to estrangement speaks to how deeply rooted their marriage was in their common purpose and in God. This vow of celibacy may even have been a comfort to Kasturba a decade later when Gandhi was carrying on a love affair with another woman. Sarla Devi was a beautiful, cultured, and highly educated Indian woman who became a fierce ally to Gandhi's cause, and she and Gandhi became very close. It was probably painful and humiliating for Kasturba. Everyone around them knew about it, but at least she would have known that because her husband could never break a vow, the affair would remain chaste. And in fact, this is exactly what caused the relationship to end.

In a letter Gandhi wrote to Sarla Devi, he said, I have been analyzing my love for you. I have reached a definition of spiritual marriage. It is a partnership between two persons of the opposite sex where the physical is wholly absent. It is therefore possible between brother and sister, father and daughter. It is possible only between two brahmacharis in thought, word and deed. Have we that exquisite purity, the perfect coincidence, that perfect merging,

the identity of ideals, the self-forgetfulness, that fixity of purpose, that truthfulness? self-forgetfulness, that fixity of purpose, that truthfulness. For me, I can answer plainly that it is only an aspiration. I am unworthy of that companionship with you. With dearest love, I still subscribe myself. That's quite a breakup letter. I can't just be friends with you because the fate of humanity is at stake? Nearly 30 years later, he admitted that he had in fact been dangerously tempted by her. With one solitary exception, I have never looked upon a woman with a lustful eye.

I have touched perhaps thousands upon thousands, but my touch has never carried the meaning of lustfulness. Even the one solitary instance referred to by me was never with the intention of despoiling her. Nevertheless, my confession stands in that case. My touch had lustfulness about it. I was carried away in spite of myself, and but for God's intervention, I might have become a wreck. Some have made the mistake of thinking the reason Gandhi gave up so many earthly pleasures was because they never meant that much to him in the first place. On the contrary, he had a robust appetite for food

and for sex. When he was in his 70s, long after he had taken his vow of celibacy, he still worried he might slip and, after Kasturba had died, would occasionally test himself by sleeping with naked young women, including his 19-year-old grandniece. He did this because he thought the fact that there was still trouble in India was a sign that he was impure, but yeah, basically, he was weird about sex. And because he was so extra with everything he did, and because he was a leader, his weirdness spilled out onto others. He was staunchly opposed to birth control methods of any kind other than abstinence, said women should be taught to say no more firmly to their husbands,

and claimed that the only difference between a sex worker and a married woman who has recreational sex with her husband is The former sells her body to several men. The latter sells it to one man. He insisted that everyone should strive to be beyond the reach of lust and enacted practices at his communes that aimed to train young people to resist their sexual impulses. He made boys and girls sleep and bathe together and once assigned his son Manilal, who was, at the time, around 20 years old, to give sponge baths to an ailing married woman of about the same age whose husband was away,

fighting for the cause in Fiji. When the patient and her nurse, Manilal, were found kissing, Gandhi flipped out. He rushed to the commune, shamed them, and then announced that he was going on a seven-day fast to purify himself in atonement for their sin. Manilal, his makeout partner, Kasturba, and some other people all said they would join Gandhi in the fast. Gandhi said that if Manilal were to die as a result of the fast, it would not be regrettable. When the fast was over, Gandhi made the young woman cut her hair and put Manilal on the train with no money, banishing him to Johannesburg for a year. As author B. M. Bala notes in his book Kesturbha Gandhi, a biography, this marked the beginning of Gandhi's dedication to fasting as a form of protest.

It became a powerful political tool for him, as well as a path to dharma. Gandhi denied himself the things that brought him the most joy because those were the greatest gifts he could make to Satyagraha, to the cause. And this is what he tried to require of Kasturba as well. But her attachments were naturally different than his, because she was, in fact, her own person. And while she did everything he ever asked of her, she was not able to dissolve her maternal bonds, which was what he told her she should strive to do. She would not and could not give up caring especially for her own children. Neither, it could be argued, did Gandhi. He was very hard on his kids, refusing to let them accept educational scholarships they were offered because, like with the necklace,

it would be wrong for them to benefit from his, for lack of a better word, celebrity. But it's one thing to say, you have to learn to live in the world just like everyone else, even if your parent is a public figure. Gandhi took it, not surprisingly, much farther than that. He didn't treat his children just like anyone else. It's almost like he punished them for being his. Their eldest child got married as a teen, thinking it would please his father. But instead, Gandhi disapproved, having long since turned against the idea of child marriage.

The second son was forced to take a vow of celibacy after that episode with the sponge bath, though apparently it didn't stick. He did get married and have two kids about 14 years later. In the end, none of the boys was educated as Kasturba had hoped they would be. It was possibly the greatest sadness of her life. It was possibly the greatest sadness of her life. Kasturba and her husband were both in prison in 1944 when it became clear that her body was finally giving out. Gandhi had taken to going on 21-day fasts as a form of protest and Kasturba would faithfully follow suit.

But it was too much for her. All those years of hemorrhage, hard work, struggle, worry, and imprisonment had depleted her too much. When she contracted bronchitis, it turned into pneumonia, and her heart began to fail. Gandhi lobbied for her release, but the British government was apparently too afraid of this tiny 75-year-old woman, and they denied the request. They did, however, allow her to be moved to Gandhi's cell so that they could be together at the end. The shroud in which she received her last rites was, at her request, made from cloth that had been woven by Gandhi himself. As she died, he stroked her hair, and she said,

Do not sorrow after my death. It should be an occasion for rejoicing. There is a story you may have heard that Gandhi denied castorba penicillin while she was dying. It's true, he did. It was apparently a big bone of contention with one of their sons who begged his father to let her have the shot. And listen, none of us were there, so who knows? But another version of the story, according to Kesterbaugh's doctor, lays out the argument that the son was in denial,

that medicine would have needlessly prolonged her life at that point, and that it was an act of mercy for Gandhi to let her go. Although it is impossible not to note that this was a man who had perfected the art of letting go of what he loved just because he loved it. After she was cremated, Gandhi said, If anything, she stood above me. But for her unfailing cooperation, I might have been in the abyss. She helped me to keep wide awake and true to my vows. She stood by me in all my political fights and never hesitated to take the plunge. In the current sense of the word, she was uneducated. But to my mind, she was a model of true education. India would not gain independence from British rule until 1947,

three years after Kasturba's death. And afterward, things did not go smoothly. Muslims and Hindus were fighting, and Gandhi thought it was all because he was not pure enough. His satyagraha, his soul force, was too weak. Not to belittle that, but thoughts of superstitious sports fans do come to mind. It is an incredibly self-centered perspective.

And yet the woman who had shared his life, his wife, his student, who never asked for any of it, but went along with all of it, never needed to be taught how to be selfless. It's the way she lived her life from the day she married him. Kasturba Gandhi's life was not an easy one, and her husband, to whom she devoted herself for 62 years, returned her love in a way that was, at times, pretty tough. But, my severities were all based on love. I wanted to make my wife an ideal wife. My ambition was to make her live a pure life, learn what I learned, and identify her life

and thought with mine. In the end, of course, she wound up teaching him through her fortitude, her endurance, her humility, and her faith. These are the qualities that would inspire the Satyagraha movement with which they changed the world. But one man cannot do everything. And so while Gandhi liberated India from British rule, his own wife was never liberated from his view of her as an extension of himself. As evolved as he got, he never moved beyond the template of marriage he was handed as a child. It was not enough for her to live like he lived. She had to feel what he felt, want what he wanted, no matter how much it hurt. In fact, the more it hurt, it seemed the better. But if the course of their life together had surprised her,

it had also been full of honor and purpose. She died fulfilled. If Gandhi was a saint, then surely Kasturba earned that status as well. But she would never accept it because she said she had not renounced all earthly pleasures. She was never able to give up coffee. But as she is said to have put it herself, one saint in the family is enough. Special thanks to Dipika Guha and Samrat Chakrabarty for bringing the voices of Kasturba and the Mahatma to life. I'd also like to thank my significant other for keeping his nose out of all my dietary choices. Check back tomorrow for a follow-up episode with our voice actor Deepika to hear more about how Kasturba is regarded within India today. Significant Others is written and read by me,

Liza Powell O'Brien. I'm not a historian, and I'm greatly indebted to the work of those who are. In some cases, I use diaries or newspapers or court records as sources, but most often I draw from biographies and autobiographies and articles, which represent countless hours of work

by people who are far more knowledgeable than I. Sources for each episode are listed in the show notes. If you hear something interesting and you want to know more, please consider ordering these books from your independent bookseller. And if you are a historian or someone who knows something about the people I'm talking about, and you'd like to take issue with an impression I've made or a conclusion I've drawn, I welcome the dialogue. Finally, if you have an episode suggestion, let us know at significantpod at gmail.com. History is filled with characters,

and we tend to focus only on a few of them. Significant Others is produced by Jen Samples. Our executive producers are Joanna Solitaroff, Adam Sachs, and Jeff Ross. Engineering and sound design by Eduardo Perez. Music and scoring by Eduardo Perez and Hannes Brown, with additional help from Emily Prill. Research and fact-checking by Ella Morton. Special thanks to Nick Liao and Lisa Berm. Talent booking by Paula Davis and Gina Batista. you