The Not So Mahatma Side of Gandhi

Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi better known Mahatma Gandhi or ‘Bapu’ played a very important role in our freedom struggle. It was because of him we attained independence, he was the one who united the people of India and led us in this struggle. So we can say that he was the architect-in-chief of our freedom struggle. Everyone in the world sees him as an ideal man, but there is a dark side of this ‘Mahatma’ as well. A side which everyone knows, but no one wants to talk about it.

Gandhi’s experiment with his sexuality on Mridula Gandhi, aka Manu ben. Manu Ben revealed the details about the experiment in 10 dairies, which is 2000 pages. The diary starts from the time when Manu ben was called in Aga Khan palace to take care of Gandhiji’s ailing wife, Kasturba Gandhi. She took care of her in her illness. The diary ends 22 days after Gandhiji’s death.

Gandhi and his Experiment

In the year 1906, Gandhiji after marrying Kasturba Gandhi and having 3 sons took a vow of celibacy that is brahmacharya at 38. Once a person embraces celibacy, that person needs to abstain himself from any kind of physical relationship and activity and has to follow the path of spiritualism, in short, the person has to embrace chastity and poverty.

In such a situation, Gandhiji had to do the same. Now he could not make any relationship with any woman, including his wife. Due to this, his behavior changed. He started feeling uneasy and weird in the presence of women. To test himself, he started an experiment in which he would bathe and sleep with women naked. Among those women, Mridula Gandhi aka Manu ben, his granddaughter was also included. This experiment sparked anger and dissatisfaction among Gandhiji’s supporters. Even Gandhiji’s closest friend Jawaharlal Nehru called this experiment as ‘unnatural and abnormal’.

But Gandhiji did not care about what people said as he believed that whatever he was doing was his moral duty. Within one year he set up more such ashrams where young men and women were asked to bathe and sleep naked together & were punished if they indulged in any kind of sexual talk or sexual activity. Even married couples were not given privacy in his ashram. He said that if the couple felt sexually aroused they should take a bath in cold water. In his newspaper, Indian opinion, he wrote:

“It is the duty of every young Indian not to marry and in case if they have to marry for some reason, then they should not make any physical relationship with their wife”

While Gandhiji was adamant regarding this experiment, his friends and family were not happy with this experiment, neither with his behavior. His then secretary Nirmal Kumar Bose had advised him to stop this experiment as people of India were not ready for this and they might misunderstand him (Gandhi).

Vallabhbhai Patel called him out on his face and told him, “whatever you are doing is wrong and immoral.”

To which Gandhiji replied, “sleeping with Manu is not wrong. Instead, it is my moral duty”. This experiment has sparked anger and dissatisfaction among Gandhiji’s supporters.

Gandhiji, as we all know, inspired lots of Indian at the time of freedom struggle. People from all walks of life looked up at him. They believed in him and were inspired by his work and speeches. One such person was P.R. Parshuram. He was a typist and Gandhiji’s personal secretary for two years. After which he resigned. He addressed a letter to Gandhiji in which he talked about Gandhiji’s experiment. He wrote:

 “You are our national father; I was always inspired with your work. When I first came to the ashram as a typist, I had great respect for you and for the people living in ashram, but after spending the first 24 hours in the ashram, I lost a large part of this respect towards you. I am against this experiment in which you bathe and sleep naked with women; I am against this matter that you use young people for your experiment, without thinking about their feelings? “

Everyone understood that Gandhiji was the main pillar of our strength as he was in the forefront of our freedom struggle, but this does not mean that his followers agreed with his experiment.

Accepting the Fact!

Gandhiji is not the first man who had thousands of followers but a deeply flawed personal life, neither is he the last. For example,

I hope you remember self-styled godman Asaram Bapu. Asaram like Gandhiji also had a huge following. People considered him God and trusted him blindly. He was guilty of raping a 16-year-old girl in the name of performing rituals that were supposed to ‘cure her of evil’. Asaram was arrested and declared guilty by Rajasthan High Court. Currently, he is serving the term. Similar case with Gurmeet Ram Rahim, the Dera Sacha Sauda chief. The court declared him guilty in a rape case by a special CBI court in Panchkula.

 By citing these examples, I am not saying that Gandhiji sexually assaulted women, no! All I am saying is had Gandhiji still been alive and if this experiment had happened in today’s time would people have still ignored this incident just because he is the ‘father of our nation’. I understand that media didn’t have power at that time and people were not comfortable in talking about such things. But in today’s time, we can talk, we share our stories, we make sure that justice is served even if that means we need to take part in the protest. So why are we turning a blind eye to this now? Why aren’t we talking about it? Why are people not able to accept that ‘Bapu’ was a human being, he was not a Mahatma that people expected him to be.

I still believe that Gandhiji is a great man, he is the reason that we are free but I cannot ignore the fact that just to test his sexuality he did things which is not at all acceptable. I will always be grateful to him but whenever I see the photograph of him and Manu together, I will be forced to remember the not so ‘Mahatma’ part in him.

Delhi’s Full Statehood Demand

 

Pic Courtesy: NDTV Khabar

Recently the demand for full statehood of Delhi has become the talk of the town thanks to Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal. The question is what is the meaning of statehood? and why is it so important to the Delhi political lobby.

To start with Statehood means the status of being recognized as an independent nation or a state. Demand for the statehood of Delhi was there for a very long time but the first serious step was taken in the year 1987 by Justice R.S. Sarkaria Committee which was later renamed Balakrishnan Committee. The committee was set up to look into the matter of reorganization of Delhi Set up.  It recommended restoration of the legislative assembly as it noticed that most of the problem citizens of Delhi faced were due to flaws of the existing system. In forefront of this demand was the BJP leader Madan Lal Khurana. The recommendations of the committee were taken into consideration and in May 1990 Congress government at the center introduced a bill which aimed at changing the status of Delhi. The Parliament passed the Constitution (69th Amendment) Act in the year 1991 and inserted articles 239AA and  239BB in the constitution according to which, Delhi was provided with a legislative assembly, the status of a Union Territory, the council of ministers along with an elected chief minister with a limited mandate. In short, Delhi was given a partial statehood. After years of debates and discussion Delhi has still not achieved full statehood.

Later, the topic of Delhi statehood was taken up by two major Indian political parties to remain strong and win the game of politics but like every promise in the manifesto, this one was also forgotten.

In the year 2012, a new political party Aam Aadmi Party emerged. Lead by Arvind Kejriwal it defeated three times Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit (Congress) in the Delhi election and created a history. Delhi Chief Minister came to power on the back of big promises, which required full control to be kept, and soon came to realize that he only has half the power which meant he was the king of a kingdom being ruled by someone else. Ever since AAP took office their main motive was to get a full statehood for Delhi which lead to many tussles between the center (i.e. BJP appointed LG Najeeb Jung) and state government.  The clashes being driven by the fact that the Delhi Government does not have total autonomy. It controls PWD, Delhi Jal Board, Ministry of Power, Health, Sanitation, Transport, and Education. It does not have control over the city’s three primary bodies namely DDA, MCD and Delhi Police.

Arvind Kejriwal after getting elected directed the bureaucrats to rout the files related to public, public orders and land through his office. On the other hand, LG Najeeb Jung stated that he is not obligated to send files related to the reserved matters to the CM’s office. Apart from this they also clashed over the appointment of Anti Corruption Bureau Chief, the Home Secretary and the Delhi Commission for Women Chairperson etc.  This led to the matter being taken up by the Supreme Court of India.  The SC recently passed the judgment stating that LG should work in coordination with the Delhi government and should not delay issues.

Getting a statehood might lead to a drop in corruption as the Delhi government would get the power to take disciplinary action against the defaulters and also the right to appoint bureaucrats.  Another reason for statehood is there are lots of authorities in Delhi whose accountability is divided between LG and state government. Like PWD is accountable to Delhi government and MCD is accountable to LG. Which leads to lots of confusion and it leads to an overlap in the decision making of the Delhi administration. A full statehood to Delhi will mean that all authorities will be accountable to one i.e. the Delhi government which according to the Delhi government will resolve all the problems in the city.

Like every coin has two sides the demand for statehood comes with its own set of potential downsides. Granting a full statehood to Delhi means more responsibility on the state government. The government would have to bear the cost of running three more departments i.e. DDA, Delhi Police and MCD, which will lead to a hike in the budget, which from a common man perspective may lead to price hike, high taxes, etc.

With less than a year of the current government remaining before the next elections, Arvind Kejriwal has a lot of promises yet to be kept and getting Delhi statehood might be the last ball six that AAP can hit to capture the world cup in 2019

Cast your vote not vote your caste!

We live in a divided country, not divided by states but by religion and caste. In every election, the main agenda of the parties is not to highlight their achievements and future development plans, but to highlight and raise cast and religion-based agenda. They have gone to the extent of filling children’s brains with ideas they don’t even understand. In a piece of recent news, Uttar Pradesh’s Hindu Jagran Manch warned Christian schools in Aligarh not to celebrate Christmas with majority Hindu students. Hindu Jagaran Manch claims that Christmas celebrations lure Hindu students, it affects their mentality and later converts them. This incidence shows what type of India we are living in! It is very unfortunate that a country that strives on the motto of ‘unity in diversity’ has become a victim of communalism. Yes, communalism! just because there are no riots happening or no one is getting killed does not mean people are not getting divided! and the people who are playing this divide and rule policy are not outsiders but people who are citizens of this country. These politicians are no less than Britishers. They are walking on the same footstep and making India weak. It’s not entirely their fault though, we the citizens of our country are also at fault. We are the ones who elect them. In India people don’t cast their vote they vote their caste. We know that they don’t deserve to form a government but still we vote them because we are blinded by “idol worship” or “party worship”. It’s high time we realize that this won’t help in the development of our country. I am not saying that democracy is bad no never! I believe in democracy as much as you but one thing which I know is that I won’t cast a vote to the party just because my family has been doing so. I will give my vote to the person who knows how to run a government and will not play cheap political tricks to ruin my countries unity.

Triple Talaq: What took it so long?

Triple Talaq or Talaq-e-biddat is a form of Islamic divorce which is used by Muslims in India. It allows Muslim men to divorce their wives by uttering ‘talaq’ three times in verbal, written, messages, or any other electric form. This left Muslim women with nothing as after the divorce they were not entitled to alimony or child support or any other support from the ex-husband. With no money and support, they were forced to live in poverty and were left vulnerable which made them prone to violence and harassment. Recently the Supreme Court of India gave a landmark judgment by stating that the triple talaq is unconstitutional, illegal and void. They said that it is not integral to religious practice and violates constitutional morality. It is a historic judgment but the question is why it took decades to eliminate this unconstitutional law?

Resistance to Change!

A Certain section of the concerned religion and politics are the reason behind the delay of the verdict. All India Muslim Personal Law Board, a non-government organization opposing a ban on triple talaq states that in patriarchal society discrimination is prevalent be it in Hinduism or Islam or any other religion. Other than this there are some ‘respected’ people in the concerned community who think that since women are the weaker sex they can’t take the decision on their own. They don’t know what is good or bad for them and that’s why they are not given the power of instant talaq.

These are not my words this ‘ideology’ came to my notice when I was watching a debate related to triple talaq on a news channel. In that debate, there was a woman who was given divorce by triple talaq and she was favoring a ban on this unconstitutional practice. She asked a question that if triple talaq is valid in their society then why are only men given this right? The ‘honorable’ man in the argument stated that women are weaker sex and they don’t have the knowledge, therefore, they can’t make this important decision. The power to make a decision which involves lives of two people is given to male counterpart because of the gender stereotype. In a time when women of our country are making us proud by winning Olympic medals, heading the banks and MNC’s and going to space, some orthodox people still consider women to be weaker sex! We live in the 21st century gone are the times when women were considered ‘abala’ now times have changed and it’s high time that this stereotypical thinking also changes.

Politics adding to the feud!

Politics also played a major role in the delay of this verdict. In the 1980’s the Supreme Court held hearing for the Shah Bano case, where Shah Bano was asking for ₹500 alimony from her ex-husband. The Supreme Court ruled in her favor but the then Rajiv Gandhi government passed a law which nullified the Supreme Court’s judgment. All this was done to appease the Muslim vote bank since after the Supreme Courts judgment there were protests in many places by certain sections of Muslim community stating that the Supreme Court was interfering in their religious personal law. The Shah Bano case goes down in the history as the case where SC’s judgment was overturned just for the sake of politics. Even now many political parties were still against the ban on triple talaq because they didn’t want to lose their vote bank.

It’s time to change. Politics and religion should not come interfere in the development of the country. On one hand, we are planning to make India a super power, on the other hand, it took us decades to give basic women rights to the females. Religious freedom is worth protecting but it should not come at the expense of equality.