Making of the mahatma: Gandhi and his wife in South Africa; and (below) Gandhi on a visit to Tripura in 1947

As usual with Gandhi’s experiments in ideal living, the education of the farm’s children (at Tolstoy Farm in South Africa) was neglected and they were expected to take part in all the work around the farm…

Gandhi had them pay little attention even to the textbooks they did have, self-confidently proclaiming: “I did not find it at all necessary to load the boys with quantities of books. I have always felt that the true textbook for the pupil is his teacher.” …

Gandhi liked to “experiment” not only with his own self-restraint, but with that of others. “I sent the boys reputed to be mischievous and the innocent young girls to bathe in the same spot at the same time,” he once said, having fully explained the duty of self-restraint to them. They bathed at a fixed time, and Gandhi would generally be present. He also had them sleep together on an open veranda. The boys, the girls and himself, with a distance of only three feet between their beds: “I made the experiment from a belief that boys and girls could thus live together without harm.”

Inevitably nature would assert itself and on this particular occasion there was some sexual banter between the boys and two of the girls, who were presumably developing physically. When it was reported to Gandhi he remonstrated with the young men, but was troubled about what to do with the girls. He wished to give them some physical sign as a lesson to them and a warning to the boys. “What mark should the girls bear,” he wondered. He was awake all night worrying about it, then suggested they let him cut off their long hair. The girls refused, but Gandhi worked on the elderly women on the farm and got their support and finally the girls came round and he cut off their hair himself.

Gandhi’s eldest son Harilal had joined his parents in South Africa, in the company of his wife; he and his brother Manilal had thrown themselves into the cause and had been repeatedly imprisoned. Their enduring resentment at their lack of education was intensified when Gandhi accepted the offer of a scholarship to study in England from his old friend Pranjivan Mehta who had helped him during this first days in London, and instead of giving it to one of his own children (as Mehta had intended) gave it to his nephew Chaganlal. He chided Manilal: “Why does the idea of study haunt you again and again? If you think of study for earning your livelihood, it is not proper; for God gives good to all...” He wrote to Harilal: “I must advise you to shake off this craze for examinations. If you pass, it won’t impress me much. If you fail, you will feel very unhappy.” He even refused funds for Harilal to go back to India when his wife and child had returned there. Harilal endured six periods of imprisonment between 1908 and 1911 in his father’s campaign.

When Chaganlal fell ill and failed to complete his studies, Gandhi was again in a position to choose a scholar to send to train as a lawyer. Harilal was again eager, but Gandhi again passed him over in favour of another young man. Gandhi understandably did not want to be accused of nepotism, but this seemed to be active discrimination against his own family…

Harilal left the settlement to seek a future in India in May 1911, saying to his mother: “He just does not care for us, any of us.”…

In 1915, Harilal wrote a “half-open” letter for limited distribution, charging his now feted father with neglect of his family, and particularly with keeping his sons “ignorant” by denying them education… Harilal said: “You have treated us as a ring-master would treat the beasts of the circus… You have spoken to us never with love, always with anger. In argument you have always used us with humiliating language: ‘You are ignorant… you lack understanding, you think you have reached the last frontier of knowledge.’ Walking and moving, sleeping and sitting, reading and writing, you have kept us in constant fear of you. You have a heart of stone.”…

Another incident … showed how seriously Gandhi treated matters of personal morality. His son Manilal and a woman at Phoenix called Jeki, the daughter of Pranjivan Mehta, were found to have “fallen” twice while Jeki’s husband was away in Fiji. Presumably they had sex. His reaction, as usual over sexual matters, was extreme: he imposed a seven-day fast on himself and vowed to have only one meal a day for the following four and a half months. Thus, he said, “Everyone came to realise what a terrible thing it was to be sinful.”

Manilal fasted with him. “He will, I hope, be able to bear the seven days’ fast,” Gandhi said, “but if he dies in the process, it will not be a matter for regret.” He further ordered Manilal to swear to a lifetime of celibacy and relented only in 1927, under pressure from Kasturba, when Manilal was 35. Jeki he had fast, have her hair cropped, take off her jewellery and wear mourning as a sign of remorse. He wrote: “Never before have I spent such days of agony as I am doing now… The heart seems to have gone dry. The agony I am going through is unspeakable. I have often wanted to take out the knife from my pocket and put it through the stomach.” Later, he had Jeki sent away to her husband as she was “without pity, without remorse”. There may be another element in his anguish over the affair: perhaps he was involving her in the experiments in sexual control that were later to dominate his life. He once wrote of the sleeping arrangements at Phoenix: “We were most of us here on the veranda sleeping side by side, Jeki was next to me.”…

Thanks to (his) early marriage, Gandhi had become tainted by carnality before he knew his own mind. Before he could reject it, he was burdened by those things of this world — his wife and children. Later he developed an indifference to the product of sex, his children, as if they tied him to the earthly world as living symbols of his carnal nature, and were of no import. When they became sexual beings themselves, his revulsion was almost palpable.

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AUTHORSPEAK

Jad Adams answers a few questions on the Mahatma

● Was the Father of the Nation a failure as a father in the eyes of his sons?

It is not at all unusual for people who are or wish to be great spiritual leaders to renounce their families. In the case of Gandhi, his family was treated like so much baggage of which he had to be divested if he wanted to reach spiritual perfection. He was much kinder with his grandchildren.

● A newspaper quoted you as saying Gandhi was sex mad. Why do you think so?

A British newspaper did say I said Gandhi was sex mad, but that was their interpretation of what they thought I was saying, for use in a headline, not a direct quote. My view of Gandhi is more sophisticated (and I would not use slang). Gandhi’s musings on sex were not occasional or cursory: his accounts were frequent and detailed. He talked about sex, he wrote newspaper articles and letters about sex and gave sermons where he discussed his sleeping arrangements.

● Why was chastity so important to Gandhi?

This is a question I am trying to understand in the book. Gandhi showed no great interest in chastity for the first years of his married life. He did not in fact develop a censorious attitude to sex (and certainly not to marital sex) until he was in his 30s, eventually taking a vow of brahmacharya when he was in his late 30s and already had four children. Thereafter he started to tell everyone else they should be chaste, including within marriage. He ended up with ‘experiments’ that challenged his chastity by putting him in contact with naked women and girls. I think he believed sex was a tremendously strong force which, if he could control it, would give him great spiritual strength.