Scribd
Upload
63 views2 pages

Gandhi 52

Gandhi believed there was a connection between private and public conduct. He slept platonically with a young woman named Manu to test his belief that true self-control required no restraints. When questioned about it, Gandhi insisted he slept innocently with Manu and millions of women in his mind each night. He felt this confession proved the purity of his pilgrimage and sacrifice by fearlessly stripping away his ego.

Uploaded by

sai
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
63 views2 pages

Gandhi 52

Gandhi believed there was a connection between private and public conduct. He slept platonically with a young woman named Manu to test his belief that true self-control required no restraints. When questioned about it, Gandhi insisted he slept innocently with Manu and millions of women in his mind each night. He felt this confession proved the purity of his pilgrimage and sacrifice by fearlessly stripping away his ego.

Uploaded by

sai
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
You are on page 1/ 2

Gandhi believed, as he told Nirmal Bose, that "there

is an indissoluble
connection between private, personal life and
public. . . . [Y]ou cannot
overlook private deflections from the right conduct.
If you are convinced
. . . you should pursue my connection with Manu
and if you find a flaw, try
to show it to me."41 Nirmal argued against the
practice but failed to convince
Gandhi that he did anything inappropriate, since he
firmly believed
God directed his actions, and approved of his loving
(nonsexual) intimacy
with Manu. Gandhi then wrote to Vinoba to explain
that he slept with
Manu in order to test what had been "my belief for a
long time that that
alone is true brahmacharya which requires no
hedges. ... I am not con-
[ 229 ]
Gandhi's Passion
scious of myself having fallen. . . . My mind daily
sleeps in an innocent
manner with millions of women, and Manu also,
who is a blood relation to
me, sleeps with me as one of these millions. ... If I
do not appear to people
exactly as I am within, wouldn't that be a blot on my
non-violence?"42 Vinoba
"did not agree," but he "did not wish to argue."43
Gandhi's selfeffacing

1
passionate insistence on truth, much like his need
to test the purity
of this pilgrimage sacrifice, could to his mind, best
be proved by his fearless
confession that he daily contemplated sleeping with
"millions of women,"
as he slept with Manu, innocently, unagressively,
emptying himself of all
masculine force and sexual violence, stripping
himself naked of ego. Only
when the painful pleasure of his passion left him
fortified as a karma yogisadhu,
his mind and heart perfectly indifferent to pleasure
and pain, would
he truly be ready to defeat the forces of evil hatred
unleashed in his sacred
Motherland and prove himself worthy of living to
125.

You might also like