MEET MRS. GANDHI

New Zealand Listener, Volume 6, Issue 141, 6 March 1942, Page 16

MEET MRS. GANDHI

— *« (From an article in the "Sunday Statesman," Calcutta)

AHATMA GANDHI and his wife are of the same age (71) and they belong to that period in India’s social history that is associated with child marriages, purdah, and a rigid caste system. Gandhi was betrothed twice before he married Kasturbai, and even then their marriage was solemnised at the tender age of 13, just when she was stepping out of childhood and he was very much a boy. It was a great adventure, but Gandhi took his duties as a husband very seriously. His sense of fidelity was very strong, and this tended rather to make him jealous and suspicious, and this was most irksome for his wife, who was a girl of spirit and personality. He wanted to draw her into everything that he did, but this entailed the tedious task of educating her, for she was illiterate. Kasturbai did not take kindly to these lessons, and they were not successful. This would make him irritable and more inclined to impose his will upon her. Very Much in Love But the more restraints he imposed upon her the greater liberties she took to show her independence of spirit. It was all very innocent, and rose out of an almost aggressive desire on Ghandi’s part to make her the ideal wife. Also he was very much in love with her. During all those tedious and troublesome days, when the spirit of Gandhi was undergoing a metamorphosis, to be reborn again as the man is to-day, she gave him all the love and support that his heart could desire. Their family life was very happy, even while Gandhi

was labouring to make the cause of the Indians in Soyth Africa his own. But in the moment that Gandhi found himself, it was then that Kasturbai lost him. Let it not be supposed that his great love for her forsook him. On the other hand, it found greater expression in the vast well of love that was born in his heart for his countrymen, It is:not difficult to picture her indignation when public doubts have been cast on her husband’s morality by enemies who found in this a novel mode of attack. In his own humble way he has answered these accusations, and paid her the greatest tribute that any wife can desire: "I took the vow of brahma-charya (asceticism) in 1906, and

that for the sake of better dedication to the service of the country. .... My wife became a free woman, free from my authority as her lord and master. .... No other woman has any attraction for me in the same sense that my wife had. I was too loyal to her as a husband and too loyal to the vow I had taken before my mother to be a slave to any other woman." Through the hectic days of Gandhi’s return from South Africa and his appearance at the helm of Indian affairs, she has been actively connected with his work, Her Trust Never Faltered It was his cause, and therefore hers. It is difficult to imagine the state of her mind whenever her husband undertook his fasts. After all, she was a woman, whose entire life was centred round him, yet, without a word of complaint, she awaited her fate at his hands, for all his fasts were voluntary. There was no reproach from her; she gave him unselfish understanding, even while her own heart was nigh to breaking. Even old age did not find her faltering, and during the Rajkot trouble she was-among the first to volunteer for passive resistance, Nearly 60 long years, punctuated by "memory stones," has Kasturbai Gandhi spent in the sublimation of self. She is now a frail old lady, who is as simple as she has ever been, with a charming courtesy of spirit. Ostentation and outward show have no part in her life. She is as far removed from the whirl of publicity as an ascetic in.«the Himalayas. Yet it swirls round her husband, and then smilingly she withdraws out of its reach.