GANDHI THE ASCETIC

New Zealand Listener, Volume 25, Issue 631, 3 August 1951, Page 5

GANDHI THE ASCETIC

Sir,-In his review of The Selected Writings of Mahatma Gandhi, W. B. Sutch states categorically, "Gandhi also preached birth control." I think you will find, Sir, that Gandhi preached no such thing. What he did preach was continence, and this explains the contradiction of his earlier statement which Dr. Sutch makes in his next sentence, ", .. in later years he advocated absolute chastity in and out of marriage." Now, I do not know whether Dr. Sutch was trying to sneak an odd one through the coverslips for the birth-controllers, or whether it is just a case of loose terminology, but there is all the world of difference, both morally and in practice, between birth control and continence (or absolute chastity). Any definitioy of birth control would, I think, be built around the phrase "artificial methods of limiting birth," and might possibly be widened to include the "rhythm" system of family limitation. The term has a specialised meaning for the general public, and if I remember rightly this specialised connotation was given it with a euphemistic flick of the tongue by the birth control advocates themselves. Dr. Sutch says "Gandhi should become a saint." Maybe so, but saints

and birth control do not go well together. Gandhi himself told Mrs. Sanger in 1936, "We have not had enough education of the passions. I belong to a generation that believes that life is made for self-restraint in every way of life. Your generation believes in a multiplication of wants, freedom of all human passions." I trust Dr. Sutch will be more careful with his terminology in the future, or else take a look around the field a little more closelv before plaving loose

strokes.

D. E.

H.

(Wellington).

(Our reviewer -replies: ‘What I wrote was, ‘Gandhi also preached birth control. His experiences in his early teens had given him a strong sense of guilt about sexual activity, and in later years he advocated absolute chastity in and out of marriage. "All attachment . to the senses is death," is the Hindu doctrine, and Gandhi extended it; he saw sin in every sensual pleasure.’ "My statement could, perhaps, have been improved by putting a semi-colon instead of a full-stop after ‘control,’ as I did after the phrase ‘Gandhi extended it.’ But how can anybody, after reading a column on the asceticism of Gandhi (from which the above quotation is an extract) be so obtuse as to suggest that the kind of birth control I was imputing to Gandhi was that of Margaret rar oa "In quoting me out of context your correspondent also betrays himself by omitting my remarks on Gandhi’s sense of guilt about sexual activity." -Ed.)