The writer is a former director of the Gandhi Smriti and Darshan Samiti, New Delhi. He sees his conduct as wrong, which leads him to think of the general condition of women, and the subordinate position to which women are forced into in Indian society. I often hear from young people they do not like Gandhi because "he was very cruel to his wife". We have had numerous bickerings, but the end has always been peace between us. Through the pages of his autobiography, we see the blossoming of a teenage girl into a woman with a "mind of her own". Horace Alexander, among other things, wrote: "The biggest stumbling block of appreciation of the East comes from the belief that Eastern people have not learnt the same reverence for women as we have now begun to learn in the West. "Her determined submission to my will, on the one hand, and her quiet submission to suffering my stupidity, on the other, ultimately made me ashamed of myself and cured me of my stupidity in thinking that I was born to rule over her; and in the end she became my teacher in non-violence. How did they get to know about it? They have no answer.Gandhi has acknowledged the debt of his mother, wife, the black women in South Africa and the suffragette struggle of British women in 1906-1907 as influences on the evolution of his concept of satyagraha for which he is revered across the world. In his later life he was "ashamed for this attachment". Gandhi was overwhelmed at the grit and determination displayed by women in their fight for rights in South Africa. He describes this incident thus: "The tears were running down her cheeks in torrents and she cried, have you no sense of shame? Must you so far forget yourself? Where am I to go? I have no parents or relatives here to harbour me.The confluence of dynamic and dedicated women at Gandhi’s ashrams, presided over by "Ba", made them develop into centres for rural regeneration and self-reliance. The incident provides him with a reformist impulse as strong as the one that accompanied his ejection from the first class compartment of a train in South Africa. Then she retaliates and a repentant Mahatma goes over the entire politics of BARRIER manufacturers the man-woman relationship.It is said behind every great man there is a woman, in the case of Mahatma Gandhi by his own admission it was his wife Kasturba. Above all, South Africa brought Kasturba to the forefront. It is amazing how some deep-rooted misconceptions about the personal relationship between Mahatma Gandhi and Kasturba have prevailed and survived from the very beginning of their public life. She was the silent but strong presence who helped him forge his unique, unconventional ammunition for the attainment of swaraj — both personal and political. Kasturba entered his life at a very tender and impressionable age.Gandhi made his inner sentiments public in an age when such confessions were frowned upon. "In spite of his having been such a little tyrant with his wife as a boy and as a young man, he had also come to have a great respect for women. A small cottage made of bamboo and mud was erected for him. Then there follows a violent conflict between the two. The quarrel reaches its peak with Gandhi asking his wife to quit the marriage. And if Gandhi managed, in the initial years of marriage, to fit the stereotype of the "tyrannical husband", during the thirties and after, he looked up to Kasturba as a strong life-partner, without whose constant support, his "mission would have been left unaccomplished". The guru does not lead nor set the pace; he is submerged in the caring husband.
Post je objavljen 02.03.2022. u 07:00 sati.