Mahatma Gandhi: The Saint Who Slept with Teenagers

# Mahatma Gandhi: The Saint Who Slept with Teenagers


> "An eye for an eye only ends up making the whole world blind."

Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, the man the world knows as “Mahatma” or “great soul,” is the icon of nonviolent resistance. He’s the guy on the posters, the serene-looking man in the loincloth who brought the British Empire to its knees without, in theory, throwing a single punch. But for a man who preached a simple life of austerity and spiritual purity, his own was a labyrinth of contradictions that would make a modern PR team spontaneously combust. He championed celibacy, for instance, while sleeping naked next to his teenage grandnieces. It’s the kind of detail that doesn’t usually make it into the history books, but it’s precisely the sort of delicious irony that makes a man more than a monument.

## The London Dandy Who Became a Loincloth-Clad Ascetic

Before he was the half-naked fakir Winston Churchill so despized, Gandhi was a surprisingly dapper law student in London. He took dancing lessons, learned to play the violin, and made a concerted effort to adopt the manners of an English gentleman. He was, for a time, obsessed with fitting in. This was the same man who would later encourage Indians to burn their British-made clothes and embrace the simple, hand-spun khadi. The transformation from a man who wanted to be British to the man who wanted to rid India of the British is a testament to the power of a good, old-fashioned identity crisis. His time in South Africa, where he was thrown off a train for being a person of color, was the catalyst. It was there that he honed his philosophy of “Satyagraha,” or “truth force,” a form of nonviolent resistance that would become his trademark.

## The Apostle of Nonviolence and His Problematic Views

Gandhi’s commitment to nonviolence is legendary. He inspired Martin Luther King Jr. and Nelson Mandela. He’s the gold standard for peaceful protest. But his views on other matters were, to put it mildly, complicated. His early writings from South Africa are peppered with racist remarks about Black Africans, whom he referred to as “kaffirs.” He considered them to be on a lower rung of the civilizational ladder than Indians. And while he championed the cause of the “untouchables” in India, whom he called “Harijans” or “children of God,” his approach was often paternalistic and fell short of the radical equality that leaders like B.R. Ambedkar demanded. He was a man of his time, which is another way of saying he was a man with prejudices.

## The Celibate and His "Experiments" with Chastity

This is where things get truly weird. In his later years, Gandhi became obsessed with the idea of “brahmacharya,” or celibacy. He believed that preserving his vital fluids would give him spiritual power. To test his resolve, he began a series of “experiments” in which he would sleep in the same bed, naked, with young women, including his grandnieces Manu and Abha. He claimed that if he could remain chaste in their presence, it would be a sign of his spiritual purity. The young women, for their part, were expected to go along with this arrangement. It’s a deeply uncomfortable and ethically dubious chapter in his life, one that his hagiographers tend to conveniently overlook. It raises the question: can a man be a saint and still be a bit of a creep? The evidence suggests, well, yes.

## The Legacy: A Complicated Icon for a Complicated World

So what are we to make of this man who was both a hero and a hypocrite? He was a political genius who understood the power of symbols. He was a moral crusader who held some deeply immoral views. He was a spiritual leader who engaged in some very strange behavior. Perhaps the most honest way to remember Gandhi is to embrace his complexity. He was not a plaster saint, but a flawed and fascinating human being who managed to change the world. His legacy is not a simple story of good versus evil, but a messy, contradictory, and ultimately more interesting tale of a man who tried, and often failed, to live up to his own impossible ideals. He was a man who, in his quest for perfection, revealed beautiful, maddening imperfections of being human. And for that, he is one of the great iconoclasts of history, a man who shattered the very idea of what a revolutionary could be.

## The Goofy Snob Verdict

In a world of self-proclaimed gurus and life coaches, Gandhi was the real deal, a man who actually lived his philosophy, even when it led him to some very strange places. He was a man of immense courage and conviction, but also a man of his time, with all the baggage that entails. He’s the kind of historical figure you can admire and be deeply uncomfortable with at the same time, which is, of course, the most interesting kind of historical figure there is. He’s a reminder that our heroes are never as simple as we want them to be, and that the pursuit of purity can lead to some very impure thoughts. We salute him, even as we raise a skeptical eyebrow. He is, without a doubt, a prize for any of rare lists of fascinating individuals. His life was a masterclass in the art of being a glorious, magnificent, and utterly maddening contradiction. A true goofy snob, if there ever was one.

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