Madame Kasturba: An intimate account
 

by Prof. Sunanda Mahendra

Quite a number of books in the form of biographies and memoirs have been written on the great Indian leader and spiritualist Mahatma Gandhi and a number of films and creative works have appeared in the literary scene, on the same subject over the years.

Though a smaller amount has been recorded of his wife, the lesser known Madame Gandhi, whose full name goes as Kasturba, I had the chance of reading a well-written intimate and touching account of her life by her private doctor Susila Nair.

This is a Sinhala translation of a book written in English translated by the novelist and screen playwright Sumitra Rahubddha titled Mahatma Gandhi Patini Kasturba, [Platform For Alternate Culture, Nugegoda 2005].

The reader is made to understand that this is a rare recollection of memoirs of a medical doctor who had the chance of treating not only the husband [Mahatma Gandhi] but his wife [Kasturba] as well at all moments of their lives, spanning to more than thirty years, indicating sensitive areas in their existence attempting to overcome physical and mental ailments like living apart from family bonds, attempts to share emotions that hinder the same, undergoing stress and strain falling behind bars from time to time etc.

narrative

The series of memoirs are written in the form of a narrative where the central character portrayal happens to be the reflection of the greatness and the farsightedness of a feminine character Kasturba, who sometimes act like a wife, sometimes a mother, and sometimes a sharer of socio-political nuances of her life, helping to build a better society through the vision she had obtained from her husband Mahatma, living closer to him in all her day-to-day activities.

The original author Susila Nair, according to a brief note attached to the book, had been the private doctor of Mahatma since her graduation as a medical doctor in 1937. She had also been imprisoned for sometime together with Mahatma and later on she had been the health minister of India [as a result of her entering into Gandhian politics].

She had not only been a medical doctor in her life but also an intimate associate helping him to win the vision of liberation through non violence. It looks as if Mahatma had not anticipated a book of this calibre, according to the preface written by him to this book.

But he had nevertheless stated that the life of Kasturba had been one of the rarest lovelorn episodes not only in his life, but also among the masses, who so loved her as she had been mixing with them at all moments of their ups and downs sharing their feelings and aspirations.

despair

She is also shown as a wife who had been helpful and sometimes caused a certain degree of despair which is depicted as a part of the process moments in the struggle of the freedom fight where privacy is undermined above the public activities.

In order to help the reader with closer acquaintance with the characters that appear in the memoirs, the author lines up the names and titles and explains the significance of each. In this manner the reader comes to know the character more intimately.

For instance, the term ‘ba’ [in Kastuba] means the mother in Gujarati. She was known by that term all throughout the world. ‘Bapu’ was the term used to address Mahatma by all his associates and this means father in Gujarati.

There are references to gods and goddesses, especially of Indian origin. Though the book centres round a single character, that of Kasturba, the socio-political and socio-cultural issues like the struggle of the common man in the search for an identity as a human being, is one of the dominant emergences.

Then the reader encounters issues of sociological and communicational factors that go to the understanding of the helping hand extended to bring about peace through non violence, the civil disobediences and their manifold misgivings, the supplementary factors pertaining to indigenous wisdom, the beliefs and superstitions and the pains and aberrations in the prisons and sanatoriums, with the will to live and suffer for a magnanimous common cause.

The author touchingly underlines some of the sensitive areas in the life of Mahatma and his wife Kasturba where sometimes one feels that Mahatma is mistaken while his wife had the courage to forgive him.

One example is the event where Mahatma leaves to see the conditions of the down trodden harijans and comes back late in the night to see that his wife had prepared meals and waiting for him. But he resists her request with some feeling of desolation and irritation for which he finds himself wrong later.

But he discovers with a sound understanding that she had forgiven long before his own realization of the matter, and had the courage to bear his pains in empathy [p.22].

Then we see the errors of judgement in his life which is never openly discussed by his wife Kasturba thinking that it will give him a pain of mind, instead makes him know of his own follies gradually [p23].

Mahatma for many a time is portrayed as a person who admits his errors and says ‘the fault is mine’. This makes us see another side of Mahatma, presumably an area which we do not see in some of the other biographies published so far.

acts of truth

We come across acts of truth [Satyakriya] penitence [upavasa ] and moments of spiritual exercises where the husband and the wife participate with the rest of the followers in the form of socio religious congregations.

The discovery of Kasturba’s diaries and the revelations of accounts [maintained from 1931-1933] in them add colour to the narrative of real life by way of knowing more about Gandhi the man, the social reformer and the teacher.

The diaries reveal the fact that Mahatma had been trying his best to teach his wife all about classics like Ramayana and Mahabharata, elevating her from the common plane of education.

He had also asked one of his brothers to translate one of these classics into a lighter veined Gujarati work. But unfortunately the mission had been half way done and due to his ill health the project had been discontinued [p53].

Then the author Nair says that she was entrusted with the mission to teach Kasturba [p54]. But Kasturba had not been in a sound frame of mind to grasp the subtleties in the text.

The series of memoirs come to a conclusion portraying the last days of Kasturba, which is touching, where the husband Mahatma Gandhi is shown as a steady enlightened person interspersed with a supreme sense of love and kindness, sometimes washing her clothes [p97] helping the attendants and standing quite nearer to her talking to her [p98] withstanding his own physical weakness.

He would get his associates and accompany them with prayer sessions [p.100].

The gradual passing away of Kasturba from this existence, is poetically presented and the translator Rahubaddha uses a language that suits the tenor of the experience embedded. I felt that the reading of this series of memoirs is an exercise in capturing a series of memorable spiritual moods.

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