WAS GANDHI A TANTRIC?

Nicholas F. Gier, Professor Emeritus, University of Idaho

(ngier@uidaho.edu)
First presented at the annual meeting of the Society for Asian and
Comparative Philosophy,
Asilomar Conference Center, Monterey, California, June, 2006
My meaning of brahmacharya is this: "One who never has any lustful intention,
who . . . has become capable of lying naked with naked women . . . without being in
any manner whatsoever sexually excited."
--M. K. Gandhi
The greater the temptation, the greater the renunciation.
--M. K. Gandhi
I threw you in the sacrificial fire and you emerged safe and sound.
--Gandhi to his grandniece Manu Gandhi
I can hurt colleagues and the entire world for the sake of truth.
--M. K. Gandhi (letter to Sushila Nayar)
[Gandhi] can think only in extremeseither extreme eroticism or asceticism.
--Jawaharlal Nehru
The professional Don Juan destroys his spirit as fatally as does the professional ascetic, whose [mirror]
image he is.
--Aldous Huxley

Some scholars believe that it is unseemly to write about the sex lives of
great thinkers. William Bartley, for example, has been criticized for
documenting, quite successfully in my opinion, Ludwig Wittgenstein's
homosexual encounters, information that helps us better understand his life
and work. If we use this information in an ad hominem attack against these
thinkers' worldviews, then we have indeed erred and done them an injustice.
Full and accurate biographies, however, are essential for those of us who
wish to capture the full measure of a person's life and character. It is
therefore unfortunate that D. K. Bose, Gandhi's faithful secretary and
interpreter in Bengal, was forced to self publish his book My Days with
Gandhi. He only thought that he was being truthful, but many considered
him an apostate, and Sushila Nayar, one of Gandhi's female initmates,
thought he had "a dirty mind."
Jeffrey Kripal, author of Kali's Child, has also been condemned for taking Sri
Ramakrishna's failed Tantric initiation seriously and for interpreting his
interactions with his male disciples as homoerotic encounters. Most people
would rather not hear about Martin Luther King's extramarital liaisons, but
they remain embarrassing facts, along with the plagiarized passages in his

doctoral dissertation, that must be integrated into our understanding of this

great saint of nonviolence. King confessed that what he did was wrong and
he sought forgiveness from his wife and sought repentance. Sadly, I do not
think that we can say that same thing about Gandhi's response to those who
criticized his intimate relations with young women. Furthermore, King did not
defend his actions by saying that they were part of his spiritual development,
something that Gandhi of course did.
It is now widely known that Gandhi shared his bed with young women as part
of his experiments in brahmacharya, a Sanskrit word usually translated as
"celibacy," but generally understood as the ultimate state of yogic selfcontrol. Gandhi believed that Indian ascetics who sought refuge in forests
and mountains were cowards, and he was convinced that the only way to
conquer desire was to face the temptation head-on with a naked female in
his bed. I take Gandhi at his word that he did not have carnal relations with
these womenhis sleeping quarters were open to all to observeso he was
not among the left-handed Tantrics who engaged in ritual sex with their
yoginis. At the same time, Gandhi's Tantricism cannot be right-handed kind
because this school proscribes intimate contact with women.
As would be expected, we will find that Gandhi was a very distinctive Tantric.
Just as he claimed that he was an Advaitin while that the same time being a
Dvaitin, perhaps it can be said that Gandhi was somehow simultaneously a
left-handed and right-handed Tantric. Raihana Tyabji, a close associate with
a Tantric past, thought that Gandhi's position straddling right-handed and
left-hand Tantra was untenable, and that the only way to free himself and his
women from sexual desire was "to give free rein to itto indulge it and
satiate it. But he wouldn't listen." It is significant to note that when his
colleagues criticized him for sleeping with his grandniece Manu, Gandhi
defended himself by saying that he, according to Geoffrey Ashe, "held radical
views of brahmacharya and urged them to study the Tantra cult. (11a)
It is not widely known that Gandhi subscribed to Shakta theology, one that
puts skakti, the power of the Hindu Goddess, at the center of existence. As
we shall see, Shakta theology is the foundation of Hindu Tantricism. Scholars
have warned us that not all Shaktas are Tantrics, but Gandhis sexual
experiments with young women definitely suggest some association with
Tantra. In the first section I will evaluate the position of one commentator
who makes strong claims about Gandhi's Tantricism. In the second section I
explain Gandhi's views on shakti and how they relate to Tantricism. The third
section will investigate how well Gandhi's Tantric qualities match with a
standard list of what constitutes Tantricism. The fourth section is a summary
of Gandhi's intimate relations with early female associates before he invited
women to share his bed. The fifth section deals with those women who were
directly involved his sexual experiments and the effect that these
experiences had on them and on Gandhi himself.
The final section will compare Gandhi with Ramakrishna's failed Tantric
initiation and Sri Aurobindos relationship with Mira Richards, better known
simply as The Mother. I will then summarize what I believe we can

reasonably say about Gandhi's Tantricism, and whether or not he achieved

the spiritual goal that he was seeking. It is also possible that that Gandhis
sexual experiments may have been an abuse of personal power rather than
a practice of Hindu spirituality.
One defense that could be made for Gandhi's actions is that he experienced
intimate relations with men as well. Hermann Kallenbach, a South Africa
associate, was very close to the Mahatma. Kallenbach promised that he
would travel to the "ends of the earth in search of [Gandhian] Truth," and he
also promised Gandhi that he would never marry. Gandhi reciprocated by
declaring unconditional love and a declaration that they would always be
"one soul in two bodies."
Gandhi was also very close to Pyarelal Nayar, Sushila Nayar's brother, and
boasted that Pyarelal slept closer to him than his sister did. For Gandhi,
however, sleeping with men was different from sharing a bed with women.
Abha Gandhi's husband Kanu once objected to his wife sleeping with the
Mahatma and offered himself as a "bed warmer." Gandhi rejected his
proposal by making it clear that brahmacharya experiments required young
women as bedmates. Finally, if someone makes an appeal to the Indian
custom and necessity of intimate Indian family sleeping arrangements, Girja
Kumar is not convinced: "Not even in India do grown-up daughters sleep with
their fathers."
I
In his book The Days with Gandhi Bose does mention in passing that
Gandhis techniques are "reminiscent of the Tantras," and Gandhi himself
said that he read the books on Tantra written by Sir John Woodroofe, but, as
far as I know, only Gopi Krishna has argued at any length about Gandhis
Tantricism. In his on-line essay "Mahatma Gandhi and the Kundalini Process,"
Krishna argues that the only way that we can explain Gandhis actions with
these young women is to assume he was a kundalini yogi. Krishna
speculates that "upward flow of reproductive energy [shakti]" started as soon
as he committed himself to brahmacharya in 1906. Gandhi was 37, "the
usual time," from Krishnas own experience, "for the spontaneous arousal of
the Serpent Power."
As evidence that Gandhi had perfected this state, Krishna cites this passage
from Gandhis Key to Health: "[the brahmacharis] sexual organs will begin to
look different. . . . He does not become impotent for lack of the necessary
secretions of sexual glands. But these secretions in his case are sublimated
into a vital force pervading his whole being." Krishna claims that this passage
makes it "patently clear" that Gandhi had attained the state of
brahmacharya, but it is not clear that Gandhi is writing about himself, and
that, except during the crisis with Manu, he rarely ever claimed spiritual
perfection.
As the kundalini yogi matures, Krishna states that he "needs constant
stimulation to increase the supply of reproductive juices. . . . The Tantras and
other works on kundalini clearly acknowledge the need of an attractive

female partner in the practices undertaken to awaken shakti." Gandhi does

in fact say that "my brahmacharya . . . irresistibly drew me to woman as the
mother of man. She became too sacred for sexual love." Krishna admits that
Gandhi himself most likely "had no inkling of the transformative process at
work in him," even though he claims that Gandhi noticed that his male organ
had shrunk. Krishna brushes aside criticism of Gandhis actions and also
concern for the young womens mental health, because "nature
accomplishes her great tasks in her own way and leaves short-sighted
mortals wondering how it could happen." Apart from the speculative nature
of Krishnas theory, we should be most concerned about his disregard for the
womens well being, as well has the implication that Gandhi was driven by
forces over which he had no control.
II
For Gandhi the virtues of patience, self-control, and courage were absolutely
essential to defeat the temptation to retaliate and respond with violence.
Gandhi made it clear that each of these virtues were found most often in
women. Gandhi once said that he wanted to convert the womans capacity
for "self-sacrifice and suffering into shakti-power." Gandhi describes
womankind as follows: "Has she not great intuition, is she not more selfsacrificing, has she not greater powers of endurance, has she not greater
courage?" He also claimed that ahimsa is embodied in the woman: she is
"weak in striking. . . strong in suffering."
The women around Gandhi were amazed how comfortable they felt in his
presence and how much of a woman he had become to them. Millie Polak
observed that "most women love men for [masculine] attributes. Yet,
Mohandas Gandhi has been given the love of many women for his
womanliness." His orphaned grandniece Manu considered Gandhi as her new
mother, and she simply could not understand all the controversy surrounding
their sleeping together. D. K. Kalelkar also thought that there was no scandal
with Manu, "because his relationships with women were, beginning to end,
as pure as mother's milk."
The fact that women felt no unease in his presence was proof to Gandhi that
he was approaching perfection as a brahmachari. Indeed, Bose contends that
Gandhi attempted to "conquer sex" was "by becoming a woman." Gandhi
told Pyarelal Nayar that he once tore the burning sari off a woman in his
ashram, but "she felt no embarrassment, because she knew I was a
brahmachari and so almost like a sister to her." Gandhi also mentions
Krishna's bathing gopis, their clothes hidden from them, standing
unembarrassed in front of their beloved Lord. Alternatively, Gandhi says that
his goal was the state of "complete sexlessness" recommended by Jesus and
that this condition could be achieved by becoming a eunuch by prayer not by
an operation.
Shakti is substantially different from the masculine tejas, a power that the
gods and brahmins possess, because shakti is a necessary attribute that the
Goddess shares with everything in the universe. Ontologically speaking,

tejas is a quality, seen most clearly in its meaning as fire, a primary element
of the basic substance, while shakti is that basic substance. The Hindu
Goddess theology essentially breaks the vicious cycle of the Vedic maxim,
explained superbly by Brian K. Smith, that one gains power only at another's
expense. The Vedic power game, as with most patriarchal concepts of
power, is a zero-sum game; those who control the sacrifice control tejas. The
result is constant battles between gods and antigods, gods and ascetics,
priests and kings. Goddess theology offers something radically different:
shakti is a power that all beings have by virtue of their very existence.
Given Gandhi's commitment to the nonviolent feminine, we must read shakti
rather than tejas when he states that "all power comes from the preservation
and sublimation of the vitality that is responsible for the creation of life."
Gandhi may very well be indicating a Tantric process of empowerment that
involves the preservation and sublimation of a male vitality that has its
source in shakti. When Gandhi did his first radio broadcast on November 12,
1947, he declared that the phenomenon of broadcasting demonstrated
"shakti, the miraculous power of God."
When Gandhi once described himself as "half a woman," an alternative view
of masculine and feminine power suggests itself. The Chinese/Jungian view
of complementary yin (anima) and yang (animus) energies is found in this
passage: "A man should remain man and yet should learn to become
woman; similarly, a woman should remain woman and yet learn to become
man." (This view of coequal powers differs ontologically from the view of
shakti as primary and tejas as derivative.) Hsi Lai uses the yin/yang model
to explain Gandhis sexual experiments: "He didnt do this for the purpose of
actual sexual contact, but as an ancient practice of rejuvenating his male
energy. . . . Taoists called this method using the yin to replenish the yang."
The source of Gandhis dipolar views of male and female may have been
Christian rather than Asian. While a young man in England, Gandhi came into
contact with the Esoteric Christian Union, whose interpretation of the image
of God meant that the individual "must comprise within himself the
qualitiesBmasculine and feminineBof existence and be spiritually both man
and woman." When he confesses to Kedar Nathji and Swami Anand that his
sexual experiments were "unorthodox," Gandhi says that his views on this
subject had been influenced by "Western writers on this subject." We will see
that Aurobindo had similar views of a dipolar relationship between himself
and his own skakti Mira Richards. The emphasis that both men placed on
equality with women fits this male-female model much better.
Hindu Tantrics drew their philosophical inspiration from a fusion of
Upanishadic monism and Sankhya-Yoga with its radical dualism of purusha
(pure spirit) and prakriti (material energy). Tantricism dissolves this dualism
by identifying prakriti as the Goddess, who then creates both the spiritual
and material worlds. Here is an illustrative passage from the DeviMahatmya, one of the first Shakta texts: "You are the primordial material
(prakriti) of everything, manifesting the triad of constituent strands [of
gunas]; (You are) the cause of all the worlds . . . the supreme, original,

untransformed Prakriti." A common image for Shaivite Tantricism is Kali

standing on top of an inert Shiva"Shiva without Shakti is a corpse"
confirming in Shakta theology that even the gods derive their power from
Durga/Kali's shakti. A Vaishnava version of this is beautifully succinct:
"Without you [Radha], I [Krishna] am inert and am always powerless. You
have all powers [shakti] as your own form; come into my presence."
Despite this emphasis on goddess dynamism, it is the human male who is
active in Tantric rites. Only males undergo initiation, and the only instruction
females receive, if they get any, is that they "should not even mentally touch
another male." Gandhi's Tantricism definitely follows this androcentric
approach. Gandhi also takes the defiant stance of the Tantric who says that
he cares nothing for what others thinks of his practice: "The whole world may
forsake me but I dare not leave what I hold is the truth for me." Gandhi once
admonished a critic that he would sleep with a thousand women if that is
what it took to reach spiritual purity.
Buddhist Tantricism, interestingly enough, inverts the active/passive polarity
and makes the Goddess passive and the male active. (Exceptions to this
were some Tantric Buddhists in Bengal and Oddiyana who kept the dynamic
female, and the goddesses Vajravarahi and Aparajita who maintained active
power in Tibet.) As prakriti the Hindu Goddess was primordial cause, but in
the Hevajra Tantra the "yogin is Means and Compassion (upaya), and the
yogin [is] Wisdom (prajna) and Voidness for she is deprived of causation."
Ironically, an active Hindu Goddess did not lead to any relief for oppressed
women in India, but a passive Buddhist Goddess has inspired the practice of
thousands of female Tantrics in the Tibetan tradition, including Mongolian
nuns I witnessed training in the Red Hat sect in Ullanbatur.
Superficially, it appears that Gandhi's dominance in his sexual experiments
may indicate a completely passive female role, but his statements about
shakti quoted above support, at least philosophically, the Hindu view of
active female power. Nevertheless, Gandhi would have approved of the fact
that many of the Buddhist Siddhas receive instruction from mentor
goddesses (dakinis), and some of the Siddhas are women themselves.
Furthermore, nonviolence, salvation of the lower castes, and selfless service
to others are pervasive themes in the stories of the 84 Buddhist Siddhas.
Bharati is correct in rejecting the standard Advaitin strategy of identifying
their absolute monism with Nagarjuna's deconstruction of all metaphysics, or
the constructive postmodern view that Nagarjuna's is subtlely reformulating
the non-substantial ontology of Pali Buddhism. But I believe Bharati is wrong
to imply that the Shakta philosophy behind Hindu Tantricism dissolves the
phenomenal into the noumenal into a state of "absolute oneness." I make
this criticism only from the standpoint of the Shakta tradition, which I have
studied carefully, and not the Tantric sutras of which I currently know little.
In any case, Gandhis neo-Vedanta does not embrace this absolute monism.
III

Gandhi's embrace of Shakta philosophy and his "sacred" experiments with

young women (calling one of them his "spiritual wife") qualify him as some
type of Tantric, but let us see how his practice matches the criteria
traditionally used to identify Tantrics. If Tantra is "psycho-experimental
interpretation of non-Tantric lore," then Gandhis experiments with young
women as a means to become a bramachari certainly qualifies as Tantra.
Gandhi is also a Tantric in that he believes that his investigations are value
free in that they place experiment above conventional law and morality.
One significant difference in this regard is that while Indian Tantricism
represents a premodern recovery of primordial knowledge, Gandhi most
often models his experiments in truth on a modern scientific discovery of
new personal truths, saying in particular that he "framed [his] own rules [for
brahmacharya] as occasion necessitated." However, in his response to A. V.
Thakkar in February, 1947, he leaves the scientific model: "It is not an
experiment but an integral part of my yajna. One may forgo an experiment,
one cannot forgo ones duty." In his response to Boses criticisms of his
sleeping with Manu, Gandhi claims that "I have not become modern at all in
the same sense you seem to mean. I am as ancient as can be imagined and
hope to remain so to the end of my life."
Normally Tantric practices are tightly structured, highly ritualized, and the
initiation procedures, guided by a guru, are esoteric. The only bona fide guru
in Gandhis spiritual development was Raichandcharya, a Jain saint, not a
Tantric, with whom Gandhi corresponded during his formative South Africa
period. Gandhi officiated at daily worship and hymn singing, encouraged the
chanting of the Ramanama, and followed an unconventional diet, but these
practices are not Tantric in any way. The chanting of the Ramanama is said to
have magical properties, but its use is so widespread in India it may not
indicate any special Tantric associations. Nevertheless, Gandhi does connect
the chanting of Rama's name with "an alchemy [that] can transform the
body" that leads to "the conservation of vital energy."
Gandhis experiments with truth were highly personalized but not spiritually
esoteric as are Tantric practices. Only after the sexual experiments came
under public scrutiny did Gandhi started telling his female associates to keep
their activities secret. Not until his last days, when his sleeping with Manu
became public, did Gandhi confess that this secrecy was actually a sign of
untruthfulness. Gandhi's secrecy was simply expedient and not spiritually
required.
Let us now check Douglas R. Brooks ten "principal generic features of Hindu
Tantricism" against Gandhis spiritual practices. The first feature is that the
Tantric, while based in the Vedic tradition, appeals to extra-Vedic "practices,
concepts, and traditions." Gandhis experiments with truth are definitely
extra-Vedic practices, and he frequently appealed to concepts and traditions
that had their origins outside of India. It appears that Gandhi also meets the
second criterion that Tantrics practice "special forms of yoga and spiritual
discipline." Gandhi also embraces Brooks third Tantric principlenamely,
"Tantrics are at once theists and philosophical nondualists." Gandhi is

frustratingly inconsistent on this matter, alternating between a fervent

personal theism and equally strong affirmation of impersonal monism. I
believe that Gandhi is best understood as a neo-Vedantist, one, such as
Aurobindo and Vivekananda, who saw Atman-Brahman as a dialectical
identity of the One and the Many. The last section is devoted to the Tantric
aspects of this movement.
Except for possibly two, the rest of Brooks "generic features"the use of
mantras (4th), yantras and mandalas (5th), the absolute authority of the guru
(6th), god and goddess conjugal union (7 th), and the use of unconventional
substances (9th) are not found in Gandhis spiritual practices. The ninth
criterion is not entirely alien to Gandhi because, in addition to the four
forbidden substances, the 5th makara is "sexual intercourse outside the
legitimate, dharmic boundaries of marriage." It is significant to note that,
although we are assuming he did not engage in sex, Gandhis experiments
were not with his legal wife but with young virgin girls, a requirement for lefthanded Tantrics. Brooks eighth criterion actually has two parts, the first
requiring that Tantra be esoteric, which does not match Gandhi, but the
second, Tantric practice is "dangerous" and "not easily controlled or
mastered," fits Gandhi quite nicely. The tenth feature, that the practice is
open to all regardless of gender or caste, is also one that Gandhi easily
qualifies.
IV
Before Gandhi started his brahmacharya experiments in 1938, he had
a string of intimate relationships with European and Indian women. I am
indebted to Girja Kumar's book Brahmacharya: Gandhi and His Women
Associates for information about the five women discussed in this section. In
contrast to Bose, who encountered resistance everywhere when he tried to
publish on this topic 50 years ago, Kumar's book, which is more explicit,
judgmental, and comprehensive than Bose's, has been warmly received,
signaling that most Indians are now ready to accept Gandhi as fully human.
Kumar's sources are not secret or anonymous; in fact, most of the material
comes from letters found in Gandhi's Collected Works.
While he was in South Africa, Gandhi fell in love with Millie Polak, the wife of
Henry Polak, both of whom lived with Gandhi at Phoenix Farm. Kumar
describes their first contact as follows: "Gandhiji and Millie started
conversing through their eyes. They made a pact between them
immediately. Poor Henry was left stranded." As with all of his female friends,
Gandhi insisted that he and Millie be sisters or alternatively that he be her
father, but after they were together in London in 1909 without Henry, Gandhi
dared to suggest that he was a substitute husband.
Even though Millie was smitten by him, she stood up to Gandi's controlling
nature and argued against his absurd dietary ideas and his goal to force
chastity on all his coworkers. This independent spirit that defines most of his
female intimates of this early period stands in instructive contrast to the
passive participants in the later brahmacharya experiments. For example,

Kumar describes Manu as a devotee who "was prepared to sacrifice her life
at the altar of her ishtadeva (personal God)." Gandhi controlled every aspect
of Manu's life, and when she once forgot his favorite soap at their last stay,
he made her walk back through a dark jungle to retrieve it.
When Millie finally broke off their 3-year affair, Gandhi's attentions
turned to Maud Polak, Henry's sister. Maud worked with Gandhi at Phoenix
Farm as his personal secretary until 1913. In a letter to Henry, Gandhi
described Maud seeing him off at a railway station: "She cannot tear herself
from me. . . . She would not shake hands with me. She wanted a kiss. [This
incident] has transformed her and with her me."
Esther Faering, a young Danish missionary, was the next major love in
Gandhi's life. From her very first visit at the Satyagraha Ashram in 1917,
Kumar describes Faering as "completely hooked on" Gandhi, and as with
Millie Polak, "an instant chemistry developed" between them. Gandhi
"experienced an intensely personal passion for Esther," and she praised him
as the "Incarnation of God in man."
The other ashramites were alarmed at Gandhi's obsession with Faering, and
Kasturba Gandhi was particularly cool to her husband's new love interest.
Gandhi made matters worse by siding with Faering against his wife. While he
was away from the ashram, he wrote daily letters to Faering, which Kumar
describes as having the passionate intensity of the bhakti and sufi poets. He
hazards a guess that "Esther must have stirred," as young beautiful women
are supposed to do in the Tantric yogi, "the serpent resting uncoiled in
[Gandhi's] kundalini."
One would expect Gandhi to have at least been serially monogamous in his
relationships, but that was not the case. While Faering was struggling
against Kasturba and other ashramites and receiving Gandhi's loving support
by mail, he was away conducting what Kumar calls a "whirlwind romance"
with Saraladevi Chowdharani, a Bengali revolutionary married to a Punjabi
musician. Her father was a secretary of Indian National Congress in Calcutta,
and by virtue of her singing and activism, Saraladevi was celebrated as
Bengal's Joan of Arc and as an incarnation of Durga. She rose to the
challenge and wrote that "my pen reverberated with the power of Shiva's
trumpet and invited Bengalis to cultivate death."
After the Jallianwala Bagh massacre in 1919, Gandhi stayed at Saraladevi's
home in Lahore and then they toured India together during 1920. Her
husband, R. D. Chowdhary, was in jail for the first eight months this period,
but he was content, as was Henry Polak, to share his wife with the Mahatma.
Gandhi agreed with Chowdhary that Saraladevi was the "greatest shakti of
India."
Gandhi called Saraladevi his "spiritual wife" after "an intellectual wedding,"
and he reported that he bathed "in her deep affection" as she showered "her
love on [him] in every possible way." Kasturba Gandhi had refused to wear
khadi, but Saraladevi became the Mahatma's most elegant khadi model.
Kumar describes them as "lovelorn teenagers with stars in their eyes," and

depicts Saraladevi as "aristocratic, gorgeously dressed, sensuously beautiful,

and imperious. In short, she had everything that [Kasturba] lacked."
In contrast to his later brahmacharya mistresses, Saraladevi, just as Millie
Polak before her, did not bow to Gandhi's authority in any way. For example,
as the quotation above implies, she agreed with fellow Bengalis, such as the
young Aurobindo, that independence required violent revolution. Following
her Goddess, Durga's shakti was always accompanied by violence, and
Saraladevi eventually broke with Gandhi over this very issue.
Kumar concludes that just as his relation to Faering, while "full of sensuality,"
was asexual, Gandhi's romance with Saraladevi was "probably . . . entirely
platonic." There was, however, a "large component of eroticism" and the
"line of demarcation between sexual, sensuous, erotic and platonic was only
of degree and not of kind." Kumar's phrasing is unfortunate and logically
incoherent, because "degree" means a slippery slope and not a strict line
between the intellectual/spiritual and the physical. In letters to Saraladevi in
July, 1920, Gandhi insists that being "spiritually" married means that the
"physical must be wholly absent," but he then admits that he is "too
physically attached to" her for there to be a true "sacred association." In his
conversations with Margaret Sanger, Gandhi refers to a "woman with whom I
almost fell," and "the thought of my wife kept me from going to perdition."
Writing to Rajkumari Amrit Kaur, a later bedmate, he admitted the he, "with
one solitary exception," had never "looked upon a woman with lustful eyes."
These two references must have been to Saraladevi Chowdharani.
Madeleine Slade, later Gandhi's beloved Mirabehn, was the daughter of a
British naval officer who was once stationed in Bombay. Mirabehn first
learned of Gandhi through Romain Rolland, who was then writing a Gandhi
biography. She wrote to Gandhi requesting that she become a member of
the Sabarmati Ashram, but he required that she live as an ascetic for one
year before coming to India. More than any of his disciples, Mirabehn
eagerly took to the austerities that Gandhi demanded. As opposed to
Kasturba, who disliked latrine duties, Mirabehn eagerly took charge of the
toilets, even those for all the delegates to a meeting of the Indian National
Congress.
At their first meeting in November, 1925, Mirabehn found Gandhi "divine,"
and she was able to confirm Rolland's claim that he was indeed the second
Christ. They fell in love with one another and Kumar says that "Mira was
Saraladevi . . . all over again." Once again, because of Gandhi's fascination
for her, Mirabehn was shunned by the ashramites. Gandhi soon discovered
that Mirabehn's emotional instability caused his blood pressure to rise, so he
frequently sent her away on other tasks. They did, however, keep in contact
with weekly self-described "love letters," and Gandhi wrote that she haunted
his dreams. Mirabehn agreed with Gandhi's depiction that their passion was
like a "bed of hot ashes," a veritable ascetic-erotic rhapsody of yogic tapas.
Gandhi also shared with Mirabehn agonies about his spontaneous erections,
daytime ejaculations, and wet dreams, for which he castigated himself
unmercifully, and they even discussed the causes and cures of constipation.

V
Of the women closely associated with Gandhi, at least ten were said to have
slept in his bed. They can be identified as follows:
Sushila Nayar was only 15 when she came to the Sabarmati Ashram and
then became Gandhi's intimate companion, with some periods of alienation
and remove, for the rest of his life. Gandhi claimed that Nayar was a natural
brahmachari, having observed it from childhood. They bathed together and
even used the same bath water, but Gandhi assured everyone that he kept
his "eyes tightly shut."
Lilavati Asar, associated with Gandhi from 1926-1948, slept in his bed and
gave him "service," which meant bathing and massaging.
Sharada Parnerkar slept "close" to Gandhi and rendered "service." She was
very ill in October, 1940, and Gandhi gave her regular enemas.
Amtul Salaam, whom Gandhi called his "crazy daughter," was a Punjabi
from Patiala. She was also a bedmate and masseuse. Gandhi once wrote
about the joy he gave Salaam when she received a massage from him.
Prabhavati Narayan, a Kashmiri, lived in an unconsummated marriage with
Jayaprakash Narayan, Indira Gandhi's most famous political foe. Because of
her lack of sexual interest or desire, Gandhi thought that Prabhavati would
be a perfect married brahmachari. In addition to sleeping with Gandhi, she
also gave him "service."
Raj Kumari Amrit Kaur, married to a Rajasthani prince, was Indias first
health minister and was a Gandhi associate for 30 years. Although older, she
slept right along with the younger women in Gandhi's quarters. She also
helped with baths and massages.
Sucheta Kriplani, a member of Parliament and professor at Benares Hindu
University, was a member of Gandhis Peace Brigade in East Bengal in 1947.
She maintained a brahmachari marriage with J. B. Kriplani, a famous
socialist and saint. Gandhi fought their union tooth and nail. Although
Gandhi invited Mrs. Kriplani to his bed on a regular basis, he insisted that
married couples in his ashrams always sleep in different quarters.
Abha Gandhi was a Bengali who accompanied the Mahatma in East
Bengal. She started sleeping with Gandhi when she was 16; she also bathed
him and washed his clothes.
Kanchan Shah, also a married woman, had a "one night stand" with Gandhi
and was banned from brahmacharya experiments because she reputedly

wanted to have sex with him. Gandhi gave the following instructions on
brahmachari marriage to Shah and her husband: "You should not touch each
other. You shall not talk to each other. You shall not work together. You
should not take service from each other." But Gandhi of course received
"service" from his women on a daily basis. On the hypocrisy of taking what
he denied to others, Kumar has this to say: "The vow of brahmacharya was a
revenge he took upon everyone else."
Manu Gandhi was his brothers granddaughter and she was his constant
companion for the last eight years of his life. Interestingly enough, there is a
temple to Manu, a powerful rain goddess, in Gandhis home city of
Porbandar.
Most accounts of Gandhis spiritual experiments focus on those with Manu in
1946-47 in East Bengal. Although he conceded at the time that it "may be a
delusion and a snare," and although he seemed to be recalling his earlier
experiments at Sevagram"I have risked perdition before now"he was still
confident that he had "launched on a sacrifice [that] consists of the full
practice of truth" and the development of a "non-violence of the brave." He
said that these tests were no longer an experiment, which could be seen as
optional, but a compulsory sacred duty (yajna). His hut where he slept with
Manu was called "holy ground," and Manu's father had to sleep elsewhere
when he visited.
There is some confusion about whether the women simply slept next to him
or shared the same cover, or whether they slept clothed or unclothed. The
scenario appeared to be that they first slept next to him, then slept under
the same cover without clothes. Significantly, Gandhi admitted that "all of
them would strip reluctantly. . . and they did so at my prompting." As to the
reason for complete nakeness, Sushila Nayar recalls Gandhi's explanation to
Manu: "We both may be killed by the Muslims at any time. We must both put
our purity to the ultimate test. . . and we should now both start sleeping
naked."
Gandhi described his sleeping with Manu as a "bold and original experiment,"
one that required a "practiced brahmachari" such as he was, and a woman
such as Manu who was free from passion. Confessing as she even might
have done with her own mother, Manu told Gandhi that she had not ever
experienced sexual desire. Presumably because of these ideal conditions,
Gandhi predicted that the "heat would be great." It is not clear whether
Gandhi was speaking of the yogi heat of tapas, or the heat of the negative
reactions that he anticipated.
One has to admire Manu because it was she, not Gandhi, who suggested that
they not sleep together any longer. It is harder to credit Gandhi, particularly
when he said that the experiments ceased because of Manus
"inexperience," not because of any failing on his part. As Kumar states: "Just

five days before Gandhiji was assassinated, he charged her with failing to
realize the potential of mahayajna." So it was Manu's fault, not his.
Controversy about the practice continued during the summer of 1947, but
Gandhi was pleased when two editors of Harijan, who had resigned in protest
about the experiments, confessed that they had misjudged Gandhi. It is not
clear that the experiments stopped because Pyarelal notes that "the practice
was for the time being discontinued"; indeed, after returning to Delhi, Manu
and Gandhi resumed sleeping together and "continued right till the end."
Gandhis "sacred associations" actually began at his Sevagram ashram as
early as 1938, when his wife Kasturba was still alive. Sushila Nayar not only
slept with him there, but also gave him regular massages, sometimes in front
of visitors, and they, as I have noted, bathed together. About his relations to
Nayar, Gandhi states: "She has experienced everything I have in me. . . . She
is more absorbed in me. Hence I would even make her sleep by my side
without fear." Nayar told Ved Mehta that "long before Manu came into the
picture, I used to sleep with him just as I would with my mother. . . . In the
early days there was no question of calling this a brahmacharya experiment.
It was just part of a nature cure. Later on, when people started asking
questions about his physical contact with women, the idea of brahmacharya
experiments was developed." The fact that Gandhi changed the justification
for these experiments after closer public scrutiny suggests that his
motivation for these actions may not have been as pure as he wanted people
to assume.
In an extremely candid confession, Gandhi admits that at Sevagram he had
made a grave mistake:
I feel my action was impelled by vanity and jealousy. If my experiment was
dangerous, I should not have undertaken it. And if it was worth trying, I
should have encouraged my co-workers to undertake it on my conditions. My
experiment was a violation of the establishment norms of brahmacharya.
Such a right can be enjoyed only by a saint like Shukadevji who can remain
pure in thought, word and deed at all times of day.
Gandhi, however, could not maintain his resolve, because shortly thereafter
(as soon as 12 hours!) intimate contact with women of the ashram resumed.
According to Mark Thomson, "Gandhi explained that he could not bear the
pain and anguish suffered by women devotees denied the opportunity to
serve him in this fashion." Gandhi confessed that he "could not bear the
tears of Sushila and fainting away of Prabhavati." In February, 1939, there
was another crisis. Gandhi admitted that four women at Sevagram did not
like "giving service" and they were ordered to sleep "out of reach" of his
arms.

When Gandhi spoke of the dangers of his sexual experiments in 1938, he

must have realized that he was not ready for the test. While he did claim that
he "can keep [sexual desire] under control," he admitted he had not
"completely eradicated the sex feeling," a criterion that he had honored from
the traditional rules of brahmacharya. Gandhi openly admitted that there
were some "black nights," presumably sleeping with his women, in which
God "saved me in spite of myself."
One of these dark nights must have been May 9, 1938. In a letter to Nayar's
brother, Gandhi admitted that he may have had "a dirty mind" and may have
played "the role of Satan." His "diseased mind" might have "aroused him"
and thereby compromised Nayar, causing her "untold misery." Gandhi was
obviously wrong when he claimed previously that Nayar's natural purity
could "forestall any mistake I may make," and that "contact with her has
brought greater purity to me." Although he took all the blame upon himself,
Gandhi appears incredibly obtuse in assuming that Nayar had no reason to
feel disturbed or unhappy about the psychological effects of her intimate
relations with him.
Sushila Nayar was away from the ashram for long periods for her medical
education. When she finished, Gandhi begged her to return as the ashram's
doctor. He was upset that she now refused to be called his daughter, and he
urged her, without her preconditions, to "rush to me and become one with
me." Reading the dozens of letters exchanged during this time, it is clear
that Nayar was still very troubled about what happened at Sevagram. She
wrote that she would return only on "conditions," which were that she would
not have to give Gandhi "service." Nayar reluctantly submitted to Gandhi's
indomitable will in September, 1940. While he was in Delhi, she did give him
a massage, but she came to him "with great difficulty." She also sent him a
letter beforehand, which he described as "hurtful." While describing himself
as unhappy, he acknowledged that Nayar was suffering "deep misery." It
looked as if Nayar could have succeeded in tearing herself away from
Gandhi's possessive domination, just as his earlier intimates had, but she did
eventually return to him and was with him and Manu in East Bengal.
Although Gandhi declared that he, compared to other men, could take
greater liberty" with women, and that no woman "has been harmed by
contact with me or been prey to lustful thoughts," there is sufficient evidence
to prove that Gandhi's experiments had a deleterious effect on his female
intimates' mental health. There was intense competition among the women
for Gandhis attention. For example, Lilavati Asar and Amtul Salaam were
very jealous of Sushila Nayar, and Gandhi promised Asar that he would stop
sleeping with Nayar because of her anger.
Gandhi was always inclined to blame others for not understanding the
unique nature of his experiments. In 1940 Gandhi admitted that the

"atmosphere here [Sevagram] cannot be said to be natural for anyone," but

nevertheless the conflict was caused by those who were not properly
"absorbed" in it. Those who had learned "master the atmosphere" could live
at Sevagram "comfortably and grow." Several visitors attested to definite
signs of psychological turmoil among Gandhi's women companions. In 1947
Swami Ananda and Kedar Nath, two visitors with substantial spiritual
credentials, queried Gandhi as follows: "Why do we find so much disquiet
and unhappiness around you. Why are your companions emotionally
unhinged?" Raihana Tyabji observed that the more Gandhi's young women
"tried to restrain themselves and repress their sexual impulses . . . the more
oversexed and sex-conscious they became."
After learning of the experiments, Bose wrote that he would "never tempt
[himself] like that; nor would my respect for a womans personality permit
me to treat her as an instrument of an experiment undertaken only for my
own sake." He was also concerned about the womens emotional health:
"Whatever may be the value of the prayog [experiment] on Gandhijis own
case, it does leave mark of injury on the personality of others who are not of
the same moral stature as he himself is, and for whom sharing in Gandhijis
experiment is no spiritual necessity."
Bose was also concerned about Gandhis own emotional state, observing
that Sushila Nayars presence brought him out of his normal "unruffled"
composure. On December 17, 1946 at 3:20 AM, Bose heard two loud slaps
and "deeply anguished cry" from Gandhis sleeping quarters. He went in to
find both Nayar and Gandhi in tears. Bose had assumed that Gandhi had
slapped Nayar, but she insisted that Gandhi had hit himself on the forehead
twice, a physical form of Gandhis "self-suffering" that Manu had witnessed
as well. Bose also mentions an unnamed woman "Z," who "was not always
disinterested in her relations with" with Gandhi, and who also upset him and
distracted him from his political work.
VI
Gandhi can be seen as part and parcel of a radical transformation of Indian
political and religious thought that began with Rammohun Roy (1772-1833)
and the Bengali Renaissance. Roy responded to British colonialism with what
I call a "reverse" Orientalism, and he and other like minded Indian
intellectuals, bolstered by European scholarship, claimed that behind the
shroud of a corrupt popular Hinduism there lay rational, monotheistic religion
equal to, if not greater, than Christianity. Roy and those who followed him
targeted sati, idol worship, and animal sacrifice to the Goddess as
particularly degenerate accretions to the pure philosophy of the Vedas and
the Upanishads. Although many rejected that idea of the Aryan invasion,
many Indian intellectuals nonetheless turned the Indo-European linguistic
theory into a racial theory of indigenous high caste (=Aryan) superiority over
the colonizers.

Although Roy rejected Kali worship in a dramatic way, he recommended the

Mahanirvana Tantra as an antidote to the left-handed Tantra that was
prevalent in Bengal. Urban has investigated the origins of this text and has
determined that it was most likely written in the late 18 th Century (perhaps
1775). The author obviously wished to present a sanitized version of Tantra
to ameliorate British concerns and to incorporate a significant Indian,
especially Bengali, tradition. The most suspicious aspect of this Tantra is that
the ruling deity is not the Durga or Kali but an impersonal Brahman. Chapter
Seven of the text, however, does feature Kali, but not in her violent form;
rather, she is "the ocean of nectar of compassion . . . whose mercy is without
limit," and the "possessor of beautiful ornaments, adorable as the image of
all tenderness, with a tender body." The five forbidden things (meat, fish,
wine, parched grain, and sexual union) are mentioned "euphemistically" and
Tantric sex is performed exclusively with ones wife. The text also
recommends intercaste marriage based on mutual consent of the partners.
One of the most significant results of the Bengali Enlightenment was the
Ramakrishna mission, which now offers social and spiritual services at 137
offices all over the world. Ramakrishnas followers have tried to
deemphasize his Tantric connections, but the influence was intimate and
profound. Ramakrishna's first major spiritual teacher was a woman called the
Bhairavi Brahmani, who taught a mixture of Tantra and Bengali Vaishnavism.
There are two radically opposed camps of interpretation of Ramakrishna's
experience with the five Ms (mamsa, matsya, madya, mudra, and
maithuna)--mischievously translated by Doniger as the five F's--flesh, fish,
fermented grapes, frumentum, and fornication. On the one hand, there is
Saradananda who claimed that Ramakrishna completely refused to
participate, thereby legitimizing the view that being Kali's child is spiritually
superior to the decadent state of being her lover. On the other hand, Datta's
belief that Ramakrishna "easily performed all of these obscene and horrific
rites with the Bhairavi."
Jeffrey Kripal, author of Kalis Child, believes that the truth lies somewhere in
between. He concludes that Ramakrishna passed the first M in its most
horrific form: eating rotten human flesh. Fulfilling the second M was not that
difficult for Bengalis, for they have a great passion for fish, but Ramakrishna
ate it in the Tantric way--boiled in a human skull. Ramakrishna fudged on the
third M: so great was his aversion to wine that he was only able to touch his
tongue to a drop of it.
The most notorious M--ritual intercourse--proved to be Ramakrishna's
greatest problem. All that Ramakrishna could manage was to sit on the
virgin's lap, crying out for Mother, and falling into samadhi. Ramakrishna
interpreted the event as follows: "In the Tantras there is talk about the lefthanded practice with a woman, but this is not good. . . . I performed the
worship of the sixteen-year-old girl in the child state. I saw that her breasts
were Mother's breasts, that her vagina was Mother's vagina." Kripals main

thesis is that Ramakrishna remained forever Kalis child never the mature
Tantric hero.
Returning to Gandhis Tantricism, we can make some instructive
observations. Both he and Ramakrishna were married, and both experienced
intimate relations with virgin girls. (Kumar notes insightfully that both Gandhi
and Ramakrishna was "compulsively tactile" with Gandhi's constant touching
of young women and Ramakrishna's caressing of his disciples.)
Ramakrishnas child bride was later elevated as the "Holy Mother Sarada
Devi." She is now an equal person in what the Ramakrishna Mission calls
"Holy Trinity," consisting of her, Ramakrishna, and Vivekananda. Until her
death in 1920, Sarada Devi was considered the adopted mother of the
remaining disciples, and today she is revered as a "human, yet divine" saint,
an obvious manifestation of shakti. While Ramakrishna was involved in an
actual Tantric rite, Gandhi was operating in a quasi-Tantric context. The most
important difference, however, is that Manu and the other young women
played the child role, while Gandhi claimed victory, at least during this
period, as a mature yogin, a true master of sexual desire.
As a young revolutionary in Calcutta, Sri Aurobindo and his associates
represented a radical political manifestation of the Bengali Renaissance.
Outraged by the ill-fated partition of Bengal in 1905, underground groups
formed and executed terrorist acts against the British government.
Aurobindo most likely composed the oath taken by many of these
revolutionaries, whose final act was to lift a sword to Kali. In another text
Aurobindo phrases Kalis disposition as follows: "Offer sacrifice to me. Give
for I am thirsty. [It is I] who . . . hungers to enjoy the heads and bodies of
mighty rulers." Kalis ugliness and violence was blamed on the colonial
powers, which brought out the wrath of the great goddess who now
sanctioned revolutionary action by her devotees.
In Aurobindos mature philosophy the Tantric elements are clear, complete
with Tantric terms such as sadhaka (Tantric aspirant) and sadhana (Tantric
practice). The primordial being of Aurobindo's Shakta cosmogony is
Mahashakti, the transcendent Universal Mother, who "descends" as the
Tantric polarity of Ishvara-Shakti, which expresses itself as the purushaprakriti dualism in the nescient world.
P. B. Saint-Hilaire explains
Aurobindo's view most aptly:
Purusha and Prakriti are separate powers, while Ishvara and Shakti are
contained in each other. . . . Purusha is the true being. . . in ordinary man, he
is covered by the ego and by the ignorant play of . . . Prakriti, and remains
veiled as a "witness" which upholds and observes the play of Ignorance.
When he emerges, he is perceived at first as a calm, immovable
consciousness, detached from the play of Nature. Thereafter he gradually
asserts himself as the sovereign Master of Prakriti.
The traditional assertive Durga/Kali dominating an inert Shiva is replaced by
a dipolar Shiva-Skakti pair committed to right-handed Tantra. Aurobindo, and
even Gandhi, would agree with Shaiva Siddhanta, one of whose texts reads:
"Shiva generates Shakti, and Shakti generates Shiva. Both in their happy

union produce the worlds and souls. Still Shiva is [ever] chaste and the
sweet-speeched Shakti is [ever] a virgin." Gandhis view of pure satyagrihis
who conceived of shakti as the embodiment of ahimsa would prove to be the
most effective form of Indian nationalism and arguably the best form of
conflict resolution known to humankind. Gandhis spiritual universalism,
however, owes much to Aurobindo and other thinkers of the Bengali
Renaissance.
It is significant that Aurobindo takes a Western Jewish woman, Mira Richards,
as his shakti, consciously or unconsciously bringing East and West together
just as Gandhi did in his own ways. When Aurobindo claimed that he and
Richards "were one but in two bodies," he is embracing the right-handed
Tantra that is described above. (We are assuming that, as in Gandhis case,
Aurobindo had no sexual relations with his Tantric consort, although their
rooms adjoined one another.) In contrast to Gandhi, Aurobindo saw no need
to prove his spiritual purity by sleeping with young virgins. In Ramakrishna,
Aurobindo, and Gandhi we see also a sweet and gentle goddess, not the
militant and ugly Kali of the Bengali nationalists. It could be argued that
both Aurobindo and Gandhi, as least from the standpoint of a masculinized
Shakta theology, became mature Tantric yogis, while Ramakrishna never left
the child state of what Freudians would call a pregenital sexuality. As
opposed to Gandhi, Ramakrishna did not appear to know the temptation of
sexual attraction, unless Kripals thesis of Ramakrishnas homoerotic
tendencies can be supported.
In conclusion, if we can call Gandhi a Tantric, then it is a very unique
nonritualistic, nonesoteric practice combining aspects of both left- and righthanded Tantric schools. It also must be said, no matter how much we want
to hold Gandhi in the highest esteem, that there is sufficient evidence to
conclude that Gandhi was inconsistent in his justifications for his sexual
experiments and not completely sincere in carrying them out. This would
then lead one to question whether these experiments were a spiritual
necessity or simply a personal indulgence and abuse of power. If the goal of
the true Tantric is to transform desire into something sacred, then personally
I am less and less certain that Gandhi achieved this goal. As Aldous Huxley
once said: "The professional Don Juan destroys his spirit as fatally as does
the professional ascetic, whose [mirror] image he is."
ENDNOTES
Letter to R. A. Kaur, March 18, 1947.
Quoted in Ved Mehta, Mahatma Gandhi and His Apostles (Harmondsworth,
Middlesex: Penquin Books, 1976), p. 213. I rely heavily on Mehta for two
reasons: (1) his book was well received and republished by Yale University
Press; and (2) he sought out all the living Gandhian associates and
interviewed them extensively.

Quoted in Girja Kumar, Brahmacharya: Gandhi and His Women Associates

(New Delhi: Vitasta Publishing, 2006), p. 90.
The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi (New Delhi: Government of India
Publications, 1958), vol. 93, p. 340.
Jawaharlal Nehru, Selected Works (New Delhi: Orient Longman, 1974), p.
349.
Aldous Huxley, Do What You Will (New York: Doubleday, 1928), p. 45.
William Bartley, Wittgenstein (Chicago: Open Court, 2nd ed., 1985).
Quoted in Mehta, p. 203.
Jeffrey Kripal, Kalis Child (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993).
Gandhi, Young India 8 (January 21, 1926), p. 30.
Quoted in Mehta, p. 211.
11a

Geoffrey Ashe, Gandhi: A Study of Revolution, (London: Heineman, 1968),

p. 370.
Collected Works, vol. 79, p. 301.
Ibid., vol. 96, p. 183.
See Mehta, p. 201.
Kumar, p. 294.
Nirmal Kumar Bose, My Days with Gandhi (New Delhi: Orient Longman,
1974), p. 2.
Pyarelal Nayar, Mahatma Gandhi: The Last Phase (Ahmedabad: Navajivan,
2nd ed., 1966), vol. 1, bk. 2, p. 229.
Gopi Krishna, "Mahatama Gandhi and the Kundalini Proces" (Institute of
Consciousness Research, 1995) at http://www.icrcanada.org/gandhi.html
(accessed on June 11, 2006). All the citations are from the second section of
the essay.
Gandhi, Key to Health, trans. Sushila Nayar (Ahmedabad: Navajivan Trust,
1948), p. 24. Krishnas English translation differs significantly from this one,
so I wonder if he is citing the same text. He himself gives no reference.

Cited in Bose, p. 171.

Pyarelal, p. 214.
Gandhi, Womans's Role in Society (Ahmedabad: Navajivan Publishing, 1959),
p. 8.
Gandhi, Harijan (November 14, 1936), p. 316). "Woman is the incarnation of
ahimsa. Ahimsa means infinite love, which again means infinite capacity for
suffering" (Harijan [February 24, 1940], p. 13.
Cited in Martin Green, Gandhi: Voice of a New Revolution (New York:
Continuum, 1993), p. 261.
Quoted in Mehta, p. 213.
Bose, p. 177. Mrs. Polak noted a Atrait of sexlessness@ even in his South
Africa days (Gandhiji as We Know Him, ed. Ch. Shukla [Bombay, 1945], p.
47). A Mrs. Shukla said that Athere are some things relating to our lives that
we women can speak of . . . with no man . . . . But while speaking to Gandhiji
we somehow forgot the fact that he was a man@ (C. Shukla, Gandhiji=s
View of Life [Bombay, 1951], p. 199). See also The Last Phase, vol. 1, p. 595;
2nd ed., vol. 1, bk. 2, p. 234.
Cited in Metha, p. 44.
Pyarelal, p. 585. This story may have variations, but the one that I read
clearly indicated that the Gopis were embarrassed to come out of the
Yamuna River and redeem their saris for a kiss from Krishna. Radha of
course was the single exception.
Ibid., pp. 219, 220.
Brian K. Smith, "Eaters, Food, and Social Hierarchy in Ancient India," Journal
of the American Academy of Religion 58:2 (Summer, 1990), pp. 177, 178.
Gandhi, Harijan (July 23, 1938), p. 192.
V. S. Gupta, "Gandhi and the Mass Media" at http://mkgandhiarvodaya.org/mass_media.htm, visited on May 30, 2006.
Quoted in Pyarelal, p. 217.
Gandhi's Letters to Ashram Sisters, ed. K. Kalelkar and trans. A. L. Mazmudar
(Ahmedadbad: Navajivan, 2nd rev. ed., 1960), p. 94.
Hsi Lai, The Sexual Teachings of the White Tigress: Secrets of Female Taoist
Masters (Rochester, VT: Destiny Books, 200), p. 16. Lai states that he
became interested in "the matter of transformational sex" by reading about
Gandhi's experiments.
Pyarelal, p. 223.

As told to Bose, pp. 149-50.

Devi-Mahatyma, 1.59 (Coburn translation).
Agehananda Bharati, The Tantric Tradition (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press,
1965), p. 202.
Brahmavaivarta Purana, Rakriti-Khanda 55.87, trans. Tracy Pintchman, The
Rise of the Goddess in the Hindu Tradition (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1994), p.
164.
Bharati, p. 236.
Collected Works, vol. 87, p. 13. Compare this with the Tantric yogi who said
"Let my kinsmen revile me. . . let people ridicule me on sight . . . ." (cited in
Bharati, p. 238).
"Thousands of Hindu and Moslem women come to me. They are to me like
my own mother, sisters, and daughters. But if an occasion should arise
requiring me to share the bed with any of them I must not hesitate, if I am
the bramacharya that I claim to be. If I shrink from the test, I write myself
down as a coward and a fraud" (Collected Works, vol. 87, p. 15).
See Bharati, pp. 200, 202, 203. Other exceptions were an active Shiva in
Tamil Shaivism and a static female in the Markandeya Purana (p. 213).
Hevajra Tantra, trans. D. L. Snellgrove, excerpted in The World of the
Buddha, ed. Lucian Stryk (New York: Grove Press, 1968), p. 311.
See Buddha's Lions: The Lives of the Eighty-Four Siddhas, trans. and ed.
James B. Robinson (Berkeley: Dharma Publishing Co., 1979).
Bharati, p. 21.
See N. F. Gier and Paul K. Kjellberg, "Buddhism and the Freedom of the Will"
in Freedom and Determinism: Topics in Contemporary Philosophy, eds., J. K.
Campbell, D. Shier, M. ORourke (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2004), pp. 277304. See sections on Nagarjuna.
Bharati, pp. 19, 200.
Ibid., p. 20.
Cited in Bose, p. 172.
Collected Works, vol. 87, p. 14.

Cited in Bose, p. 153.

Gandhi, Harijan (June 29, 1947), p. 212.
Quoted in Metha, p. 48.
Douglas R. Brooks, The Secret of the Three Cities: An Introduction to Hindu
Shakta Tantrism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990), p. 58.
Ibid., p. 69.
Kumar, p. 90.
See ibid., p. 97.
Ibid., p. 317.
Collected Works, vol. 96, p. 34.
Kumar, pp. 145-46.
Ibid., p. 152.
Cited in ibid., p. 216.
Collected Works, vol. 17, p. 375; vol. 16, p. 516.
Ibid., vol. 16, p. 316. "Spiritual wife" found in ibid., vol. 18, p. 130.
Kumar, pp. 223, 218.
Ibid., p. 225.
Collected Works, vol. 18, pp. 20, 71.
Ibid., vol. 35, p. 70.
Ibid., vol. 47, p. 49.
Ibid., vol. 67, p. 117.
Ibid., vol. 93, p. 204.
Ibid., pp. 335-36.

See Kumar, p. 7.
Collected Works, vol. 70, p. 220.
Kumar, p. 288.
Collected Works, vol. 87, pp. 13-14, 15. "Non-violence of the brave" cited in
Bose, p. 159.
Quoted in Kumar, p. 321.
Ibid., vol. 79, p. 238.
Quoted in Metha, p. 203.
Cited in Bose, p. 103.
Cited in ibid., p. 134.
Kumar, p. 331.
Pyarelal, pp. 226, 238. In letters to Mannalal G. Shah on March 6 and 7,
1945, Gandhi wrote equivocally: "As far as possible I have postponed the
practice of sleeping together. But it cannot be given up altogether" (cited in
Kumar, p. 8).
Collected Works, vol. 93, p. 333.
Quoted in Mehta, p. 203. The question of whether Gandhis touching of
women was appropriate had been raised as early as 1935. His response
entitled "A Renunciation" can be read in Harijan, September 21, 1935.
Collected Works, vol. 67, pp. 104-5.
Mark Thomson, Gandhi and His Ashrams (Columbia, MO: South Asia Books,
1993), p. 202.
Collected Works, vol. 67, p. 117.
Ibid., vol. 93, pp. 237-38.
Pyarelal, Mahatma Gandhi: The Last Phase (Ahmedabad: Navajivan
Publishing, 1st ed., 1958), vol. 1, p. 588. "Now mere abstention from sexual
intercourse cannot be termed brahmacharya. So long as the desire for
intercourse is there, one cannot be said to have attained brahmacharya"
(Key to Health, p. 23).

Cited in Bose, p. 171.

Collected Works, vol. 93, p. 161.
Ibid., p. 33.
Ibid., p. 349. In a letter to Sushila Nayar on August 5, 1940, Gandhi states
that one condition of her return was "taking care of [his] body," and he
acknowledged that this was not acceptable to her (Collected Works, vol. 93,
p. 343).
Ibid., pp. 364-66.
Ibid., p. 333.
Ibid., p. 338.
Pyarelal, 2nd ed., vol. 1, bk. 2, p. 228.
Quoted in Mehta, p. 211.
Bose, p. 150.
Ibid., p. 151.
Ibid., p. 95.
Ibid., p. 159.
See Hugh Urban, Tantra: Sex. Secrecy, Politics, and Power in the Study of
Religion (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2003), p. 67.
Mahanirvana Tantra 7.13, 22, cited in Urban, p. 65.
Wendy Doniger, Foreward in Edward C. Dimock, Jr., The Place of the Hidden
Moon (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989), p. xiii; cited in Kripal, p.
117.
Kripal, p. 118.
Kathamrita 2.62; 5.140-41 (trans., Kripal); see The Gospel of Ramakrishna, p.
701.
From
the
Ramakrishna
Mission
website
at
http://www.sriramakrishna.org/sdlife.htm, accessed on June 9, 2006.
Cited in Urban, p. 93.

P. B. Saint-Hilaire, The Future Evolution of Man (Pondicherry: All India Press,

1963), p. 148.
P. Nallaswami, Shivajana Siddiyar 3.2.77; cited in R. C. Zaehner, Evolution
in Religion: A Study in Sri Aurobindo and Pierre Teihard de Chardin (Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1971), p. 104.
Cited in Urban, p. 101. It seems that Aurobindo has not left Tantra behind, as
Urban claims, but has simply embraced a right-handed form of it.
Huxley, p. 45.