A new novel by Goan psychoanalyst Sudhir Kakar re-imagines the relationship between Mahatma Gandhi and Miraben, one of his most committed disciples, a British admiral’s daughter who ‘went native’:
[N]one stood out so vividly as a tall, broad-shouldered and rather imperious-looking Englishwoman named Madeleine Slade… She chopped off her hair, traded her Western clothes for an outfit of homespun cotton and embraced Gandhi’s principles of simplicity and self-denial… He gave Slade the name of Mira, after a mythical Hindu princess, and elevated her to the status of his foremost disciple, sitting with her every evening for an hour of quiet conversation while Slade massaged his feet with oil. Over the next two decades, he would write her nearly 500 letters…[H]e does suggest that Slade fell passionately in love with Gandhi, who had taken a vow of celibacy… [Gandhi wrote,] “May God remove what I consider is your moha,” a Hindi word for infatuation.
The book’s approach echoes the Freudian analyses of Indian mythology, such as that of Mirabai’s devotion to Krishna, by non-South Asians. These analyses’ obsession with sexuality almost always provokes controversy. In this case, Kakar is adopting a classically Western approach to explore the obvious implications of a retroactively sainted man’s personal relationships. Of course, Gandhi admirers are up in arms:
Kakar’s implication that the deep emotional connection between Gandhi and Slade had something other than a purely spiritual basis has raised eyebrows in a country accustomed to hagiographic portrayals in school textbooks and movies such as “Gandhi”…
Here’s Ennis’ previous post on canonizing Gandhi.
