Gandhi, Brahmacharya and Global Sexual Science, 1919–38

Abstract

This essay explores the evolution of Gandhi’s philosophy of brahmacharya (celibacy) after World War I. I argue here that Gandhi broadened his understanding of brahmacharya after he assumed leadership of the nationalist movement, rendering it into a concept that was applicable to the wider population of India rather than just to himself and a set of especially disciplined activists. A major reason for this development was Gandhi’s concern with deflating the claims of sexual science and birth control at a time when global sexology was gaining a foothold in Indian middle-class society. In this context, Gandhi specifically came to contest the notion that human ‘nature’ made brahmacharya inapplicable to ordinary people, suggested that husbands and wives could follow brahmacharya even while married, and insisted that the general practice of brahmacharya was essential to the collective health of the Indian nation. In the process, he imparted a significant eugenic component into his philosophy.

Keywords:

• Brahmacharya
• conjugality
• eugenics
• Gandhi
• Margaret Sanger
• middle class
• Paul Bureau
• sexology
• sexual science

Acknowledgements

This essay was first produced for the workshop, ‘Sex in Translation in Post/Colonial India: Vernacular Archives and Global Itineraries’, held at Queen’s University, Ontario, Canada, in April 2019. I wish to thank the participants in this conference for their comments, particularly Ishita Pande, the organiser of the workshop, and Rachel Berger, who offered extended remarks on my paper. I also wish to thank the anonymous South Asia reviewers, both of whom provided valuable suggestions. My past collaboration with Shrikant Botre is responsible for my knowledge of the writings in Marathi of R.D. Karve and Swami Shivananda and less consciously for much of my thinking on the history of sexual science in western India. Translations from Marathi are his.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. In this paper, I discuss brahmacharya in its most well-known meaning as sexual self-control. Gandhi conceived of brahmacharya as a more general control over the senses, including control over diet. But celibacy was still very central to his conception; control of the palate was for him a means to achieve this end. Gandhi’s concept also included not just the practice of celibacy, but a general mastery over ‘the sexual impulse in thought, speech and action’. M.K. Gandhi, Collected Works (hereafter, CW), Vol. XXIV (New Delhi: Publications Division, various dates), p. 117. All references to CW are to the original and hard-copy edition.

2. See, for instance, Arjun Appadurai, ‘Understanding Gandhi’, in Peter Homans (ed.), Childhood and Selfhood: Essays on Tradition, Religion and Modernity in the Psychology of Erik H. Erikson (Lewisburg, PA: Bucknell University Press, 1978), pp. 113–44 (esp. 120–1, 132); Bhikhu Parekh, Colonialism, Tradition and Reform: An Analysis of Gandhi’s Political Discourse (New Delhi: Sage Publications, 1989), pp. 177–206; and Lloyd Rudolph and Susanne Rudolph, ‘The Traditional Roots of Charisma: Gandhi’, in The Modernity of Tradition (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1967), pp. 192–216. Joseph Alter stresses the roots of Gandhi’s conceptions of celibacy in Christian traditions as well as in Hindu notions; see, for instance, Joseph P. Alter, Moral Materialism: Sex and Masculinity in Modern India (New Delhi: Penguin, 2011), p. 49. Gandhi’s experiments with ‘celibate sexuality’ later in life have also been explored, most thoroughly in Vinay Lal, ‘Nakedness, Nonviolence and Brahmacharya: Gandhi’s Experiments in Celibate Sexuality’, in Journal of the History of Sexuality, Vol. IX, nos. 1–2 (Jan. 2000), pp. 105–6.

3. Lal’s essay, ‘Nakedness, Nonviolence and Brahmacharya’ breaks to a certain extent with a static view of Gandhi’s ideas, especially through discussion of Gandhi during the 1940s, but focuses mainly on the personal aspects of Gandhi’s perspective. Joseph Alter, especially in Gandhi’s Body: Sex, Diet and the Politics of Nationalism (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2000), does recognise that Gandhi’s views on brahmacharya was a discourse on national public health, a view that is central to this study. Unlike this study, however, Alter does not explore changes in Gandhi’s understanding over time.

4. Ramachandra Guha, India before Gandhi (Gurgaon: Penguin Books India, 2014), pp. 195–7.

5. M.K. Gandhi, An Autobiography: The Story of My Experiments with Truth, Mahadev Desai (trans.) (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1957), p. 316.

6. Ibid., p. 317.

7. M.K. Gandhi, ‘On the Necessity of Continence’, translation of a 1913 writing published in M.K. Gandhi, Self-Restraint versus Self-Indulgence (Ahmedabad: Navjivan Press, 3rd ed., 1947 [1928]), p. 58.

8. See, for instance, ‘Letter to Maganlal Gandhi’, 28 Dec. 1908, in Gandhi, Collected Works, Vol. IX, pp. 117–9; and ‘Letter to Maganlal Gandhi’, 20 Jan. 1910, CW, Vol. X, pp. 131–3.

9. ‘Letter to Raojibhai Patel’, 29 Nov. 1911, in CW, Vol. XI, p. 191.

10. ‘General Knowledge about Health [XVII]’, Indian Opinion (26 April 1913), in CW, Vol. XII, pp. 44–52.

11. In the twentieth century, advocacy of brahmacharya needs to be viewed as a theory that challenged ‘traditional’ sexual norms in the communities that constituted the middle class (for instance, because its advocates stressed the importance of no marriage or delayed marriage and questioned the centrality of reproduction to conjugality).

12. In Gandhi’s thought, Hindu theories of brahmacharya, which stressed the importance of observing celibacy in the stage of life associated with studenthood, in effect came together with a general critique of child marriage. In some writings, he stressed the importance of observing celibacy until 25 or 30 years of age.

13. Neeraj Hatekar et al., ‘The Making of the Middle Class in Western India: Age at Marriage for Brahmin Women (1900–50)’, in Economic & Political Weekly, Vol. 44, no. 21 (2009), pp. 40–7.

14. Anshu Malhotra, ‘The Body as a Metaphor for the Nation: Caste, Masculinity and Femininity in the Satyarth Prakash of Dayananda Saraswati’, in Avril Powell and Siobhan Lambert-Hurley (eds), Rhetoric and Reality: Gender and the Colonial Experience in South Asia (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2006), pp. 121–53.

15. Veronika Fuechtner, ‘Indians, Jews and Sex: Magnus Hirschfeld and Indian Sexology’, in Veronika Fuechtner and Mary Rhiel (eds), Imagining Germany, Imagining Asia: Essays in German–Asian Studies (Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2012), pp. 111–30.

16. Ishita Pande, ‘Time for Sex: The Education of Desire and the Conduct of Childhood in Global/Hindu Sexology’, in Veronika Fuechtner et al. (eds), A Global History of Sexual Science, 1880–1960 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2018), pp. 279–304; see also Luzia Savary, ‘Vernacular Eugenics? Santati–Śāstra in Popular Hindi Advisory Literature (1900–40)’, in South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies, Vol. 37, no. 3 (2014), pp. 381–97.

17. Shivananda, Brahmacharya Hech Jeevan (Mumbai: Lakhani Books, 2012 [originally published in Baroda: Jummadada Vyayam Mandir, 1922]); Shivananda, Manowanchhit Santati!: Gruhasthashramache Anubhavsiddha Niyam (Amravati: Rashtroddhar Karyalaya, 2nd ed., 1928); and Shivananda, Dampatya Rahasya Vidnyan (Mumbai: Lakhani Books, 1972 [1929]). My collaborator, Shrikant Botre, is largely responsible for rediscovering the importance of Shivananda’s writings.

18. Shivananda, ‘Preface’, in Dampatya Rahasya Vidnyan (Mumbai: Lakhani Books, 1972 [1929]), p. 4.

19. Shivananda, ‘Introduction’, in Dampatya Rahasya Vidnyan, p. 7.

20. This literature is discussed in Leslie Hall, Hidden Anxieties (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1991).

21. Shrikant Botre and Douglas E. Haynes, ‘Sexual Knowledge, Sexual Anxieties: Middle-Class Males in Western India and the Correspondence in Samaj Swasthya, 1927–53’, in Modern Asian Studies, Vol. 51, no. 4 (2017), pp. 991–1034.

22. Karve, Adhunik Kamashastra (Bombay: Right Agency, 5th ed. 1949 [1932]), p. 6.

23. Ibid., p. 161.

24. R.D. Karve, Klaibyachi Mimamsa (Bombay: Right Agency, 1949), p. 2.

25. R.D. Karve in Samaj Swasthya, Vol. 3, no. 3 (Sept. 1929), p. 69.

26. ‘Archive: Gandhi and Mrs. Sanger Debate Birth Control [1936]’, in Sarah Hodges (ed.), Reproductive Health in India: History, Politics, Controversies (Delhi: Orient Longman, 2006), p. 242.

27. Havelock Ellis, Sex and Marriage: Eros in Contemporary Life (New York: Random House, 1952 [1928?]), p. 27.

28. ‘Archive: Gandhi and Mrs. Sanger Debate Birth Control [1936]’, p. 242.

29. Sanjam Ahluwalia, Reproductive Restraints: Birth Control in India, 1877–1947 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2018), pp. 30–5, 44–5, 70.

30. Ibid., pp. 31–3.

31. Ibid., p. 70.

32. There were also strong differences: for instance, Gandhi did not claim the married couple could determine the sex of the child or its personal characteristics through their thoughts at the time of conception.

33. In a fascinating account, Thomas Weber has depicted the strong willingness of Gandhi to acknowledge the sincerity of Sanger’s views and to listen to her perspectives, even suggesting that Gandhi made significant concessions to Sanger on some issues, including the value of the rhythm method of birth control. There is little evidence, however, that Gandhi significantly retreated from the views discussed in this essay as a result of these encounters; see Thomas Weber, Going Native: Gandhi’s Relationship with Western Women (New Delhi: Roli Books, 2011), pp. 131–40.

34. ‘In Confidence’, Young India (13 Oct. 1920), in CW, Vol. XVIII, pp. 345–8.

35. ‘Swadeshi and “Brahmacharya”’, Navajivan (30 Oct. 1921), in CW, Vol. XXI, p. 371.

36. M.K. Gandhi, Self-Restraint v. Self-Indulgence (Ahmedabad: Navjivan Press, 1928), p. 5. All citations to this book after this point come from the third edition published in 1947 and available online [www.mkgandhi.org/ebks/self-restraint-self…, accessed 26 April 2020].

37. ‘Towards Moral Bankruptcy’, in M.K. Gandhi, Self-Restraint v. Self-Indulgence (Ahmedabad: Navjivan Press, 1928), pp. 8–9.

38. ‘Archive: Gandhi and Mrs. Sanger Debate Birth Control [1936]’.

39. Ahluwalia, Reproductive Restraints, pp. 71–2.

40. Paul Bureau, L’Indiscipline des Moeurs (French), Towards Moral Bankruptcy (English), Mary Scharlieb (trans.) (London: Constable & Co. Ltd, 1925).

41. Gandhi, Self-Restraint v. Self-Indulgence, p. 9.

42. Ibid., p. 21. Neurasthenia, or nerve disease, was a common diagnosis at the time, and was often a regular refrain in discussions on the causes of national ‘weakness’ in a number of different countries. Gandhi certainly referred to weakness of the nerves regularly in his discussion of what he saw as sexual indulgence, whether personal or collective.

43. Cited in ibid., p. 24.

44. Cited in ibid., p. 32.

45. Ibid., p. 530.

46. Ibid., quoted by Gandhi in Young India (1 July 1926), in CW, Vol. XXXI, p. 78.

47. ‘Letter to S.D. Satavalekar’, 6 April 1927, CW, Vol. XXXIII, p. 216.

48. ‘What is Natural?’, Navjivan (13 June 1926), in CW, Vol. XXX, pp. 570–1.

49. ‘Archive: Gandhi and Mrs. Sanger Debate Birth Control [1936]’, p. 244.

50. ‘Influence of Attitudes’, Young India (16 Sept. 1926), in CW, Vol. XXXI, p. 413.

51. See, for instance, Sujata Patel, ‘Construction and Reconstruction of Woman in Gandhi’, in A. Raghuramaraju, Debating Gandhi (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2006), pp. 348–9.

52. ‘Some Arguments Considered’, Young India (2 April 1925), in CW, Vol. XXVI, p. 450.

53. For a discussion of the importance of marriage in Gandhi’s thought, see Patel, ‘Construction and Reconstruction of Woman in Gandhi’, esp. pp. 341–7.

54. Ibid., p. 348.

55. ‘Influence of Attitudes’, p. 412.

56. ‘For Contraceptives’, Harijan (4 April 1936), in CW, Vol. LXII, p. 310.

57. ‘Influence of Attitudes’, p. 412.

58. ‘Some Arguments Considered’, p. 450.

59. ‘Speech at Gandhi Seva Sangh Meeting–VI’, 6 Mar. 1936, in CW, Vol. LXII, p. 247; see also ‘Birth Control–I’, Harijan (14 Mar. 1936), in CW, Vol. LXII, p. 262.

60. ‘Married Brahmacharya’, Harijan (20 Mar. 1937), in Gandhi, Self-Restraint v. Self-Indulgence, p. 105. Gandhi seemingly suggested in this passage that a couple that was truly desireless at the time of such intercourse could not fail to achieve conception.

61. ‘Birth Control–II’, Harijan (21 Mar. 1936), in CW, Vol. LXII, p. 279.

62. ‘Brahmacharya or Chastity’ (c. 1938) in Gandhi, Self-Restraint v. Self-Indulgence, p. 102.

63. The term ‘married brahmacharya’ was Gandhi’s, whereas I have coined the term ‘societal brahmacharya’ myself as a way of capturing Gandhi’s concept.

64. ‘Swadeshi and Nationalism’, Young India (12 Mar. 1925), in CW, Vol. XXVI, p. 280.

65. See ‘Influence of Attitudes’, p. 413.

66. ‘Towards Moral Bankruptcy’, in Gandhi, Self-Restraint v. Self-Indulgence, p. 38.

67. ‘Swadeshi and Nationalism’, p. 280.

68. ‘Some Arguments Considered’, p. 452.

69. ‘Self-Control’, in Gandhi, Self-Restraint v. Self-Indulgence, p. 64.