The life of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, India’s ‘Father of the Nation’, is often a topic of discussion among historians worldwide and critics in recent years have been unwaveringly pointing out his follies.
Noted musicologist and historian Mark Lindley, who has written many articles about Mahatma Gandhi’s life, his writings and some of his associates, feels that critics of the Father of the Nation isolate his writings and see it in a different context.
“Even about his ‘experiments’ like being with young women, he was doing them during his old age because he thought he was impure! It was to purify himself. Gandhiji’s actions were a result of him being extremely puritanical.” he observed.
Currently a visiting scholar at the University of Hyderabad, Prof. Lindley was at the Goethe Zentrum on Tuesday to deliver the first of his three-day series of music lecture.
When asked about a recent article which revealed the contents of letters between Gandhiji and Sarala Devi Chaudharani, Rabindranath Tagore’s niece, Prof. Lindley explained, “Some biographers interpret that there was something between them, but it was nothing actually. They wrote a lot of letters, he was hoping she would help him with the Independence struggle. There was nothing sexual,” he affirmed.
The scholar also believes that Gandhiji’s religious beliefs had altered towards the end of his life. “Gandhi during the 1920s would talk about reincarnations very often, and he had also believed in it. However, by the 1940s, he talked about it just once a year. I suspect he no longer believed in it,” he said, and added that towards the end of his life, the Mahatma also agreed with Dr. B. R. Ambedkar, about the need to eradicate caste.
