As with his long absences abroad, his sometimes indifferent treatment of his children and frequent extreme fasts, she appears to have gone along with the chastity and sex experiments, albeit reluctantly.
“She didn’t give much credit to the restrictions on eating or seemingly any of the things that he did, but she went along with them because she was a devoted and devout Hindu wife,” Adams said.
The author says that Gandhi’s practices were commonly discussed when he was alive, but after his assassination in 1948 the details were glossed over in his elevation to the stature of national icon.
“I don’t think that an understanding of any individual’s sexuality necessarily casts them in a poor light. To suggest it does implies a negative view of sex, which I don’t have,” he said.
Adams is a visiting research fellow at London University and has previously written biographies of British politician Tony Benn, pioneering British feminist Emmeline Pankhurst and India’s Nehru dynasty.
RSS