by PRAMOD KAPOOR
Gandhi Before Mahatmahood… “Spiritual husband” …and the young Tagoress Saraladebi, turn of century PHOTO/Private Archive
She was his ‘pearl’; he her ‘law-giver’. Gandhi’s relationship with Saraladebi Chowdhurani in 1919-1920 charged his politics, threatened his marriage and alarmed his disciples.
“You are mine in the purest sense. You ask for a reward of your great surrender, well, it is its own reward.”
Gandhi in a letter to Saraladebi Chowdhurani
It was a life-changing year for Mahatma Gandhi. In March 1919, the British passed the draconian Rowlatt Act to crack down on political protests. In April, General Dwyer’s men opened fire on crowds protesting against the Act in Amritsar’s Jallianwala Bagh, resulting in a horrific massacre. In October, Mahatma Gandhi fell in love. He was then fifty and the woman, Saraladebi, was forty-seven. She happened to be the niece of Rabindranath Tagore. Though Gandhi had met her earlier, it was not until he stayed in her home in Lahore while her husband, a prominent freedom fighter from Punjab, was in jail that they really became close. So close that it almost broke Gandhi’s marriage to Kasturba.
Saraladebi was a striking woman with independent views and was highly intelligent. Gifted, well-informed, dynamic and driven, she was twenty-nine when Gandhi first saw her, in 1901, conducting an orchestra as it played a piece she had composed for the Congress party convention. By his own admission, he was enamoured of Saraladebi. She was the daughter of Janakinath Ghosal and Swarnakumari, Tagore’s elder sister. Gandhi and Saraladebi met again in 1919 in Lahore, when they soon became one of the most talked-about couples because of their closeness, even in public. Neither Gandhi nor Saraladebi mention much in their respective autobiographies about their relationship, though at one place she parts with a stray revelatory anecdote: “When I was in grave political trouble, Mahatma Gandhi told me ‘your laughter is a national asset. Laugh away’.”
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