Gandhi's "Spiritual Wife" – The scandalous infatuation with Tagore's niece Sarla Devi Chaudhurani
1. Many know that Mohandas Gandhi slept naked with underage girls, including his grand niece, to test his celibacy. The 78 year old Congress leader destroyed the lives of these innocent teenage girls. That happened in the 1940s and is no longer a secret. Less known is his infatuation with a married woman two decades earlier.
2. In 1919, at the age of 49, Gandhi developed an intense, emotionally charged relationship with Sarla Devi Chaudhurani that shocked his inner circle.
3. Sarla Devi, born 1872, was the niece of Rabindranath Tagore. A fiery nationalist from Bengal who promoted women's education, she initially favoured violent resistance to British rule. Married to Lahore-based Rambhuj Dutt Chaudhary, she was educated, independent, charismatic and politically active in Punjab.
4. They met when Gandhi stayed at her Lahore home after her husband’s arrest for protesting against the Jallianwala Bagh massacre of more than 2,000 innocent civilians by Brigadier Reginald Dyer. Gandhi was dazzled. He saw in her a “great shakti” (divine feminine power) – beauty, intellect and leadership potential that Kasturba, his devoted but traditional wife, lacked.
5. Gandhi’s letters to Sarla Devi reveal deep infatuation. He wrote feverishly: “You still continue to haunt me even in my sleep. No wonder Panditji (Nehru) calls you the greatest shakti of India. You may have cast that spell over him. You are performing the trick over me now.”
6. Gandhi called her his “spiritual wife,” described their bond as a “spiritual marriage,” and signed off with growing affection. He saw her as a key partner to lead India’s women and the freedom movement.
7. Gandhi travelled with her, quoted her writings in Young India, and openly admired her. To his friend Hermann Kallenbach, he framed it in lofty spiritual terms – like his scandalous experiments in self-control. But contemporaries saw a midlife emotional crisis.
8. It caused uproar. His son Devdas, secretary Mahadev Desai, and Congress leader C Rajagopalachari opposed it strongly, fearing damage to Gandhi’s image and the party. Pressure mounted. Plus, Sarla Devi was strong-willed, not easily moulded into Gandhi’s ideal protege.
8. By mid-1920, Gandhi called off the friendship: “The inner bond shall remain, but the outward expression must cease.” The intense phase lasted roughly a year. Their families later connected through marriage (her son Dipak wed a Gandhi relative).
9. Gandhi was no freedom fighter. He was in all likelihood a British plant, though actual evidence of that may never surface as the colonial government burnt vast quantities of papers in the weeks leading up to the British exit from India. But there is plenty of corroborative evidence - every action of Gandhi protected the British soldiers and administrators from the anger of Indian revolutionaries. Gandhi never spent a day in a real jail. The British hanged thousands of revolutionaries but Gandhi never got a scratch on his body.
10. That left him free to practise his crackpot theories like extreme nonviolence and 'celibacy.' His nonviolence hurt Hindus and led to India's Partition. His 'celibacy' scarred several young girls for life.