The 154 th Birth Anniversary of Kasturba Gandhi

Remembering Kasturba Gandhi  : The Mother of Indian People
 

Siby K. Joseph

 

  

The 154 th birth anniversary of Kasturba Gandhi is in the month of April 2023. The celebration of April 11 as Kasturba’s birthday is of recent origin. All the books written on Kasturba during Gandhi’s lifetime only mention that she was born in the month of April 1869. It was in the year 2003, at the request of White Ribbon Alliance India, an alliance of 1,800 organisations — the Government of India had declared April 11, the birth anniversary of Kasturba Gandhi, as National Safe Motherhood Day.  From then onwards Kasturba’s birthday is being celebrated as National Safe Motherhood Day without much fanfare.  Now many Gandhian organizations observe her birthday on 11 April. The Encyclopedia Britannica article also mentions April 11 as the birth date of Kasturba Gandhi.

 I had the opportunity to participate in the 150th Birth Anniversary celebration of Mahatma and Kasturba Gandhi in October 2019 at the Phoenix Settlement, the Ashram established by Mohandas and Kasturba in Inanda, South Africa in 1904. It helped me to understand Kasturba’s role in the running of the settlement. It will not be an exaggeration if I say that the running of the settlement was mainly in the hands of Kasturba Gandhi. It was in this communitarian experiment, the journey of Kasturbai to Ba started. However, her active involvement in the satyagraha struggle, started with a judgment   delivered by Justice Searle of the Cape Supreme Court on 14th March 1913. In this judgment he pronounced that marriages not celebrated according to Christian rites and/or not registered by the Registrar of Marriages were invalid in South Africa. She took it as affront on womanhood or motherhood and jumped into the vortex of the struggle. Even Sir Pherozeshah Mehta, “the lion of Bombay” who was till then little impressed with the Satyagraha movement in South Africa came to the forefront and passed a resolution on 10th December, 1913and declared that India could not sleepover the matter any longer. It was in   the speech of Sir Pherozeshah Mehta delivered while moving the resolution, he described Kasturba as “one of the foremost heroines in the whole of the world”.

 Gandhi’s ashram experiments in Kochrab, Sabarmati and Sevagram provided an opportunity to become a Ba of all people. Kasturba’s cottage in Sevagram Ashram is known as Ba Kuti . People who came in touch with her moved really by her motherly love or affection.  That is why Prabhavati, wife of Jayaprakash Narayan, wrote  “During winter days in Sevagram, I used to go into Ba's room after the early morning 4 0' clock prayer. And Ba always insisted: "Prabha, Go and sleep for some time". Even in freezing weather Ba used to sweep the room; then she would heated water for the bath, and after the cleaning and dusting were over she would come to wake me up. Warm water was always ready for my bath.”

She further wrote “Ba's life was one replete with love, dedication, and also renunciation. When little girls like us, who attended on Bapu, went to tend on Ba, she sent us away laughingly, "I don't need anything. Don't tire yourself". Even in rains Ba used to carry and clean her own chamber pot.

She was Simple and Magnanimous ….. Ba was the very image of love, simplicity and self-sacrifice. I experienced these qualities every moment I lived with her.”It was quite appropriate that Ramdas Bhatkal named his popular  play  based on the life of  Kasturba Gandhi as “Jagadamba” Shweta Shelgaonkar played the role of Kasturba Gandhi in that play. I had the opportunity to be with her in a talk at All India Radio. She shared her experience with us how difficult it was to portray a personality like Ba. 

Gandhi wrote in a foreword for a biography on Kasturba Gandhi first published in the United States of America in 1948 “It seems to me that the root cause which attracted the public to Kasturba was her ability to lose herself in me. I never insisted on this self-abnegation. She developed this quality on her own. At first I did not even know that she had it in her. According to my earlier experience, she was very obstinate. In spite of all my pressure she would do as she wished. This led to short or long periods of estrangement between us. But as my public life expanded, my wife bloomed forth and deliberately lost herself in my work. As time passed, I and my service of the people became one. She slowly merged herself in my activities. Perhaps Indian soil loves this quality most in a wife. Be it as itmay, to me this seems to be the foremost reason for her popularity.”

  In a statement issued by Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose on the death of Kasturba Gandhi on February 22, 1944, said “I pay my humble tribute to the memory of that great lady who was a mother to the Indian people,…Kasturba has died a martyr’s death.  Though Netaji called her a martyr, there were people who were not ready to accept her as a martyr. It is evident from the press statement issued by V. D. Savarkar which read as ‘The Hindu Sangathanists should not contribute a single pie to the Congressite Kasturba Fund', questioning Gandhi's alleged silence over the martyred men and women who died in pursuit of 'armed attempts to overthrow British rule'. The target amount was 75 lakhs coinciding with Gandhi’s 75 birthdays.  Despite the fact that Congress leaders were in Jail, it crossed more than 1 crore, it shows she was really the mother of Indian people as Netaji described.  Yes, she was the Ba of all.

 

 About the Author

Dr. Siby K. Joseph is Director, Sri Jamnalal Bajaj Memorial Library and Research Centre for Gandhian Studies, Sevagram Ashram Pratishthan, Sevagram,Wardha- 442102,  Maharashtra  and Author of the book Kasturba Gandhi: An Embodiment of Empowerment  Email: directorjbmlrc@gmail.com

 Kasturba Gandhi: An Embodiment of Empowerment

https://gsnmumbai.org/pdf/kasturba-book.pdf