unusual sex life. He spoke constantly of sex and gave detailed, often
provocative, instructions to his followers as to how to they might best
observe chastity. And his views were not always popular; "abnormal and
unnatural" was how the first Prime Minister of independent India,
Jawaharlal Nehru, described Gandhi's advice to newlyweds to stay
celibate for the sake of their souls.

But was there something more complex than a pious plea for chastity at
play in
Gandhi's beliefs, preachings and even his unusual personal practices
(which
included, alongside his famed chastity, sleeping naked next to nubile,
naked
women to test his restraint)? In the course of researching my new book
on
Gandhi, going through a hundred volumes of his complete works and many
tomes
of eye-witness material, details became apparent which add up to a
more
bizarre sexual history.

Much of this material was known during his lifetime, but was distorted
or
suppressed after his death during the process of elevating Gandhi into
the "Father

of the Nation" Was the Mahatma, in fact, as the pre-independence prime

minister of the Indian state of Travancore called him, "a most
dangerous, semi-repressed sex maniac"?

Gandhi was born in the Indian state of Gujarat and married at 13 in
1883; his
wife
Kasturba was 14, not early by the standards of Gujarat at that time.
The young couple had a normal sex life, sharing a bed in a separate
room in
his family home, and Kasturba was soon pregnant.

Two years later, as his father lay dying, Gandhi left his bedside to
have sex
with Kasturba. Meanwhile, his father drew his last breath. The young
man
compounded his grief with guilt that he had not been present, and
represented his subsequent revulsion towards "lustful love" as
being related to his father's death.

However, Gandhi and Kasturba's last child wasn't born until fifteen
years
later, in 1900.

In fact, Gandhi did not develop his censorious attitude to sex (and
certainly
not to marital sex) until he was in his 30s, while a volunteer in the
ambulance corps, assisting the British Empire in its wars in Southern
Africa. On long marches in sparsely populated land in the Boer War and
the
Zulu uprisings, Gandhi considered how he could best "give service"
to humanity and decided it must be by embracing poverty and chastity.

At the age of 38, in 1906, he took a vow of brahmacharya, which meant
living a
spiritual life but is normally referred to as chastity, without which
such a
life is deemed impossible by Hindus.

Gandhi found it easy to embrace poverty. It was chastity that eluded
him. So
he worked out a series of complex rules which meant he could say he
was
chaste while still engaging in the most explicit sexual conversation,
letters and behaviour.

With the zeal of the convert, within a year of his vow, he told readers
of his
newspaper Indian Opinion: "It is the duty of every thoughtful Indian
not to marry. In case he is helpless in regard to marriage, he should
abstain from sexual intercourse with his wife."

Meanwhile, Gandhi was challenging that abstinence in his own way. He set
up
ashrams in which he began his first "experiments" with sex; boys
and girls were to bathe and sleep together, chastely, but were
punished for
any sexual talk. Men and women were segregated, and Gandhi's advice
was that
husbands should not be alone with their wives, and, when they felt
passion,
should take a cold bath.

The rules did not, however, apply to him. Sushila Nayar, the attractive
sister
of Gandhi's secretary, also his personal physician, attended Gandhi
from
girlhood. She used to sleep and bathe with Gandhi. When challenged, he

explained how he ensured decency was not offended. "While she is
bathing I keep my eyes tightly shut," he said, "I do not know ...
whether she bathes naked or with her underwear on. I can tell from the
sound
that she uses soap." The provision of such personal services to Gandhi

was a much sought-after sign of his favour and aroused jealousy among
the
ashram inmates.

As he grew older (and following Kasturba's death) he was to have more
women
around him and would oblige women to sleep with him whom – according
to his
segregated ashram rules – were forbidden to sleep with their own husbands.

Gandhi would have women in his bed, engaging in his "experiments"
which seem to have been, from a reading of his letters, an exercise in

strip-tease or other non-contact sexual activity. Much explicit
material has
been destroyed but tantalising remarks in Gandhi's letters remain such
as: "Vina's
sleeping with me might be called an accident. All that can be said is
that
she slept close to me." One might assume, then, that getting into the
spirit of the Gandhian experiment meant something more than just
sleeping
close to him.

It can't, one imagines,
can have helped with the "involuntary discharges"
which Gandhi complained of experiencing more frequently since his
return to
India. He had an almost magical belief in the power of semen: "One who

conserves his vital fluid acquires unfailing power," he said.

Meanwhile, it seemed that challenging times required greater efforts of
spiritual fortitude, and for that, more attractive women were
required:
Sushila, who in 1947 was 33, was now due to be supplanted in the bed
of the
77-year-old Gandhi by a woman almost half her age. While in Bengal to
see
what comfort he could offer in times of inter-communal violence in the

run-up to independence, Gandhi called for his 18-year-old grandniece
Manu to
join him – and sleep with him. "We both may be killed by the
Muslims," he told her, "and must put our purity to the ultimate
test, so that we know that we are offering the purest of sacrifices,
and we
should now both start sleeping naked."

Such behaviour was no part of the accepted practice of bramacharya. He,
by
now, described his reinvented concept of a brahmachari as: "One who
never has any lustful intention, who, by constant attendance upon God,
has
become proof against conscious or unconscious emissions, who is
capable of
lying naked with naked women, however beautiful, without being in any
manner
whatsoever sexually excited ... who is making daily and steady
progress
towards God and whose every act is done in pursuance of that end and
no
other." That is, he could do whatever he wished, so long as there was
no apparent "lustful intention". He had effectively redefined the
concept of chastity to fit his personal practices.

Thus far, his reasoning was spiritual, but in the maelstrom that was
India
approaching independence he took it upon himself to see his sex
experiments
as having national importance: "I hold that true service of the
country
demands this observance," he stated.

But while he was becoming bolder in his self-righteousness, Gandhi's
behaviour
was widely discussed and criticised by family members and leading
politicians. Some members of his staff resigned, including two editors
of
his newspaper who left after refusing to print parts of Gandhi's
sermons
dealing with his sleeping arrangements.

But Gandhi found a way of regarding the objections as a further reason
tocontinue. "If I don't let Manu sleep with me, though I regard it as
essential that she should," he announced, "wouldn't that be a sign
of weakness in me?"

Eighteen-year-old Abha, the wife of Gandhi's grandnephew Kanu Gandhi,
rejoined
Gandhi's entourage in the run-up to independence in 1947 and by the
end of
August he was sleeping with both Manu and Abha at the same time.

When he was assassinated in January 1948, it was with Manu and Abha by
his
side. Despite her having been his constant companion in his last
years,
family members, tellingly, removed Manu from the scene. Gandhi had
written
to his son:
"I have asked her to write about her sharing the bed with
me," but the protectors of his image were eager to eliminate this
element of the great leader's life. Devdas, Gandhi's son, accompanied
Manu
to Delhi station where he took the opportunity of instructing her to
keep
quiet.

Questioned in the 1970s, Sushila revealingly placed the elevation of
this
lifestyle to a brahmacharya experiment was a response to criticism of
this
behaviour. "Later on, when people started asking questions about his
physical contact with women – with Manu, with Abha, with me – the idea

of brahmacharya experiments was developed ... in the early days, there
was
no question of calling this a brahmacharya experiment." It seems that
Gandhi lived as he wished, and only when challenged did he turn his
own
preferences into a cosmic system of rewards and benefits. Like many
great
men, Gandhi made up the rules as he went along.

While it was commonly discussed as damaging his reputation when he was
alive,
Gandhi's sexual behaviour was ignored for a long time after his death.
It is
only now that we can piece together information for a rounded picture
of
Gandhi's excessive self-belief in the power of his own sexuality.
Tragically
for him, he was already being sidelined by the politicians at the time
of
independence. The preservation of his vital fluid did not keep India
intact,
and it was the power-brokers of the Congress Party who negotiated the
terms
of India's freedom.