The Secret Diary of Kasturba

Book excerpt: THE STORY OF KASTURBA GANDHI AND WHAT IT MEANT TO BE THE WIFE OF MOHANDAS KARAMCHAND GANDHI. ‘I don’t know what evil resides in me,’ he wrote to a friend. ‘I have a streak of cruelty in me that compels people to attempt the impossible in order to please.’ He is the Mahatma, a man the world venerates as a prophet of peace. But for Kastur, the child bride who married the boy next door, Mohandas was a sexually driven, self-righteous and overbearing husband. Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi was sworn to poverty, celibacy and the cause of India’s freedom. Kastur spent sixty-two years of her life juggling the roles of a devoted wife, a satyagrahi and a sacrificing mother, who was eclipsed because of a man who almost became God for India’s multitude. Gandhi was an intolerant father to Harilal, his wayward son. Kasturba paid the price for her son’s unending misery. Kastur is long dead, but she lives on in the pages of her diary. In this gripping tale, Neelima Dalmia Adhar tells her story and what it meant to be Kasturba Gandhi, wife of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi.