Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi was a compulsive letter writer. The most exciting portions of his writings (and responses to those) concern his women associates. Mahatma Gandhi's Letters on Brahmacharya, Sexuality and Love deals with his cardinal principles of brahmacharya on par with satyagraha. A definitive work on human relations, celibacy, sexuality and love, the book reads like a confessional on the scale of St Augustin and Rousseau. It deals with controversial experiments in brahmacharya. There were more than a dozen women who came to be closely associated with Gandhi at one time or the other; that included Millie Polak, Nilla Cram Cook, Mirabehn, Sushila Nayyar and Manu Gandhi. This is his biography as well as the life-stories of all his associates. Not to be mixed are the chapters relating to Sarla Devi, whom he claimed to be his “spiritual wife” and the failed romance of Mirabehn and Prithvi Singh Azad. Also to be found in the Appendix is the exciting story of his association with ‘soul-mate’ Hermann Kallenbach, breaking entirely new grounds. Finally, Gandhi comes out as a contemporary as well as the timeless mahapurush.
Born in 1925 at Dera Ghazi Khan (Pakistan), Girja Kumar is a veteran research scholar. The man behind the Sapru House library, he has held many important positions including Chairman of the Delhi Library Board (1985-86) and President of the Indian Library Association (1983-85). He was Associate, Oriental Division, Library of Congress, Washington DC during 1954-55. He retired as chief librarian of the Jawaharlal Nehru University library in 1985. His world has been a world of books. While he wrote books on censorship and education, he always contemplated producing a book on the greatest cult figure of modem times ? Mahatma Gandhi. Brahmacharya, Gandhi and His Women Associates is based on extensive research and quotes of the main players while delineating the Mahatma?s relationship with his women associates. The present book, in that sense, is a biography within a biography. Girja Kumar was associated as a book critic with several national publications and wrote regularly for The Indian Express (1975-79) and The Week (1984-87). He has published a definitive biography of world-renowned librarian Dr S R Ranganathan, besides publishing an innovative work on the ?arrogance of intellectual power?. His The Book on Trial, Fundamentalism and Censorship in India was widely acclaimed.
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