A Gandhian 'romance': Setting the record straight

Book review of Lost Letters and Feminist Histories: The Political Friendship of Mohandas K. Gandhi and Sarala Devi Chaudhurani

In 1936, long after Sarala Devi Chaudhurani and Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi had drifted apart, in an interview with the advocate of birth control, Margaret Sanger, Gandhi confessed that he had had a “spiritual companionship” with a woman with a “broad cultural education” and with whom he had “nearly slipped” but had been “saved” by those around him. An upper-class, university-educated  bhadramahila from the aristocratic Tagore lineage who adopted the khadi sari with panache, toured with Gandhi and gave impassioned speeches at public gatherings on the nationalist cause, Sarala Devi was certainly a bit of an enigma, different from many other