Gandhi, Brahmacharya, and Sexual Science, 1920–37

A great deal of the existing literature focuses on Gandhi’s own personal adoption of brahmacharya in South Africa, and the way he understood this practice and conceptualized its relevance to his political efficacy. Much of this analysis emphasizes the likely roots of these ideas in Hindu cultural traditions. Here I explore the later development of some of his ideas about brahmacharya during the 1920s and 1930s, including his concept of what might be called societal brahmacharya, that is, the view that the widespread practice of sexual restraint by the Indian people as a whole was critical to the vitality of the nation. I argue that Gandhi’s ideas on celibacy forged his changing conceptions of brahmacharya in the context of massive, unsettling discussions in middle-class society prompted in part by the growing influence of sexual science and birth control advocacy. Sexual scientists and birth control exponents posited a logic insisting that shifts in sexual and reproductive practices might bolster the “social health” of Indian society, a logic that challenged Gandhi’s perspectives.