Category: Autobiography/Memoirs

[I am translating Kochattil Kalyani Kutty Amma’s autobiography that she published in 1991 and started writing at the age of 86, Pathikayum Vazhiyorathe Manideepangalum (The Wayfarer and the Wayside Lamps). Kalyanikutty Amma was a remarkable woman of her times when the first-generation of modern educated women were beginning to make their mark on cultural life in Malayali society. She was the daughter of a well-known medical practitioner Dr Moothedathu Krishna Menon and Kochattil Kochukutty Amma, and was educated in the Queen Mary’s College, Madras. She returned to her hometown Thrissur in the early 1920s and taught in the VG High School for girl students for more than 30 years. Outspoken and bold, she participated in the controversial inter-caste dining organized by the well-known anti-caste crusader Sahodaran K Ayyappan and married the freedom fighter and Gandhian C Kuttan Nair (and so she is also known as Mrs C Kuttan Nair). In the 1930s, she travelled all over British India to attend the All-India Women’s Conference and All-India Educational Conference meetings, acquiring a uniquely cosmopolitan sensibility. Her conversation with Gandhi about artificial contraception gives striking evidence for this.

However, I find that though she writes about this dialogue in her autobiography, there is much missing. Time and age probably took a toll, and some of what she says in her book is in direct contradiction with what has been recorded elsewhere, from 1935. Indeed, her sharp and critical intellect shines through the conversation as reported elsewhere, while besides omissions, there are serious errors in the autobiography. (For example, her claim that Gandhi favoured Hitler’s sterilisation policies. In the actual transcript reported at that time, it is the opposite. This is probably an error or a slip of memory.)

The full conversation is available as reported in The Hindustan Times, 1 November 1935. I reproduce it below so that readers of the autobiography may get a glimpse of her courageous questioning of someone who was regarded by very many as none less than the giver of the final word on all matters social at that time.]

Interview with Mrs Nair

MRS. NAIR: It is my feeling, especially after attending the All-India Women’s Conference at Karachi, that the women’s movement in India is not a representative one. It only represents the aristocracy and upper middle class. Can you suggest practical measures to make it a real mass movement?

GANDHIJI: The obvious remedy would be for the existing members to throw themselves in the khaddar and other village industry movements and thus develop the village instinct and take pride in depending on villages for all their wants.

MRS. N. Do you not think that co-education from very early days till the end of the educational career will help a great deal in removing the sex obsession that we see in our midst today?

G. I cannot definitely state as yet whether it would be successful or not. It does not seem to have succeeded in the West. I tried it myself years ago when I even made boys and girls sleep in the same verandah with no partition between them, Mrs. Gandhi and me sharing the verandah with them. I must say that it brought about undesirable results.

MRS. N. But do not worse things happen in purdah-ridden communities?

G. Yes, of course, but co-education is still in an experimental stage and we cannot definitely say one way or the other as to its results. I think that we should begin with the family first. There, boys and girls should grow together freely and naturally. Then co-education will come by itself.

MRS. N. As a teacher who has moved rather intimately with her students I have had occasion to come across some who, through ignorance and through information gathered from unhealthy sources during the period of adolescence, resorted to practices that were not conducive either to their physical or moral well-being. Will not the teaching of sex hygiene in schools in the most scientific and informal manner be really beneficial to our boys and girls.

G. Yes. And there should be no reason why one should not be able to talk freely on this matter.

MRS. N. On discussing very freely the question of birth-control with many a married woman, I find in many cases, especially in the case of those with large families, that motherhood is often thrust upon them. Woman has no freedom in the real sense of the word if she has no right over her body. So for the sake of the mother, whose health is drained away by the bringing forth of too many children and for the sake of children themselves, who should be a joy to us, but who now come forth? Unwanted in such large numbers, may not birth-control through contraceptives be resorted to, as the next best thing to self-control, which is too high an ideal for the ordinary man or woman?

G. Do you think that the freedom of the body is obtained by resorting to contraceptives? Women should learn to resist their husbands. If contraceptives are resorted to as in the West, frightful results will follow. Men and women will be living for sex alone. They will become soft-brained, unhinged, in fact mental and moral wrecks, if not also physical. Then, while I believe man to be the worse sinner, woman is not very far behind him. Both sin, on the whole. Woman is not always the victim. She should realize her majesty and train herself to say “No” when she means it.

MRS. N. But is there not too much of sex indulgence even now and is the introduction of contraceptives going to make so much difference in the sex life of the individual?

G. Undoubtedly there is already much of sex indulgence and even sex perversion. But contraceptives would be putting the cap on them. They will give a status to intemperate connection which it does not enjoy now.

MRS. N. Even in exceptional cases where a woman is too weak for child-bearing or where either of the parents is diseased, cannot this method be resorted to?

G. No. One exception will lead to another till it finally becomes general. In the cases stated above, it is better that the husband and the wife live apart. Contraceptives which are being tried in the West are leading to hideous immorality and I am sure after a few years, the Westerners themselves will realize their mistake. Do you not know that Mussolini in Italy is giving donations to parents with large families?

MRS. N. Perhaps Mussolini wants more fodder for cannon. G. What about the English and the Dutch among whom contraceptives are popular? Are they against war?

MRS. N. Can a poor country like India afford to have its present vast population, which seems to increase at a tremendously rapid pace?

G. Nature will solve the problem for us, if we allow Nature to have free play. Contraceptives are an unnatural interference with her laws. If people want to multiply like rabbits, they will have also to die like rabbits. If we become licentious, there will undoubtedly be Nature’s punishment descending upon us. It will be a blessing in disguise.

MRS. N. But is self-control possible for the ordinary man and woman?

G. Yes, under well-regulated conditions. Contraceptives are really for the educated people, who are the “sick” of humanity. I call them “sick” because their food and drink and the exceedingly artificial life that they are leading have made them weak-willed and slaves to their passions.

MRS. N. Do you then suggest, Mahatmaji, as a practical remedy for the over-indulgence in sex today, the releasing of the creative energy in man, through channels other than sex, by concentrating on matters like art, science, literature, etc.?

G. That is true so far as it goes. You have to be very careful in the choice of your food and drink and to keep both mind and body clean. Just as it is important to know what goes to the mind it is equally necessary to know what goes into the body. These are simple things, which will help you a great deal in the matter of self-control.

MRS. N. You know that in India there is no bar for physically unfit people to marry and bring forth children. Moreover, Hindu religion enjoins that none could get salvation without there being some male member to perform shraddha ceremony. This in normal circumstances is resulting in degeneration of the Hindu race. Are you, under these conditions, in favour of sterilization as is being done in Germany under Hitler?

G. There are crores of Hindus, especially untouchables who do not perform the shraddha ceremony. As regards sterilization I consider it inhuman to impose it as a law on the people. But in the case of individuals with chronic diseases, it is desirable to have them sterilized if they are agreeable to it. Sterilization is a sort of contraceptive and though I am against the use of contraceptives in the case of women, I do not mind voluntary sterilization in the case of man, since he is the aggressor.

MRS. N. Mahatmaji, you say that a woman should not allow motherhood to be thrust upon her but that she should be able to assert herself and definitely say “No” to her husband. Have you considered the fact that a Hindu woman especially has no economic status, and her defying her “Lord and Master” may result in disastrous consequences for her, and according to law she may be denied even maintenance, not to speak of a second home?

G. If you study statistics, you will find that what you say about the economic condition of a Hindu woman holds good only in the case of a microscopic minority. Do you not know that in Indian houses it is the woman that is generally the real master?

MRS. N. May I know how far your experiments in self-control in the Sabarmati Ashram have been successful?

G. It is very difficult to say. We have had individual cases of terrible tragedy, but those who visited the Ashram were much impressed by the general atmosphere of freedom, without sex consciousness, that prevailed there.