While Hindus in Bengal during Noakhali riots were getting slaughtered, Gandhi called for his 18-year-old grandniece Manu to join him and sleep with him. “We both may be killed by the Muslims,” he told her, “and must put our purity to the ultimate test, so that we know that we are offering the purest of sacrifices, and we should now both start sleeping naked.”

Such behaviour was no part of the accepted practice of bramacharya. He, by now, described his reinvented concept of a brahmachari as: “One who never has any lustful intention, who, by constant attendance upon God, has become proof against conscious or unconscious emissions, who is capable of lying naked with naked women, however beautiful, without being in any manner whatsoever sexually excited, who is making daily & steady progress towards God & whose every act is done in pursuance of that end & no other.” That is, he could do whatever he wished, so long as there was no apparent “lustful intention”.

Credit – @sheshapatangi1

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