'The whole world is but one family' - Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan Australia

In the transformation of Mohandas Gandhi
into Mahatma Gandhi, there was one person
who played a very prominent but silent role.
Needless to say, but it was his wife, Kasturba Gandhi
(1869–1944), on whose death after more than sixty
years of life together, Gandhi mourned—“I can’t
imagine a life without Ba. She went away to freedom,
imprinting on the heart to work or to die.” Gandhi,
the apostle of Ahimsa (non-violence) and Satyagraha
(non-violent resistance) had admitted more than once
that he learned the art and science of Satyagraha from
Kasturba. He felt that her life was an extremely sacred
one. In discharging her duty as a wife she had even
sacrificed her conscience. She never stood in between
him and his sacrifices. Everyone called her Ba in
great respect. “She had assisted me properly in my
observance of celibacy”, Mahatma Gandhi certified in
‘My Experiments with Truth’, his autobiography.
Early Life
Kasturba Gandhi, wife of Mahatma Gandhi, the
great leader of Indian Freedom Movement, was born
to a prosperous businessman Gokuladas Makharji
of Porbandar on April 11, 1869. She got married
to Mohandas Gandhi, when she was just thirteen
years old. At the time of her marriage, Kasturba was
illiterate. She had not been given formal education, as
was the custom in conservative families of the period.
The husband taught the wife to read and write in their
mother tongue, Gujarati and she picked up enough
language to go through the daily newspapers. During
the early period of their married life, the husband
insisted that the wife obeyed strictly what all was told
by him to which the wife was not willing to oblige and
this resulted in occasional wrangles between the two.
The Family
When her husband left for London for pursuing
further studies, she remained in India for upbringing
their newly born son Harilal. The couple had three
more sons. Kasturba gave birth to a male child in
1885, but it died soon. They had four more sons—
Hiralal (1896), Manilal (1897), Ramdas (1898), and
Devadas (1900). When Gandhi went to South Africa,
Ba accompanied him with the two kids. They lived in
Durban, South Africa for more than 19 years.
The Ideal Wife
Like a good wife, Kasturba always stood by the side
of her husband, even if she didn’t approve of some of
his ideas. She went along with her husband to South
Africa in the year 1897. From the period between 1904
and 1914, she was actively involved in the Phoenix
Settlement near Durban. In the year 1913, she raised
Kasturba Gandhi
her voice against the inhuman working conditions of
Indians in South Africa. Infact, she was imprisoned
for three months and that too in the jail, where the
prisoners were made to do hard labour. In 1915, she
accompanied her husband and supported the Indigo
planters. There, she taught women and children about
basic concepts like personal hygiene, discipline etc.
Ideal Companion
In 1915 they returned to India. When Gandhi set up
the Satyagrahashram in Sabarmati, Ba was his chief
assistant in running the Ashram. When Gandhi started
the Khadi (handspun cloth) movement, Ba organized
its propaganda. Whenever Gandhi went into a fast
against what he thought was unjust, Ba was with
him. The husband’s goal was the wife’s motto. The
wife was the husband’s shadow, especially when the
husband had been sacrificing his life for the country.
She gave leadership to the women in the Satyagraha
movement and had been jailed many times. The
frequent fastings that Gandhi undertook ate into her
health also and her own internment in prisons added
fuel to this malady. Kasturba Gandhi suffered from
the problem of chronic Bronchitis. To top it, the stress
level caused during the Quit India Movement’s arrests
aggravated her illness. Her health began to decline.
The situation got worse, when she got victimized by
pneumonia. Her husband disagreed with her idea to
go in for penicillin. Medical attention was there but
to no avail; and on 22 February 1944, this great lady
who was the shadow of her husband who became the
Father of the Nation and one of the greatest men of
all times, breathed her last, lying on the lap of her
beloved.
Source: www.iloveindia.com, www.indiavideo.org