Do you know, in India, just a hundred years ago nobody was allowed to go to foreign countries, for the simple reason that in foreign countries you would be mixing with people who cannot be accepted as human beings; they are below human beings.
In India they have the worst class of human beings whom they call untouchables. They cannot be touched. If you touch them you have to take a shower and cleanse yourself. In foreign countries people are even farther down than the untouchables. For them they had a special word, mlechchhas.
It is very difficult to translate that word. It means something so ugly, so obscene, so dirty that it creates nausea in you. That will be the full meaning of the word, mlechchha: people whose contact will create nausea in you, a sickness in you.
Even when Gandhi went to England to study, his mother had taken three oaths from him. One was that he would not look at any woman with lustful eyes – a very difficult thing, because by the time you become aware that you have been looking with lustful eyes, you have already looked! I don’t think Gandhi followed that; he could not, it is impossible to follow, although he tried his best.
Secondly, he should not eat meat. And he was in such a trouble because – now in London you can find vegetarian restaurants, health food is now in fashion, but when Gandhi had gone to study, there was no vegetarian food available. He had to live just on fruits, bread, butter, milk. He was almost starving. He would not mix with people because those people were all mlechchhas. And of course he was so much afraid of women: Who knows? – just like a breeze lust comes to the eyes.
Lust is not something that knocks on your door and says, ”I am coming.” You see a beautiful woman and suddenly you feel, ”She is beautiful” – and that’s enough. Just to say, ”She is beautiful,” means you have already looked with lustful eyes; otherwise what business is it for you to judge whether she is beautiful or ugly?
In fact if you go deep down in your judgments you will see, at the moment you say that someone is beautiful, deep down you want to possess. When you say someone is ugly, deep down you don’t want to have anything to do with that person. Your ”ugly,” your ”beauty,” are really your desires for or against.
So Gandhi was continuously afraid of women. He had to remain confined to his room, because in Europe there were women all over; how could you avoid them?
And the third oath was that he should not change his religion.
The first trouble arose in Alexandria. Their ship was to wait there for three days for loading, unloading cargo. And all the people who were on the ship who had become friendly towards Gandhi – they were all Indians – said to him simply, ”What is the point, sitting here for three days? The nights in Alexandria are beautiful!”
But he didn’t understand the meaning, that ”nights in Alexandria are beautiful.” In that way he was a simpleton. He had never heard the name of the famous book ARABIAN NIGHTS; otherwise he would have understood. Alexandria is very close to Arabia, and those are Arabian nights!
So Gandhi said, ”Okay, if the nights are beautiful I am coming.” But he was not aware where he was going. They took him into a beautiful house, and he said, ”But where are we going?”
”To beautiful nights,” those friends said – and it was a prostitute’s house. Gandhi was so shocked that he lost his voice. He could not say, ”I don’t want to go in”; he could not say, ”I want to go back to the ship” – for two reasons. One was: ”These people will think that I am impotent or something.”
Secondly, he was not able to speak; for the first time he found that his throat was choked.
Those people just dragged him. They said, ”He is new – nothing to be worried about,” and he went with them. They pushed him into a prostitute’s room and closed the door. The prostitute was also a little puzzled seeing this man trembling, perspiring. She completely forgot that he was a customer.
She just made him sit; he wouldn’t sit on her bed but she forced him. She said, ”You are not in a position to stand, you will fall down, you are shaking so much. You just sit.”
He could not say that he could not sit on a prostitute’s bed; What will my mother say? I have not looked yet – he was talking to his mother inside – I have not yet looked with lustful eyes. This is just an accident; those idiots have forced me here. The woman understood that it seemed he had been forced. She said, ”Don’t be worried, I’m also a human being. What do you want? Simply tell me and I will do it.” But he could not say anything.
The woman said,”It is very difficult now, how .... You don’t speak?”
He said, ”I ... just ....”
So she said, ”You please write.”
He had to write on paper, ”I have been unnecessarily forced here – I simply want to go. And I look on you as my sister.”
She said, ”That’s perfectly okay, don’t be worried.” She opened the door and she said, ”Do you have money enough to go to the ship or should I come with you to lead you? – because Alexandria in the middle of the night is dangerous.”
He said, ”No” – now he was able to speak for the first time, seeing that a prostitute is not some dangerous animal. She behaved more humanly than any woman had ever behaved with him. She offered him food. He said, ”No, I cannot eat; I am okay.” She offered water; he wouldn’t drink water from a prostitute’s house ... as if water also becomes dirty because it is in a prostitute’s house.
In India that happens. In Indian stations you will find people shouting, ”Hindu water!” ”Mohammedan water!” Water Hindu? Mohammedan? And Jainas of course don’t drink either the Hindu water or the Mohammedan water; they carry their own water, Jaina water, because they are such a minority that in stations you won’t find Jaina water, so they have to carry their own water.
But Gandhi thanked the woman, and in his autobiography he wrote about that woman and about the whole incident: ”How cowardly I was! I could not even speak, could not even say no.”
Now these three things kept him a slave in England where he could have been free. He could have looked into many aspects of life which were not available in India, but it was impossible because those three oaths were so binding. He did not make friends, he did not go to any meetings, sermons.
He simply kept himself with his books and prayed to God, ”Somehow finish my course so I can be back in India.”
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