Key Women Who Shaped Gandhi’s Philosophy on Empowerment

Mahatma Gandhi’s philosophy on women’s empowerment was not shaped in isolation. Behind his vision of women as equal partners in India’s freedom struggle and moral regeneration stood several remarkable women who profoundly influenced his thinking. From British feminist Annie Besant to poet-politician Sarojini Naidu and the principled Rajkumari Amrit Kaur, these women helped Gandhi crystallize his commitment to women’s dignity, self-realization, and active participation in public life. Their ideas, activism, and personal interactions with Gandhi left an indelible mark on how he understood and advocated for women’s empowerment throughout his life.

Annie Besant: the feminist pioneer who awakened India 🔗

Annie Besant was a British social reformer, women’s rights activist, and Theosophist whose influence on Indian politics and on Gandhi himself was considerable. Gandhi was a huge admirer of Besant and kept pictures of her on the walls of his law office in South Africa. Their connection ran deep, with Gandhi meeting Besant in 1889 while studying law in the United Kingdom and joining the Blavatsky Lodge of the Theosophical Society in 1891.

Besant’s fierce advocacy for women’s rights, birth control, and workers’ rights in England established her as a pioneering feminist before she even arrived in India. In 1917, she started the Women’s Indian Association to which she gave her powerful support, and by 1924 the Association had 51 branches. Her work created institutional frameworks for women’s political participation that would later serve Gandhi’s mass movements.

Divergent paths, shared legacy 🔗

While Besant and Gandhi shared admiration for each other, their approaches to Indian independence eventually diverged. Gandhi once said about her that she awakened Indian people from their deep slumber. However, Besant’s principal objection was to Gandhi’s making the independence movement a mass movement, as she believed the average person lacked the ability to meet physical abuse with non-violence. She famously called Gandhi a “saint” but not a “politician.”

Despite their tactical disagreements, Besant’s example as a woman leading major political organizations, her election as the first woman President of the Indian National Congress in 1917, and her tireless work for women’s education and suffrage demonstrated what women could achieve in public life. This proof of women’s leadership capabilities reinforced Gandhi’s conviction that women were essential to India’s liberation.

Sarojini Naidu: the poet who envisioned India as a joint family 🔗

If Annie Besant demonstrated women’s political capabilities, Sarojini Naidu provided Gandhi with a powerful conceptual framework for understanding women’s role in national life. Naidu’s literary work as a poet earned her the nickname the “Nightingale of India” from Gandhi himself, because of the colour, imagery, and lyrical quality of her poetry.

Sarojini met anti-colonial nationalist Mahatma Gandhi in 1914 and quickly became one of his most trusted lieutenants. She joined his movement of non-violent resistance against British rule and traveled extensively promoting India’s independence. She was appointed Congress president in 1925 and, when India achieved its independence, became the Governor of the United Provinces in 1947.

The “Mother India” metaphor 🔗

Naidu’s most significant conceptual contribution was her vision of India as a family with women at its heart. Scholar Geraldine Forbes examines the model that Sarojini Naidu developed in her speech as President of the Indian National Congress, a model with India as the “house,” the Indian people as “members of the joint family,” and the Indian woman as the “Mother.” This metaphor harmonized women’s traditional roles with their active participation in national liberation.

In her presidential address at the 1925 Congress session in Kanpur, Sarojini Naidu declared that no sacrifice is too heavy, no struggle too great, no martyrdom too terrible, that enables us to redeem our Mother from the unspeakable dishonor of her bondage. By framing India itself as a mother requiring liberation, Naidu elevated women’s participation from a political choice to a sacred familial duty.

Naidu, Gandhi, and many other advocates of women’s and national liberation agreed wholeheartedly that women and India would advance together to the extent this new familial model for India was adopted by the women and men of India. This vision profoundly shaped Gandhi’s understanding of how women’s upliftment and national advancement were inseparable causes.

Leadership in action 🔗

Naidu did not merely theorize about women’s role; she embodied it. Gandhi initially did not want to permit women to join the Salt March because it would be physically demanding with a high risk of arrest. However, Naidu and other female activists, including Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay and Khurshed Naoroji, persuaded him otherwise and joined the march. When Gandhi was arrested on 6 April 1930, he appointed Naidu as the new leader of the campaign.

This decision to hand leadership to a woman during a critical juncture of the freedom struggle demonstrated how far Gandhi had come in recognizing women’s capabilities, partly through his interactions with Naidu herself.

Rajkumari Amrit Kaur and the mission of dignity 🔗

Rajkumari Amrit Kaur, a princess from the Kapurthala royal family who gave up her privileged life to serve the nation, maintained one of the most remarkable epistolary relationships with Gandhi. Kaur worked as Gandhi’s secretary for 16 years, and their correspondence was subsequently published as a volume of letters titled “Letters to Rajkumari Amrit Kaur.”

In these letters, Gandhi revealed his deepest convictions about women’s empowerment. Gandhi used to confide in her, as is evident from one of his letters in which he had written that his special function from childhood had been to make women realise their dignity.

The letter that revealed Gandhi’s mission 🔗

In a letter written from Wardha on 21 October 1936, Gandhi articulated his vision with remarkable clarity. He wrote, “If you women would only realise your dignity and privilege, and make full use of it for mankind, you will make it much better than it is. But man has delighted in enslaving you and you have proved willing slaves till the slaves and the slave-holders have become one in the crime of degrading humanity.”

Gandhi continued with a personal confession: “My special function from childhood, you might say, has been to make women realise their dignity. I was once a slave-holder myself but Ba proved an unwilling slave and thus opened my eyes to my mission. Her task was finished. Now I am in search of a woman who would realise her mission. Are you that woman, will you be one?”

This letter reveals several crucial aspects of Gandhi’s evolving philosophy. He acknowledged his own past failings as a domineering husband, credited his wife Kasturba for teaching him about women’s dignity through her resistance, and explicitly identified awakening women to their inherent worth as his life’s mission.

Work among poor women in South Africa 🔗

Gandhi also reflected on his early work with women, revealing a unique bond with working-class women that shaped his approach. He wrote: “There is not a woman in South Africa who does not know me. But my work was among the poorest. The intellectuals I could not draw… but just as I never fear coldness on the part of the poor when I approach them, I never fear it when I approach poor women. There is invisible bond between them and me.”

This confession shows that Gandhi’s understanding of women’s empowerment was grounded not in abstract theory but in direct engagement with marginalized women. His inability to connect with intellectual women and his natural rapport with poor women shaped his approach to mass mobilization, where he successfully brought millions of ordinary women into the freedom struggle.

Gandhi as a maternal figure 🔗

Perhaps the most striking observation about Gandhi’s relationship with women came from Rajkumari Amrit Kaur herself. Reflecting on what drew women to Gandhi, she offered an insight that transcended the common understanding of him as “Bapu” or father of the nation.

Rajkumari Amrit Kaur stated: “We found in him not a ‘Bapu’, a wise father, but what is far more precious, a mother, before whose all-embracing and understanding love, all fear and restraint vanish.”

This observation is profound. While the world knew Gandhi as Bapu, women who worked closely with him perceived something different. The paternal image suggests authority, guidance, and perhaps distance. But Kaur’s description of Gandhi as a mother figure evokes unconditional acceptance, nurturing love, and emotional safety. Gandhi himself looked upon women as “the mother, maker and silent leader of man” and had internalized these maternal qualities in his own leadership style.

Internalizing maternal qualities 🔗

Gandhiji’s devotion to women, particularly to women as mother, began with his devotion to his mother and Kasturba. He learned from both women the power of moral strength, self-sacrifice, and compassionate action. In the course of his social reform work, the realisation came to him that if he wanted to reform and purify society of the various evils that had crept into it, he had to cultivate a mother’s heart.

This deliberate cultivation of maternal qualities allowed Gandhi to connect with women across class and educational boundaries. Poor women trusted him instinctively because he approached them not with the authority of a patriarch but with the empathy of a fellow sufferer. Gandhi believed that woman was the incarnation of Ahimsa, meaning infinite love which again means infinite capacity for suffering.

The legacy of these women in Gandhi’s thought 🔗

The influence of Annie Besant, Sarojini Naidu, and Rajkumari Amrit Kaur on Gandhi’s philosophy of women’s empowerment was transformative. Besant showed that women could lead major political organizations and movements. Naidu provided a conceptual framework that linked women’s advancement with national liberation through the powerful metaphor of Mother India. Amrit Kaur served as both witness and collaborator in Gandhi’s mission to help women realize their dignity.

Gandhi was uncompromising in the matter of woman’s rights, stating that she should labour under no legal disability not suffered by man and that he would treat daughters and sons on a footing of perfect equality. This conviction was strengthened through his interactions with these remarkable women who demonstrated through their lives what equality could mean in practice.

Perhaps nothing delighted Gandhi more than the success of women in any sphere of life. The women who shaped his philosophy went on to shape India itself. Sarojini Naidu became India’s first woman governor. Rajkumari Amrit Kaur became the first woman member of the Indian Cabinet after independence and held the portfolio of health from August 15, 1947 to April 17, 1957. During her tenure, she established the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), leaving a lasting institutional legacy.

Their achievements vindicated Gandhi’s belief that women, once awakened to their dignity and potential, could transform not just themselves but entire nations. The mother who nurtured the freedom struggle also gave birth to a new vision of Indian womanhood, one in which empowerment and national service were inseparable.

What do you think? How might Gandhi’s philosophy of women’s empowerment, shaped by these influential women, remain relevant to contemporary struggles for gender equality? And what does it mean that women perceived Gandhi more as a nurturing mother than as a patriarchal father figure?

References

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annie_Besant
2. https://inc.in/leadership/past-party-presidents/annie-besant
3. https://www.constitutionofindia.net/members/rajkumari-amrit-kaur/
4. https://theprint.in/theprint-profile/rajkumari-amrit-kaur-the-princess-who-was-gandhis-secretary-indias-first-health-minister/186245/