Mirabehn and Mahadev Desai
While Gandhi came to London in 1931 as the sole representative of the Indian National Congress party, he did not travel alone. Alongside Sarojini Naidu, representing Indian women, and Pandit Madan Mohan Malaviya, representing Hindus, Gandhi also brought two vital members of support staff with him. Mahadev Desai (1892-1942) functioned as his personal secretary. He helped screen his correspondence, coordinate his diary, and document his meetings and movements. Attracting much more media interest was ‘Mirabehn’ (1892-1982), the name given to Madeleine Slade when she decided to give up her privileged British upbringing and devote herself to Gandhi. She prepared his food, maintained his (limited) wardrobe, and organised his travelling materials, preparing the party for their journey to London as well as their European tour on the return leg, taking in Paris, Geneva and Rome, the latter including a private meeting with Mussolini.
Mirabehn and Desai are seen here on the second-class deck of the SS Rajputana, during the journey from Bombay to Marseilles in September 1931. Disrupting the social conventions of life aboard deck, the Daily Telegraph reported on Gandhi’s daily prayer ritual, when ‘…the Mahatma, raising from his bench, summons his small flock of followers to prayer. Dressed in white flowing robes and looking like biblical prophets, they squat on deck, with hands clasped, heads bowed, and eyes closed in meditation.’ (4th September 1931)
Pictured to the right of Gandhi here, Mirabehn and Desai helped organise his trip to Darwen in Lancashire. He had come to witness the devastation of the Depression (and of the Indian boycott of British cloth) on industrial textile workers there, and to appeal directly to them. Mirabehn recounts in her memoir Gandhi’s hard-hitting message to the workers that their deprivation made him sad, but that in India workers were starving to death. Gandhi’s punishing schedule left her exhausted and she was glad of the contact with the people, which kept her awake, unlike lectures in Oxford or Cambridge, at which she found it impossible not to fall asleep.
Mirabehn provided rich fodder for political cartoonists and tabloid press. The Evening Standard contrasted her heritage (her father was Admiral Sir Edmund Slade, her sister was married to an English civil servant working in India) with the stories of two of her cousins, working on the London stage. David Low used her as one of many contrasts between the conservative bloc of Winston Churchill and Lord Rothermere (editor of the Daily Mail) and Gandhi’s staff.
Further information:
Gandhi’s letters to Mirabehn: https://archive.org/details/bapusletterstomi00gand/page/n7
For footage of Mirabehn introducing the spinning wheel: https://youtu.be/33VkTWzzw5M
On Mirabehn’s biography: https://feminisminindia.com/2018/05/02/mirabehn-contribution-freedom-struggle/