Welcome to Significant Others, a podcast that takes a look at the less familiar side of history.

I'm Liza Powell O'Brien, and in this episode we get to know a woman who spent her life

being a beautiful wife to a demanding saint. Together they freed their country from colonial rule,

and yet outside that country her name is hardly known at all, while his is practically a household

word. This time, on Significant Others, meet Kasturba Gandhi.

A note about pronunciation. Please excuse me if the name does not sound exactly correct.

We found that pronunciation of Kasturba varies depending on the accent of the person who is saying it,

so I may be all over the map here. Everyone knows that Mohandas Gandhi helped India win

independence from Britain through non-violent resistance. What fewer people know is that he

credits the inspiration for his tactics to his wife, Kasturba. Married for 62 years, and herself,

one of India's most valuable collaborators in the struggle for freedom, Kasturba died in prison

with her head in Gandhi's lap. But what are we to make of Gandhi as a husband? The man so devoted

to non-violence against all living things that he would not allow a venomous snake to be killed

on his property cost his own wife much suffering. He said her face reminded him of a dumb cow,

but also that she stood above him in every way. He dictated all the terms of her existence,

imposing extreme conditions on her that ultimately led to her death, and yet when that death finally

came, she asked to be wrapped in a cloth he had woven with his own hands. What kind of love story

is this? Not a western one, that's for sure. Gandhi's philosophies were so rooted in Hindu beliefs

that many of the choices he and Kasturba made don't add up to someone raised outside those

traditions. So we enter this story as outsiders, seeking only to imagine what it might have been like

to live the life of this woman who, when she was a girl, married the boy who would grow up to be a saint.

Kasturba was actually named Kastur. The bar was added later when she found fame alongside her

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