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>> Gandhi became known for recruiting women into his campaigns, a trailblazing tactic.

But before he could broaden his view to fully embrace women's power, the primary lessons had to be given and fearless steps taken by Kasturba.

>> Kasturba was a big part of what's called Gandhian philosophy.

>> Kasturba sets up an example.

She becomes a full partner with Gandhi, not simply a supporting role.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ >> Kastur Makanji Kapadia was born on the 11th of April, 1869.

[ Baby coos ] In India in those days and still sometimes in these, in poor homes, a girl child was not valued as a boy was.

So tragically, the life of many a female was snuffed out before the birth cry.

But in well-to-do homes like hers where two other infants had died of illness, she was treasured and named Kastur, meaning musk, a fragrance that was precious and difficult to obtain then, found only from the musk deer in remote regions.

>> She was lucky to be the first child who survived.

So the first daughter that survived is like a goddess, and it is really considered wonderful and a blessing.

>> She was born in the western state of Gujarat in Porbandar, a town of 15,000 in northwestern India on the Arabian Sea.

Some say the name simply means "port city."

But others say it honors the local goddess, Porai.

It was the capital of the Porbandar princely state, a protectorate of the British crown.

Kastur's family home was near the bustling square, three stories with 22 rooms and colorful frescos of Hindu gods and goddesses.

>> Kastur grew up in a port city where they had association with all kinds of people, different races, religions.

So that made it possible for them to be free of prejudice.

>> Little is known about Kastur's early years, but we do know that she played hopscotch and raided her mother's pantry for peppermints, establishing a lifelong sweet tooth.

She visited the Vaishnava temples daily, praying to Krishna, the Lord of Compassion.

And she anticipated festivals like Navratri, a nine-night celebration of the divine feminine, and Holi, when she sprayed colored water on her friends.

>> Her childhood was typical of a middle-class Gujarati girl.

The girls were not educated.

She learned chores.

She learned cooking and sorting grain and hoping, praying, doing ritual for a good husband.

That was the limit of her hope, having a good husband.

>> Kastur's parents were in the upper middle-class in the Modh-Bania caste of Hindu tradesmen.

Her mother would have embodied for Kastur the dharma or spiritual duty of a traditional Indian wife to show unconditional devotion to her husband.

>> As a child, they are listening to their parents and mothers especially, and the grandmothers and aunts, "Oh, you should be a devoted wife.

You should do whatever your husband says."

Those are the phrases that you hear growing up.

>> Kastur's father was a successful textile merchant on good terms with young Mohandas Gandhi's father, chief minister for Porbandar's princely ruler.

>> They were literally living next to each other as children, must have played with each other, and the parents settled on their betrothal.

>> At barely 7, late for most girls then, Kastur was formally betrothed to Mohandas, called Mohan as a boy.

She didn't understand what was happening, but she enjoyed the gifts of sweets and trinkets.

>> She was married at the age of 13 and Gandhi-ji at that time was only 12 years old.

>> Decades later, both would decry this centuries-long tradition of child marriage.

But then it is said Kastur was brave enough at 13 to squeeze Mohan's hand, and he squeezed hers during their wedding.

This would not have been romantic love.

She knew nothing about that, since it was neither seen or heard of in her society.

This was gutsy for a girl.

>> She was fearless, absolutely fearless.

>> Shortly after they got married, he was trying to light a lamp in the room and she laughed at him.

"Why do you want the lamp?"

And he said, "Well, I'm afraid of the dark."

And he also said, "I'm afraid of robbers and of ghosts and of snakes."

She said, "I'm not afraid of any of these things."

>> Gandhi-ji said, "You know, she was the only one tough enough because there before her lay a life that was pretty tough."

>> Little did she know that she's marrying this person who is going to go across oceans and be one of the most influential persons of the 20th century.

>> Things became difficult almost immediately after her wedding.

Usually a young bride spent time with her own family, going back and forth to her in-laws' home where she would finally reside and take direction for household duties from her mother-in-law.

But Mohan and his family moved to Rajkot, a five-day ride by oxcart.

>> She could not visit her family often.

She went and stayed with her in-laws right from the beginning.

Because Gandhi-ji's father was very ill, people who knew him came and visited.

So there were usually about 25 to 30 people having food at their place every single day.

And guess who got to do all the cooking?

The women.

>> Hard work.

Youngest daughter-in-law comes and obviously gets more than her share of the work.

And she was tireless.

She worked very, very hard.

>> During those early years, young Mohan was, as he later wrote in his autobiography, "playing the husband."

Kastur could see that the shy boy was, as he described later, "obsessed" with her physically and psychologically.

He determined to "develop" her into the perfect wife he had learned about from pamphlets and an overbearing friend who fanned the flame of unfounded suspicion that she was unfaithful.

Kastur was stunned when this and her acclaimed beauty of large brown eyes and dark hair in ringlets down to her knees led him jealously to demand that she not leave the house without his permission.

>> Yes.

Yes.

>> She resisted Gandhi's initial, very dominating personality, very controlling personality.

And she said, "You know what?

You're my husband, but I'm not going to succumb to this."

>> She was not a retiring type.

She was frank and outspoken.

>> Even though she was supposed to be a devoted wife and she was supposed to be obedient, she was not in a way that a Hindu woman would be.

He says in his autobiography that she was very obstinate.

>> She was a powerful person.

She wasn't the docile wife that Gandhi-ji would have liked.

>> So he said, "I'm sending you back to your family."

She didn't plead, simper, or cry.

She stood up to it and she said, "Okay, if you want to send me back, I go back.

But I'm not going to ask you every time I go out."

>> A Hindu wife was not permitted a divorce.

>> Many a woman committed suicide if she were sent back.

It was a great dishonor.

>> She's not rebelling against him.

She is saying that "I am a free being.

You don't have control on my life."

>> He said "Okay, you can come back on your own terms."

So she stood by her belief in what was right, and he gave in.

>> Grandfather acknowledges that that was the most profound lesson in nonviolent conflict resolution.

>> And that's what Gandhi does when he fights against colonial oppression.

>> Three years into their marriage, with Kastur pregnant, she and her young husband face two major challenges.

One night, Mohan left his father's sickbed to wake Kastur for sex.

During their stolen moments together, his beloved father died.

Then, within a week, their baby was born and died.

While grieving herself, Kastur saw Mohan suffer grief along with guilt and shame.

>> She lost the child, and she also found her husband totally devastated by his father's death.

♪ >> Three years later, at 19, Kastur gave birth to a healthy baby boy, a great joy, this first grandson in the extended family.

But following that happy addition, the new mother suffered a loss.

Two weeks later, Mohan was sailing to England to study law, leaving Kastur and the infant behind.

To help fund his trip, he sold most of her wedding gifts of gold jewelry viewed by Indian wives as their chief security.

She said nothing.

But when he was leaving, she sobbed.

>> "Don't go to London.

Don't go to London."

>> But despite her tears, he did go, and even worse, under a cloud.

Caste elders had forbidden him to make the trip, maintaining their religion did not allow voyages across the tabooed "black water."

But the diminutive 18-year-old defied them.

♪ So they excommunicated him.

And his wife, Kastur, suffered the coldness and chafes of being an outcast in India the three long years he was gone, including exclusion from all community events.

>> For her, it was a major challenge.

But she stood up to it and shouldered it quite well and adjusted.

>> When he came back, the whole family and probably Kastur most of all was very hopeful that this barrister would make a big name and all that.

But he was not successful.

>> It was painful for Kastur to watch Mohandas leave again for Bombay, where he foundered and failed as a barrister.

Then, just six months after Kastur gave birth to their second son, Manilal, in 1893, Mohandas boarded the Safari from Bombay to Port Durban to take a job as a barrister in South Africa.

He would become the first Indian lawyer in that country, serving the substantial immigrant community.

When Kastur said goodbye, Mohandas responded soothingly... >> "We are bound to meet again in a year."

>> But the year multiplied to three.

>> She was illiterate, so any letters that he wrote were not to her personally.

All letters, all communication was with the family.

It was a shared thing.

Those were tough years.

There were tough ones to come as well.

>> Kastur was happy to see Mohandas when he returned to India in 1896.

The now-successful lawyer had decided to continue the fight for Indian rights he had begun in South Africa, so he wanted her to uproot her life and go back with him.

She was excited about the three-week voyage to Durban with their 4- and 8-year-old boys and a 10-year-old nephew.

However, her excitement was dampened when her husband made new demands.

>> He forced my grandmother to wear her sari in a more stylish way and wear gloves, and all of those things irritated her.

>> He wants Kastur to now become somewhat westernized, to learn to eat with knives and forks and wear shoes.

>> She had never worn shoes before, and her feet used to get swollen and sore.

And Harilal, in fact, makes a note of that that she would fling them off as soon as she got back into their cabin room.

>> But Kastur forgot her irritation once their ship neared the port and she saw that they were in danger.

>> The ship almost failed to land because there's a huge storm.

So they survived that storm.

>> Then the ship was quarantined.

They said there was an epidemic.

It was a political reason.

>> Eventually when they do disembark, the family, there is this immense crowd of angry white males who feel that Indians are coming to take their jobs away.

>> Kastur had never seen a white crowd, not even a white person, maybe.

The crowd was violent.

>> In fact, they want to lynch them.

Gandhi almost gets killed.

It's a traumatic time for them.

>> This baptism by fire let Kastur know just how prominent her husband had become, already known simply as Gandhi.

At 27, she also experienced for the first time the danger for her and the family that came with his activism.

Soon, she faced other problems.

He refused to send the children to European schools where poor Indians were barred or to missionary schools where they would be indoctrinated into Christianity.

>> He felt that there was a lot of materialism being communicated through the education system, and he didn't want his children to be exposed to that.

>> Kastur was upset when Gandhi decided to school their two boys and nephew himself.

She correctly predicted that he would have little time to teach, so their learning suffered.

Their eldest, Harilal, in particular, would come to lament his lack of formal education.

>> He rebels, and Kastur becomes very conflicted.

>> Kastur was caring for three boys under 12 in the spacious villa Gandhi had rented.

♪ Gandhi invited his law clerks to live there.

One clerk from the so-called "untouchable" class was the unwitting cause of a dramatic interchange with far-reaching ramifications.

Because Gandhi believed the caste system should be abolished, his new house rule was that each must empty his own chamber pot, not hire a so-called "untouchable," as was customary for traditional Hindus.

>> Gandhi says that this fellow doesn't know the routine.

So Kastur's getting this night pot down the ladder, and she's making a face.

So he rushed over and he said, "You should be doing this with a smile."

He dragged her off to the gate and wanted to let her out.

>> So she does the nonviolent resistance without fighting.

>> "Keep your house to yourself and let me go."

>> Tears were streaming down her cheeks, but she was standing up to him, all 4'10" of her.

Then... >> "Because I am your wife, you think I must put up with your cuffs and kicks?

Let us not be found making scenes like this."

>> She said, "Think a little.

Where am I to go if you put me out?

Think a little."

Now, that was the key.

>> Gandhi has said more than once that it was Kastur's resistance to him, to his will, to his domination, that taught him a lot about nonviolence.

>> He began to think, "You can approach somebody without anger, without a grudge, without grievance."

>> And from her resistance, his nonviolence became a stronger, richer thing.

>> Gandhi's understanding of nonviolence evolved as his relationship with Kastur evolved.

In his 50s, remembering these times, he would write... >> In 1925, he would also write... >> In 1898, then 28, Kastur gave birth to Ramdas, and two years later, their fourth son, Devadas.

By 1901, Kastur had been in South Africa for four years, but Gandhi, eight.

He felt his activism had furthered the cause of Indian civil rights there.

So they prepared to return home to India.

The grateful Indian community showered them with gifts of gold and diamonds, which were plentiful there.

Kastur received a valuable gold necklace.

Not wanting payment for public service, Gandhi determined to place everything into a community trust.

Yet he feared Kastur's reaction.

So he convinced their sons to agree and say they did not need the jewelry.

>> This whole family was subjected to living with this very idealistic person.

>> But Kastur was not swayed by Gandhi's ploy of using the boys.

>> "You are trying to make sadhus or saints of my boys from today."

>> She predicted their future wives would want the jewelry as financial security, reminding him that he had deprived her of her jewelry when they were younger.

>> "No, the ornaments will not be returned.

What right do you have to my necklace?"

>> "Was it given for your service or mine?"

>> "I agree.

But service rendered by you is as good as rendered by me.

I have toiled and moiled for you day and night.

Is that no service?"

>> She had a mind of her own.

She was a strong woman.

>> She did have her own opinions.

And she did want to be convinced.

If they were wrong, she wanted to be convinced about it.

>> Despite the cultural constrictions of her time, at 32, Kastur was beginning to envision herself as a partner in Gandhi's work.

>> I'm sure her mind is really grappling with what is her role.

>> Kastur would never cease questioning Gandhi, and he began to listen more and understand more about nonviolent communication.

And it did not include domination.

>> Kastur was a very balancing force in Gandhi's life.

>> They both learned from the jewelry incident.

20 years later, as the two raised funds for their joint work, a wealthy lady would place her gold necklace around Kastur's neck.

Without hesitation, Kastur removed it, explaining what she had come to believe.

>> "Any gifts we receive are for the movement, not us."

>> Ultimately, they really were a wonderful couple, each learning from the other, each giving so much to the other.

>> In 1901, Kastur's challenges continued.

Just as she settled into a stable life in Bombay, Gandhi received a cable for help with the arrival of an important British statesman from South Africa.

He dropped everything to return.

>> So Gandhi's truth and Gandhi's awareness that his family may suffer as a result, this is a very real, recurrent feature in his life.

And he does -- More often than not, he chooses his truth.

>> It was two years before Kastur could secure passage to join him, rejecting his suggestion to stay in India to save money and his warning that he would not spend much time with her.

She arrived with only three sons and two nephews.

Their eldest boy, Harilal, now 16, remained behind in school.

Soon after moving into their new house in upscale Johannesburg, Kastur was surprised when Gandhi invited a white British couple to live with them, something unheard of in South Africa then.

But she welcomed it as an opportunity for her and the boys to learn English.

>> She adjusted to the situation of having all kinds of people in her home.

>> Kastur faced other domestic adjustments with Gandhi's burgeoning spiritual aspiration for what the Bhagavad Gita calls aparigraha, or nonpossession.

What worried her most about his striving to be free of greed, because it impacted the children, was when he canceled his life insurance policy.

She feared this left the family with no security.

>> And for a while, she couldn't understand, you know, why is he doing this?

What about the children?

How are the children going to survive?

>> While she had been in India, Gandhi had read a book by British philosopher John Ruskin about social equality and simple living.

This had inspired him to buy a farm where all would live off the land as equals and produce his weekly activist newspaper.

Between Gandhi's fervor for Phoenix Farm, his law practice, and his activist letter writing, Kastur and the boys seldom got to spend time with him.

>> Gandhi moves to Phoenix Farm, and it becomes an ashram life.

Every time she adjusted to a situation, Gandhi changed it.

>> Half a dozen families moved to the settlement on the outskirts of Durban, where only poor Africans lived.

Kastur said goodbye to their second son, Manilal, when Gandhi sent him to the farm to help clear the land and tend the crops.

>> So the idea of a community which revolved around the newspaper and were able to grow their own vegetables, the idea of simplicity, the idea of eco-consciousness -- a lot of people thought he was crazy.

>> There is no record if Kastur agreed with them.

1906 brought heartache to her from another source.

After making it clear that he felt cheated of his father's attention, their son Harilal, now 18, had stopped writing altogether from India.

Then they learned that he had married against Gandhi's wishes.

1906 was also the year for Kastur's greatest adaptations in response to Gandhi's major life decisions.

First, he formed an ambulance corps of Indians for the British during the so-called "Zulu Rebellion."

When Gandhi gave up their large Johannesburg house, he suggested that Kastur take one of the corrugated iron huts allotted to each family on Phoenix Farm.

She agreed, so packed up the boys and all their belongings to move there.

The land was wild and infested with snakes, two and a half miles from the nearest train station.

>> Life changed.

It was a different kind of challenge.

There were lots of scorpions and snakes on the farm.

She was not afraid of snakes, but she was almost attacked by a mamba.

>> While Kastur started from scratch at Phoenix Farm, her eighth move since marriage, Sergeant Major Gandhi trekked the Zulu territories for four weeks, witnessing the brutality of war and prejudice.

His service and deep reflection produced a transformative decision -- to make the spread of truth and nonviolence his life mission and take vows of celibacy and poverty to achieve it.

He would never be the same.

Kastur's life would never be the same.

>> It was Gandhi's secretary who pointed this out to me that when he was walking, carrying the stretcher, he came to the realization: you can't ride two horses at once.

That is, you cannot serve family and society at the same time.

You have to make a choice.

>> Now, well, Gandhi takes his vow of celibacy in 1906 and he announces in public, he talks to his friends, "By the way, I took the vow of celibacy."

>> Kastur learned about his vow after the 37-year-old Gandhi told his friends.

Their relationship was immediately altered.

She did not see him for a while.

He stayed away from Phoenix, living in a friend's attic.

>> And then what she chooses to do, she becomes his ally.

She becomes his partner.

And Gandhi says that they become very good friends.

Their love blossoms.

>> Kastur assumed the role of matriarch at the fledgling Phoenix Ashram.

She was increasingly affectionately called Kasturba, or "Kastur mother" by all.

Soon it would become simply Ba, and that is what Gandhi would come to call her too -- Ba.

>> In Gujarati, the Ba is mother, and before he even become the -- takes the Bapu, the father of the nation, she's already a Ba.

Ba, mother of all of the ashramites.

>> Kasturba kept up with Gandhi's accelerated activism from afar.

On September the 11th, 1906, he persuaded 3,000 Indian men at a rally in Johannesburg to take a vow with him to nonviolently resist an unjust law and accept any consequence, including imprisonment or death.

The following year, Gandhi would christen his radical nonviolence, to be used later in campaigns such as the Salt March, with the Sanskrit name Satyagraha -- holding firmly to the truth.

>> So nonviolent resistance or Truth Force is not complying with the structures of violence and domination.

>> And the struggle is always costly.

You go to prison, you lose your jobs, you are deported.

So it's very tough.

>> In 1908, Kasturba received 48 congratulatory telegrams from the Indian community on the first day of Gandhi's first prison sentence.

She pledged to eat the same food he would -- the non-nutritious mealie pap, a bland porridge of coarsely ground corn with no flavoring added.

A second stint of three months in prison that same year effectively ended Gandhi's law practice and their regular stream of income.

>> At that time, his practice was worth about £80,000 a year.

>> Kasturba fell gravely ill during Gandhi's second sentence.

She was hemorrhaging.

Her births have been harsh, particularly the last two.

A friend at Phoenix wired Gandhi to seek release at once.

Kasturba received a tender, yet perhaps disheartening letter from her Mohandas.

Kasturba must have agonized about whether he might remarry, as his father had done, and asked Mohandas about it.

>> He loved her.

He loved her very much.

But the love has now became the greater love, not just simply a personal, conjugal love with husband and wife.

They both came together in the Love Force, and they both were doing Satyagraha together.

>> Months later, after Gandhi's release, Kasturba, now 40, underwent surgery to stop the bleeding.

She was not even given chloroform because her doctor feared she wouldn't wake up.

Gandhi praised her bravery, especially when she refused the beef tea the doctor prescribed for her anemia, warning she would die without it.

A lifelong vegetarian, Kasturba would always practice the ancient Hindu Jain and Buddhist principle of ahimsa or nonviolence towards all living things.

Meat was harmful, spiritually and physically.

Now she impressed her husband by asserting she would give up her life for ahimsa.

As weak as she was, Kasturba demanded to be removed from that doctor's care.

So Gandhi placed her in a rickshaw, then a train, and finally a hammock to be carried by six men in the rain the two and a half miles to their hut at Phoenix Farm.

Gandhi hovered anxiously, but she reassured him.

>> "Nothing will happen to me.

Don't worry."

>> And nothing happened.

While she was convalescing, her husband soon left her for prison again, this time joined by their son Harilal, who had returned to South Africa with his new wife.

Kasturba had persuaded him to come back, hoping for a reconciliation between him and his father.

>> She was in the middle of it.

Part of my uncle's objection was that grandfather was being too hard on her.

>> As Kasturba recuperated, she regretted missing a meeting of Indian women.

She sent the letter she wrote them to the press.

>> "Had I wings, I would fly to the meeting."

>> Kasturba and her friends were eager to assist Gandhi's movement.

South African women were starting to organize for their rights too.

Gandhi admired the British suffragettes, and especially the women pacifists and reformers he had heard about while in London, but remained cautious about asking Indian women to resist.

>> Gandhi-ji's life transformed in South Africa in the 21 years.

When he came here, he was a male chauvinist, absolute male chauvinist.

But over the years, there was a change in him.

>> Kasturba was the primary reason for that shift.

She was taking on more and more responsibility with strength and grace and challenging Gandhi when she needed to.

This, despite a close friend bestowing upon him the title of reverence Mahatma, or Great Soul, which the poet Tagore and others would make widespread years later.

But she would never be daunted by the fame and adulation paid to him.

Instead, she became his trusted confidant.

>> She becomes sort of a site of experimentation.

If he could convince her, then he could convince others.

>> Kasturba blessed Gandhi and Harilal when they went to prison again and again.

Harilal's younger brothers followed his lead, a source of anxiety for Kasturba despite her growing belief in the cause.

Since conditions at Tolstoy Farm, Gandhi's second ashram, were less demanding than at Phoenix, Harilal chose to live there with his father.

In 1910, Kasturba and the other boys moved there too, reuniting the entire family for the first time in five years.

That didn't last long.

Harilal departed without warning for India.

He left behind a long letter criticizing his father and announcing his break with the family.

About his mother, he wrote... >> "I shall feel the separation from her."

>> Gandhi relayed the news of his son leaving to his favorite nephew, of whom Harilal was jealous.

Kasturba was bereft at losing Harilal, her new daughter-in-law, and her two new grandchildren.

She threw herself into the service of running the Tolstoy Ashram and caring for the ashramites.

Gandhi had challenged her with his same lofty spiritual goal of loving all there equally.

>> Gandhi says to Kasturba, "Your children and all other children in the ashram should be treated equally."

>> By nature a doting mother and grandmother with a strong longing for a traditional family life that seem to be slipping away from her, Kasturba did not completely agree with Gandhi, especially at first, but she did love all in his ashrams, especially the children, and she expanded her love to her community, her country, and the world.

>> What I remember is that she was a very loving person.

♪ >> In 1913, her community needed her.

Kasturba overheard Indian women fuming over a court ruling that affected them profoundly.

>> There was a ruling by a Supreme Court judge that Indian marriages were not recognized, which meant that all the women who were married and living here were concubines, no longer wives, and that their children were illegitimate.

>> Men can leave easily.

And even in India, you know, they can get remarried or have -- but the woman is tied to him, so she has a lot more at stake.

So Kasturba says that, "Well, this is not just his marriage.

This is my marriage at stake."

>> So she asked Gandhi-ji, "Can women go to prison?"

Gandhi-ji said, "Of course."

She said... >> "Well, then I shall go to prison."

>> But Gandhi challenged her conviction.

Could she withstand the hardships of incarceration?

If not, she would bring shame upon him.

>> "You may have nothing to do with me if being unable to stand jail, I secure release by an apology.

If you can endure hardships and so can my boys, why can't I?

I am bound to join the struggle."

>> Kasturba's key concern was if she would be given vegetarian food as she was used to or would have to fast with the health risk that involved.

But Gandhi assured her that if she did fast and were to die in prison, he would celebrate and worship her as a goddess.

>> Those around him understood and knew if he said about somebody that "If you were to die or to be killed, to me it would be something to celebrate," it meant how much he loved that person.

>> The first batch of women went from Phoenix settlement led by Kasturba Gandhi.

>> She's the first woman to show up to resist.

It is very, very unusual for women to go and do passive resistance at that time.

In 1913, even in our West, women don't have the right to vote.

>> And Muslim women and Hindu women come forward.

That was again a remarkable thing.

>> And these women are from these very traditional families.

And bringing them out, I think that was the beginning of the end of women being in only domestic sphere in the Indian context.

The women were out, and once women were out, they were out.

You can't put them back in.

>> The workers begin to say, "If women can do it, why can't we?"

And so more and more people joined.

And that was when, in 1913, there was a huge demonstration.

Thousands of people marched.

Thousands of other people went on strike.

>> At the start of her three-month sentence with hard labor, unsure if fish or meat was in her food, Kasturba insisted she be given fruit and milk only.

The prison officers wouldn't allow it, so she began to fast, again unwilling to ingest meat or meat byproducts.

The jailers were shocked when she went five days without food.

>> And finally the prison officers relented and gave her the fruit, which she shared with the other people, because that was Kasturba.

>> At that stage, Gandhi-ji began to accept that women, you know, have this power.

>> Women as embodiments of nonviolence is something Gandhi was very sensitive to.

>> When Kasturba and the women were released in February 1914, Gandhi was shaken to see how emaciated Kasturba was and told her.

Supporters pulled them in a carriage with flowers throughout the streets to a meeting where a friend and a former housemate of the Gandhis pronounced... >> "This was essentially a woman's movement.

When women realize the enormous power they have, they will rise up and make their own lives and the world what they wish."

>> Later that day, Polak wired another friend of theirs in India.

>> "Mrs. Gandhi discharged prison, almost irrecognizably altered -- reduced skeleton, tottering appearance.

Old woman.

Heartbreaking sight."

>> The women's bravery was praised by Indian newspapers and politicians.

About Kasturba's leadership, one legislator in Bombay proclaimed... >> "History records the deeds of many heroines, and I feel Mrs. Gandhi will stand as one of the foremost heroines in the whole world."

>> Kasturba and her sisters in the campaign garnered Gandhi the best press in South Africa, too.

Within months, the government abolished the hated marriage ruling, as well as the other restrictions on Indian immigrants, including an onerous tax.

>> And being Kasturba on the front lines, this is very significant for her life.

>> After the campaign's sweeping success, Kasturba and Gandhi made plans to return to India, this time for good.

But just weeks before leaving, she suffered from more bleeding with acute pain.

Weakened by her jail term, she lay critically ill.

Experimenting with dietary cures, Gandhi begged her to change her diet, to abstain from salt and dried legumes, Indian staples.

She replied... >> "Never.

Even you cannot give them up."

>> "For you, I will give them up for one year."

>> Never wanting him to suffer, even when he exasperated her, she pleaded... >> "For heaven's sake, take back your vow."

>> But he would not.

This so moved Kasturba that she abstained, too, and soon improved.

But there was one more crisis before their departure.

Kasturba discovered their second son, Manilal, was having an affair with a married woman in the ashram.

The parents had their biggest row ever about who was responsible.

Kasturba passionately defended her son, while Gandhi declared he would fast for failing them both as a role model.

About Kasturba's care during the fast she opposed, he wrote... >> "Mrs. Gandhi was divine.

Immediately she realized that there was no turning me back, so she set about making my path smooth and became my ministering angel.

No other woman would have stood the changes in her husband's life as she has."

>> Kasturba could only have stood the changes in Gandhi's life if she, like he, underwent inner transformations in sync with her own soul's rhythms.

Since she was a girl growing up in Porbandar, in Mother India, her power had always come from her spiritual anchor.

>> I don't think most people can fathom what she's all about.

She's very, very deep.

♪ >> By the time they were ready to sail from South Africa, at 45, Kasturba was not just a good Hindu wife.

She was a trusted guru and full partner in Gandhi's mission.

>> So she also became a fighter for the truth that Gandhi was fighting for.

>> One farewell reception was at the Durban Town Hall, ironically where the mob had tried to lynch Gandhi when Kasturba had arrived 17 years before.

But this time, Indians and Europeans alike gathered to praise them.

Since Kasturba was not yet ready to make a public speech, Gandhi spoke for both with his characteristic humility.

>> "I do not deserve all the praise bestowed on me.

Nor does my wife claim to deserve all that had been said of her.

Many an Indian woman had done greater service during the struggle than Mrs.

Gandhi."

>> On the 18th of July, 1914, after being garlanded and thanked a final time, Kasturba and Gandhi set sail from Cape Town, South Africa, to their beloved India via England.

While there, an Indian woman poet described her in this way.

>> "She was busy and content as though she were a mere housewife and not the world-famed heroine of a hundred noble sufferings in a nation's cause.

"Mrs. Gandhi was like a bird with eager outstretched wings, longing to annihilate the time and distance that lay between her and her far-off India."

>> When the Gandhis finally landed in Bombay, Kasturba would be garlanded again and celebrated as a goddess in the Indian tradition.

One prominent politician would even proclaim that the Indian people were prouder of her than of Gandhi.

>> "For standing shoulder to shoulder with him in the fight and in the sufferings and sacrifices he was prepared to undergo."

>> She would be very surprised, extremely surprised, because she was very humble, and she always thought her role was secondary.

>> Yet, Kastur's inspiration of how to resist nonviolently had come just at the time Gandhi was creating his revolutionary methods.

>> "It was Kastur's inspiration which helped me to reach the heights of my inner self.

She was my priceless jewel."

>> When they are back in India and the South African phase is over and Gandhi's Indian phase starts, again and again, Kasturba plays a part.

>> A multitude of others around the globe would be motivated by the Gandhis' nonviolent message and methods of resistance... >> ♪ "Yeah, have hope ♪ ♪ With compassion as my shield and faith down to my marrow ♪ ♪ I will walk the path even when it gets narrow."

♪ >> With 90 major campaigns of civil resistance fought in the 20th century and 15 in the first decade of the 21st, and still, the legacy of Kasturba's lesson persists.

>> ♪ "That's why we were born ♪ ♪ We know we are the ones hat we have been waiting for.

♪ ♪ Rise up, all you warriors of love."

♪ >> It's the same inspiration that's carried on today.

If you look at India, today's ecology movements, the movements of the peasants fighting land grab, tribals fighting against their territories being taken, people fighting against mines, dams, and expansion of town, all of it is inspired by that period.

And how do you resist in a strong way nonviolently?

>> If you count civil resistance, where people are using these unarmed methods to prosecute their conflicts, we're actually seeing a dramatic rise in it.

What about their success rates?

In the aggregate, nonviolent resistance campaigns over that entire period, 1900 through 2019, about 50% of them succeeded.

And about 23% of armed campaigns succeeded.

So in the aggregate, they were twice as effective as their armed counterparts.

>> How do you deal with the violent power of violent minds and violent instruments?

Only through a higher consciousness.

That's what women are bringing.

It is the nonviolent power in creative form which is able to resist on the one hand and create alternatives on the other.

♪ >> Even after receiving adulation in Bombay, Kasturba could never have guessed that countless women would follow in her footsteps, many never knowing it, during her lifetime, in the decades since then, and now, when courage and compassion like hers are in urgent need.

>> Compassion is the very way of being, because we wouldn't have human species survive if our mothers were not compassionate to us and took care of us.

A calf is born and can run immediately.

The human species has been designed to be crippled if we are not compassionate.

>> I have been doing research on the extent of women's participation in particular, or women-identified activists on the front lines.

And we found that, basically, the higher the degree or extent of women's participation, the more likely the movements are to succeed.

[ Crowd cheering ] ♪ >> As Gandhi came to believe, women are the power, the priceless jewels needed to achieve peace and sustainability, even survival.

♪ >> [ Chanting in native language ] [ Whoops ] ♪ >> Arriving home in 1914, Kasturba was relieved to have their early turbulent years behind her.

Little did she know her journey into history was just beginning.

♪ >> You can order "Kasturba Gandhi: Accidental Activist" on DVD.

Or watch it on video on demand at our website, kasturbagandhi.org.

♪ ♪ Visit our website for further information.

And follow us on social media.

♪ Major funding for "Kasturba Gandhi: Accidental Activist" was provided by The Ravi and Naina Patel Foundation and Virginia Dixon, with archival photos and footage provided by the GandhiServe Foundation.

Additional funding by Judy and Bill Arnold and Jeanne Hoffman, with support by the following.

A full list of funders is available at APTonline.org.

[ Woman singing in native language ] ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ >> ♪ "Rise up, all you warriors of love."

♪ ♪