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The Spirit's Pilgrimage
The autobiography of Madeleine Slade, a young English woman who renounced her heritage of privilege to become, as Mirabehn, the intimate and trusted disciple of Mahatma Gandhi.
- GenresAutobiography
319 pages, Paperback
First published August 1, 1984
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
August 20, 2013
A remarkable autobiography of a strongly individualistic woman who left England in the 1920’s to be with Gandhi in India. Even her upbringing in England was out of the ordinary. She was from the upper classes, but was definitely not of them. If she had complied with her lineage she would have married a fellow from the upper class milieu and raised children. Instead she followed her own temperament. Throughout her life she was always attracted to animals and nature. In her teenage years she heard Beethoven’s music from a piano and immersed herself in examining the life of the great German composer. She journeyed to continental Europe and met Romain Rolland who wrote several volumes on the life of Beethoven. He also wrote a dissertation on Gandhi and this is what prompted Ms. Slade into yet another direction.
At the age of 33, Ms. Slade left England to be with Gandhi in an ashram. She became a vegetarian and devoted her life to him.
This autobiography describes her life in India at a grassroots level. It is not a political biography, although we do get an overall view from time to time. She befriends several of Gandhi’s colleagues including his wife Ba. She worked on various projects in the agricultural area where her love of animals and nature is constantly visible. She is often absent from Gandhi for long periods of time. She learned to weave and spent time in jail.
During this time she never disengaged herself from her family and was saddened at the death of her parents and her only sister. She contracted malaria several times and was bed-ridden. Ms. Slade was a searcher and her life journey extraordinary. She lived to the age of 90 and died in Vienna. There is an excellent introduction (in my edition) by Barbara Grizutti Harrison.
At the age of 33, Ms. Slade left England to be with Gandhi in an ashram. She became a vegetarian and devoted her life to him.
This autobiography describes her life in India at a grassroots level. It is not a political biography, although we do get an overall view from time to time. She befriends several of Gandhi’s colleagues including his wife Ba. She worked on various projects in the agricultural area where her love of animals and nature is constantly visible. She is often absent from Gandhi for long periods of time. She learned to weave and spent time in jail.
During this time she never disengaged herself from her family and was saddened at the death of her parents and her only sister. She contracted malaria several times and was bed-ridden. Ms. Slade was a searcher and her life journey extraordinary. She lived to the age of 90 and died in Vienna. There is an excellent introduction (in my edition) by Barbara Grizutti Harrison.
August 5, 2019
Mirabehn was a British-born close associate of Mohandas Gandhi, working with him from 1925 until the end of his life. She was not just a secretary or assistant, but a diplomatic adviser and project manager. On occasion she was even sent by Gandhi to represent him in negotiations with British officials. She stayed on in India until 1959, continuing her work to improve the lives of the poor.
As a young adult, she had been told by a mentor that Gandhi was "another Christ," and from then on her mind was made up to go and work for him. Her dedication was rock-solid, as it required her to face a much harder life than she would have had at home in England: stressful political situations and imprisonment, extremely hot humid climate, poor sanitation, typhoid and repeated bouts of malaria, living in mud huts with scorpions and ticks, hard daily physical labor, language and cultural barriers, etc. She was tough, too--after all this, she lived to be nearly 90! This is her story in her own words, told as though the reader was sitting in front of her, and builds a solid on-the-ground foundation under other more philosophical commentaries about Gandhi and his work.
As a young adult, she had been told by a mentor that Gandhi was "another Christ," and from then on her mind was made up to go and work for him. Her dedication was rock-solid, as it required her to face a much harder life than she would have had at home in England: stressful political situations and imprisonment, extremely hot humid climate, poor sanitation, typhoid and repeated bouts of malaria, living in mud huts with scorpions and ticks, hard daily physical labor, language and cultural barriers, etc. She was tough, too--after all this, she lived to be nearly 90! This is her story in her own words, told as though the reader was sitting in front of her, and builds a solid on-the-ground foundation under other more philosophical commentaries about Gandhi and his work.
August 9, 2025
This is an absolutely extraordinary memoir. The story of the Indian independence movement is one of the great epics of the twentieth century - a nation escaping a tyrannical empire to become the world's largest democracy - and Madeleine Slade has a unique perspective on these events.
After a quintessentially privileged upper-middle class English upbringing, Slade reads Romain Rolland's biography of Gandhi in the 1920s and decides to drop everything and move to India to devote herself to him. She serves Gandhi and his various causes unceasingly for more than 20 years, enduring bitter repression and long jail time, but ultimately witnessing the dawn of a free India. Gandhi calls her Mirabehn, "Sister Mira".
Two things are really striking to me. The first is how little introspection there is. Slade was absorbed in action for over two decades and describes the events in detail, but her hopes, fears and misgivings (if any) stay mostly private. What drove her to take that huge risk of moving to India? How did she feel when her parents and then her sister died while she was away? Her inner life remains an enigma. Slade appears to have felt that, to serve Gandhi well, she had to repress her own feelings and dissolve completely into duty.
The second is that Gandhi never makes full use of her abilities. He is not free of the assumptions about women that pervaded both Western and Indian society at that time. He sees her as well suited to teaching villagers to spin cotton. She proves her mettle for political work through speaking tours of the UK and US, but Gandhi still does not involve her in decision making. She asks permission to go to Czechoslovakia to lead nonviolent resistance to Hitler, but Gandhi instead sends her to teach spinning in the North West Frontier Province.
Slade constantly asks to do more and, in 1942, Gandhi sends her to Delhi to liaise with the British high command. This puts her right on the frontline of the Quit India Movement, for a moment. But the British suddenly arrest the whole Congress leadership, Slade among them, before they have time to begin any negotiations. Gandhi and his closest aides are locked up together, bizarrely, in the Aga Khan Palace in Poona: a gilded cage. Here Slade witnesses the deaths from natural causes of Gandhi’s closest aide, Mahadev Desai, and his wife Kasturba.
After jail, Slade moves to Uttarakhand to set up her own ashram. Following Gandhi’s assassination in 1948, she seeks to keep alive her own interpretation of Gandhi’s ideals through agricultural reform programs. There was no official "Gandhism" and Gandhi always disdained the idea that there might be. Different followers were free to pick up different threads of his thinking. For Slade, the idea of the self-sufficient village (village self-rule, or "gram swaraj") is the most important idea. Her vision of self-sufficiency is heavily reliant on cattle, which I find a little ironic, since Gandhi himself was critical of dairy farming and tried to cut out milk from his diet on at least four occasions. Without sustained financial backing, these reform programs go nowhere, sadly, but they bear some resemblance to the "Zero Budget Natural Farming" program that is starting to take off 80 years later.
When thinking about Slade's life, the phrase "right side of history" often comes to mind. Many in Britain could see that the Raj was wrong, but very few dedicated their lives to ending it. That ability to commit totally to your ideals - even when they pit you against the coercive machine of the vast empire you were born into - is deeply admirable.
After a quintessentially privileged upper-middle class English upbringing, Slade reads Romain Rolland's biography of Gandhi in the 1920s and decides to drop everything and move to India to devote herself to him. She serves Gandhi and his various causes unceasingly for more than 20 years, enduring bitter repression and long jail time, but ultimately witnessing the dawn of a free India. Gandhi calls her Mirabehn, "Sister Mira".
Two things are really striking to me. The first is how little introspection there is. Slade was absorbed in action for over two decades and describes the events in detail, but her hopes, fears and misgivings (if any) stay mostly private. What drove her to take that huge risk of moving to India? How did she feel when her parents and then her sister died while she was away? Her inner life remains an enigma. Slade appears to have felt that, to serve Gandhi well, she had to repress her own feelings and dissolve completely into duty.
The second is that Gandhi never makes full use of her abilities. He is not free of the assumptions about women that pervaded both Western and Indian society at that time. He sees her as well suited to teaching villagers to spin cotton. She proves her mettle for political work through speaking tours of the UK and US, but Gandhi still does not involve her in decision making. She asks permission to go to Czechoslovakia to lead nonviolent resistance to Hitler, but Gandhi instead sends her to teach spinning in the North West Frontier Province.
Slade constantly asks to do more and, in 1942, Gandhi sends her to Delhi to liaise with the British high command. This puts her right on the frontline of the Quit India Movement, for a moment. But the British suddenly arrest the whole Congress leadership, Slade among them, before they have time to begin any negotiations. Gandhi and his closest aides are locked up together, bizarrely, in the Aga Khan Palace in Poona: a gilded cage. Here Slade witnesses the deaths from natural causes of Gandhi’s closest aide, Mahadev Desai, and his wife Kasturba.
After jail, Slade moves to Uttarakhand to set up her own ashram. Following Gandhi’s assassination in 1948, she seeks to keep alive her own interpretation of Gandhi’s ideals through agricultural reform programs. There was no official "Gandhism" and Gandhi always disdained the idea that there might be. Different followers were free to pick up different threads of his thinking. For Slade, the idea of the self-sufficient village (village self-rule, or "gram swaraj") is the most important idea. Her vision of self-sufficiency is heavily reliant on cattle, which I find a little ironic, since Gandhi himself was critical of dairy farming and tried to cut out milk from his diet on at least four occasions. Without sustained financial backing, these reform programs go nowhere, sadly, but they bear some resemblance to the "Zero Budget Natural Farming" program that is starting to take off 80 years later.
When thinking about Slade's life, the phrase "right side of history" often comes to mind. Many in Britain could see that the Raj was wrong, but very few dedicated their lives to ending it. That ability to commit totally to your ideals - even when they pit you against the coercive machine of the vast empire you were born into - is deeply admirable.
January 31, 2015
I have heard that this book is an account of the life of Mirabehn, one of Gandhi's British disciples. I am very excited to read about how a privileged daughter of a British admiral can leave everything behind and devote herself to this great man.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews