Madeleine Slade

Madeleine Slade (born November 22, 1892 ; died July 20, 1982 ), also known as Mirabehn or Meera Behn , was a British woman who left Great Britain to live and work with Mohandas Gandhi , leader of the Indian independence movement. She devoted her life to human development and the advancement of Gandhi's principles. She was the daughter of British Rear Admiral Sir Edmond Slade.

Early life

Mirabehn was born in 1892 into an aristocratic British family. Her father, Sir Edmond Slade, an officer in the Royal Navy, was Commander-in-Chief of the East India Squadron during Mirabehn's early life and later became Director of the British Naval Intelligence Division.

She spent much of her childhood with her maternal grandfather, who owned a spacious country estate, and was connected to nature and animals from a young age.

The other great passion of the young Mirabehn was the music of Ludwig van Beethoven . She was interested in piano and concerts and even became a concert manager. In 1921 she also organized a German conductor to conduct the London Orchestra at concerts in which Beethoven's pieces were played. She helped bring about the end of the British boycott that had existed against German musicians since the end of the First World War.

She also visited Vienna and Germany to visit the places where Beethoven had lived and composed his music, and extensively studied reading about him. She read Romain Rolland's books on Beethoven and later visited him in Villeneuve, where he was living at the time. During that meeting, Rolland mentioned his new book on Mahatma Gandhi, which she had not read before. Rolland described Gandhi as the second Christ and the greatest figure of the 20th century.

On her return to England she read Rolland's biography Gandhi and the book convinced her to become a student of Mahatma. She wrote to Gandhi and asked him if she could become his student and live with him in the Sabarmati Ashram . Gandhi answered her, invited her, but also warned her about the discipline of the ashram residents. She had made her decision and was beginning to prepare for the demands of an ascetic life in India, which included vegetarianism, spinning with a spinning wheel, and abstinence from alcohol. That year she subscribed to Young India in England and spent time in Paris reading the Bhagavad Gita and part of the Rig Veda in French.

Life in India and role in the struggle for independence

Slade arrived in Ahmedabad on November 7, 1925, where she was received by Mahadev Desai, Vallabhbhai Patel and Swami Anand. That was the beginning of her stay in India, which lasted almost 34 years. During her time in India, Mirabehn attended Gurukul Kangri University to learn Hindi. Then she went to the Bhagwat Bhakti Ashram in Rewari, founded by Swami Parmanand Maharaj, to be blessed by him. She also wrote to Mahatma Gandhi and shared her experiences at the Bhagwat Bhakti Ashram.

Mirabehn's stay in India coincided with the climax of the Gandhian phase of the independence struggle. She accompanied Gandhi and others to the 1931 Round Table Conference in London. On the way back from London Mirabehn and Gandhi visited Rolland for a week and when they said goodbye Rolland gave her a book about Beethoven that he had written while she was in India. In 1960 she started reading the book and reading it convinced her to move to Austria and spend the rest of the days in the land of Beethoven's music. The resumption of the non-cooperation campaign in 1931 resulted in her being imprisoned from 1932 to 1933.

She also went abroad to stand up for India and met, among others, David Lloyd George , General Smuts and Winston Churchill . She also visited the United States, where she met Eleanor Roosevelt at the White House. At the beginning of 1942 Mirabehn was also involved in the establishment of the Sevagram Ashram and worked with the people of Orissa to resist a possible invasion of Japan without violence. She was arrested with Gandhi in the Aga Khan Palace and held from 1942 to 1944. There she saw the deaths of Mahadev Desai and Kasturba Gandhi . She also witnessed the Simla Conference and Cabinet Mission, the Transitional Government and the Constituent Assembly, the separation of India and the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi.

Life in India after independence

After she was released from the Aga Khan Palace, with Gandhi's permission, she established the Kisan Ashram in a village called Mooldaspur majra near Roorkee. The land was donated by the local villagers. After independence, she established the Pashulok Ashram near Rishikesh and a branch called Bapu Gram and in 1952 the Gopal Ashram in Bhilangana. In these ashrams she experimented with dairy farming and agriculture and also spent some time in Kashmir. During her time in Kumaon and Garhwal, she observed the destruction of the forests there and the effects it had on the flooding of the plains. She wrote about this in an essay called Something Wrong in the Himalaya. (German: Something is wrong in the Himalayas.), but their advice was ignored by the forest authorities. In the 1980s there was a major Gandhian environmental campaign called the Chipko Movement in these areas to save the forests. One of their collaborators was the Hindu philosopher Ram Swarup .

Old age in Austria

She returned to England in 1959. In the 1960s she moved to Austria for her love of Ludwig van Beethoven's music and spent twenty-two years in small villages in the Vienna Woods , where she died in 1982.

Awards

• 1981 Padma Vibhushan

Publications

• At the side of the Mahatma. In the closest circle of Gandhi. The Spirit's Pilgrimage. translated by Harald Gardos, Sensen-Verlag, Vienna 1970.

Web links

Commons : Madeleine Slade  - Collection of images, videos and audio files