Word: brahmacharya
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...after her death realized she was "the warp and woof of my life." At 36, convinced that sex was the basis of all impulses that must be mastered if man was to reach Truth, he renounced it. An aspirant to a godly life must observe the Hindu practice of Brahmacharya, or celibacy, as a means of self-control and a way to devote all energy to public service. Gandhi spent years testing his self-discipline by sleeping beside young women. He evidently cared little about any psychological damage to the women involved. He also expected his four sons...
Forever scarred by the knowledge that, as a 16-year-old youth, he'd been making love to his wife Kasturba at the moment of his father's death, Gandhi later forswore sexual relations but went on into his old age with what he called his "brahmacharya experiments," during which naked young women would be asked to lie with him all night so that he could prove that he had mastered his physical urges. (He believed that total control over his "vital fluids" would enhance his spiritual powers...
...Y.M.C.A. Method. Chandrasekhar agrees with critics that India's birth control efforts have been snarled by red tape and hurt by wishful thinking, such as his spinster predecessor's plea for brahmacharya (monklike abstinence). Nor does he place his hopes on any single method to defuse India's population time bomb. While other experts have alternatively argued for the intrauterine loop, sterilization or the pill, Chandrasekhar recognizes that none alone can provide the answer; popular fears of the loop and surgery bear him out. Instead, he vigorously favors a "cafeteria approach," giving Indians the widest choice...
...vast propaganda drive that it needs, however, a mere $1,330,000 has been budgeted. So uncertain is the trumpet for birth control in India that the official most responsible for selling the urgency of contraceptives-Health and Family Planning Minister Sushila Nayar-believes that the best approach is brahmacharya, monklike abstinence...
Gandhi, who has described himself as "a lustful but faithful husband" until he vowed complete celibacy at the age of 37, requires all married couples visiting his "hermitage" to practice his preaching of Brahmacharya (sexual continence) as a preparation for public service. But few of India's 389 millions, who produce approximately 18 million babies a year, have embraced his kind of marriage as a permanent thing...
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