Every October 2, on Mahatma Gandhi’s birth anniversary, the country pays tribute. Maybe it is also time to honour the woman who stood by him through all the tribulations of the freedom struggle. Gandhi involved her in the movement, and she proved to be a true companion.

In her time, women were expected to stay home and look after the family; people do not even know the names of the wives of the other leaders at the forefront of the fight for independence. Kasturba Gandhi did not fade away into the background—partly because of her husband’s reformist zeal, but also because of her own courage. It is a belated testimony to her indomitable personality, that the net lists her as “Indian political activist ‧ Mahatma Gandhi's wife” and not the other way round.

Kasturba Kapadia’s family arranged her match with Mohandas, the son of a family friend; they were both seven when they were engaged and 13 when they were married. In keeping with the tradition at the time, she stayed at her parents home for a few years, leaving the adolescent husband pining for her (he wrote as much over the years of prolific writing).

Like many young women then, she was not totally subservient to her husband. On the mkgandhi.org site, historian Vinay Lal has been quoted: “Kasturba never acceded to her husband's wishes easily, and Gandhi's autobiography itself furnishes are remarkable testimony to her tenacity and independence of judgement, and the sharp disagreements she came to have with him when, in the first two decades of their marriage, he unreasonably sought to bring her under his control.”

Kasturba became pregnant when she was just 17 and lost her first child. Soon after their second son, Harilal, was born, Gandhi decided to go to London, while Kasturba remained in India. It must have been a difficult time for her, but it was also the fate of many women whose husbands migrated for work or education, leaving the wives to fend for themselves.

After a few years in South Africa, Kasturba and her children joined Gandhi there. It was there that Gandhi — after that oft-repeated incident of being thrown off the train — felt the first stirrings of a political protest and started the movement for the rights of the Indian community in the Phoenix Settlement near Durban, where they lived. It was also the time for the uneducated Kasturba to find her leadership abilities.

In the era of apartheid in South Africa, a legal ruling that denied recognition of non-Christian marriages, which would have rendered many Hindu and Muslim marriages illegal, Gandhi decided to launch a protest movement against this decree, an unfair tax on indentured labourers and the forced registration of immigrants. Since women were the direct victims of the marriage decree, they volunteered to join the struggle, and Kasturba led, despite her ill health. She and three other women crossed the Transvaal border without permits, were arrested and sentenced to three months of hard labour. Later other female protesters were also arrested and imprisoned. Kasturba helped them keep their spirits up with prayer, and also encouraged educated women to teach the unlettered to read and write.

From all accounts, she was gentle, yet authoritative. She had a mind and will of her own, but also supported her husband’s decisions. The incident when Gandhi made her clean chamber pots, to prove that no task was too menial, has been written about widely. She was unhappy about Gandhi’s strict treatment of their sons — which led to Harilal’s very public and tragic estrangement from his father — but she accepted his reasons for his behaviour. When, in 1906, Gandhi took a vow of chastity, she silenced others who suggested that he was being unjust towards her. In his biography Gandhi wrote, “She was very obstinate. In spite of all my pressure she would do as she wished. This led to short or long periods of estrangement between us. But as my public life expanded, my wife bloomed forth and deliberately lost herself in my work.”

When Gandhi returned to India, to galvanise the Independence movement against the British, Kasturba was by his side in his satyagraha, working for the welfare of women, wherever Gandhi travelled; she marched alongside him in his many civil disobedience campaigns, swadeshi, anti-caste and anti-liquor movements and was arrested several times.

According to the mkgandhi.org site, When the Quit India movement began gaining ground Gandhi was imprisoned before he could address a public meeting in Shivaji Park. Gandhi wanted Kasturba to take his place. Sensing that the police would stop her and imprison her too, historian Aparna Basu says: She, therefore, dictated to Sushila Nayar her message for the public. “Gandhiji poured out his heart to you for two hours at the All India Congress Committee meeting last night. What can I add to that? All that remains for us is to live up to his ideals. The women of India have to prove their mettle. They should all join in this struggle, regardless of caste or creed. Truth and nonviolence must be our watchwords.” She was stopped on the way to the meeting, there were one lakh people in the park that day and they went wild with enthusiasm when they saw her but she was taken prisoner and sent to the Arthur Road Prison in Bombay. Kasturba said to Sushila, “I have a feeling I will not come out alive.” The cell she was put in was dirty and she fell ill. After a few days she was removed to Aga Khan Palace in Poona where Gandhi was detained. This was to be her last prison sentence.

After 62 years of marriage, Gandhi said, “I cannot imagine life without Ba.”

Gandhi wrote about her, “If anything she stood above me. But for her unfailing co-operation I might have been in the abyss... She helped me to keep wide awake and true to my vows. She stood by me in all my political fights and never hesitated to take the plunge. In the current sense of the word, she was uneducated; but to my mind she was a model of true education. She was a devoted Vaishnav. But she had obliterated all feelings of caste from her mind and regarded a Harijan girl with no less affection than her own children. She personified the Kasturba Gandhi ideal of which Narsimha Mehta has sung in Vaishnavajana hymn. There were occasions when I was engaged in a grim wrestle with death. During my Aga Khan Palace fast, I literally came out of the death's jaws. But she shed not a tear, never lost hope or courage but prayed to God with all her soul.”

It is futile to speculate on what her life would have been like if, like the other wives, she had stayed out of the public eye. Kasturba took the difficult — and, for the times, unheard of — choice of stepping into political and social activism alongside her husband.

A few books and a play have been written about her, but her voice is seldom heard — she is always seen through the prism of other people's opinions, through her husband's writings, and biographies of him by other writers. What if she had been able to write her own thoughts and experiences? It would have made for a fascinating portrait of a woman who walked in her husband's shadow, but was not smothered by it.

Deepa Gahlot is a Mumbai-based columnist, critic and author