Revolt of a Doormat

Among the great fads of the 1920s were Dr. Emile Coue, mah-jongg, and Jiddu Krishnamurti. The most serious of these was Krishnamurti, a long-haired young Indian seer whom Bernard Shaw once called the most beautiful human being he had ever seen. The Theosophist Annie Besant* had adopted Krishnamurti, and was freely predicting that he would be a new messiah. He was more modest. "I may or may not be the second Christ--I don't know," he once said. "I don't want people to look up to me, to worship me. Most people are dumb, anyway."

Bunkum & Nonsense. Almost as if to prove it, thousands of disciples--mostly women--used to gather to listen to his lectures on "truth and love." Reverent old women and awe-struck businessmen would crowd around him to touch his hand or coat. Two years ago, close to 50 and still handsome, Krishnamurti returned to India and relative obscurity, still lecturing with the help of a few wealthy followers. Last week he was in the news again, involved in one of India's rare cases of marital dissolution.

After nearly ten years of marriage, the wife of a Bombay textile millionaire, Bhagvandas Chunilal Mehta, asked for a legal separation. She testified that Mehta beat her, locked up her medicines and used insulting language. Then Mehta took the stand with his side of the story. His wife had become a disciple of Krishnamurti. She had heard him call the sacred Hindu wedding verses "bunkum and nonsense." At another lecture Krishnamurti said to the males in the audience: "Do you know what your relationship with your wife is? We all know this relationship--sex nagging, bullying, dominating, the superficial responses of marriage . . . If you are dominant and you make her a doormat, you say: I am happily married."

As a result of listening to such teaching, Mrs. Mehta's attitude toward her husband had changed sharply. "Before, she was always strong, but good," said Mehta. "Afterwards . . . she became aggressive. I trusted my wife completely, but I did not know what Krishnamurti was up to . . . I had come to the conclusion that under the guise of teaching, Krishnamurti was running after my wife."

Resentment & Rupture. Declaring that her eyes had been opened by Krishnamurti's teachings, Mrs. Mehta had told her husband she would live a celibate life, and had moved into the dressing room. Judge Eric Weston (one of the few remaining Britons on India's bench) denied Mrs. Mehta's petition. He dryly observed: "I do not think there is any room for doubt that the teachings [of Krishnamurti] suggesting revolt of the wife from her doormat position must have had their effect upon her mind . . . This led to her refusal to carry on marital relations with her husband, which must have caused considerable resentment. Final rupture was the inevitable result of a situation which was largely of her own creation."

*In her pre-Krishnamurti days, Mrs. Besant was converted to socialism by Bernard Shaw. A warm friendship on the lecture platform and over piano duets led to talk of marriage, but since Mrs. Besant was still legally married, she suggested instead a detailed, written contract of cohabitation, which Shaw rejected with "Good God! This is worse than all the vows of all the churches on earth. I had rather be legally married to you ten times over."

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