DISCIPLE OF GANDHI

Dominion, Volume 23, Issue 104, 27 January 1930, Page 11

DISCIPLE OF GANDHI

ENGLISHWOMAN ADOPTS HINDUISM s MISS SLADE INTERVIEWED London, January 24. "I am as happy as any woman In the world,” said Miss Slade, known as “Mira Bel,” in an interview with Mr. C. J. Ketchum. “I feel neither a stranger nor in a strange land, but rather I feel I have left the night behind and emerged into the day.” Mr. Ketchum found her in a tiny hutment, squatting on the floor spinning. Four and a half years ago a beautiful dark young Englishwoman submitted herself to the Hindu discipline, and took Ghandi as her master. Mira Bel rises daily at four in the morning, and remains at prayer till five. Then, after a bathe in the Holy River, she toils at the spinning wheel through the heat of the day till seven in the evening, when she goes to prayer, and then to sleep. “That’s where I sleep,” she said, pointing- to a cot at the riverside, under the stars, “and there beyond the fence, fifteen feet away, Mahatma Ghandi sleeps. We would both prefer the bare ground, but for snakes and cobras.” Asked if she had forsaken the idea of marriage, she replied that, she had taken a double vow of both mental and physical celibacy for life.

Then, as she parted, with a handshake, while the bell rang for evening prayer, she said wistfully, “You won’t say anything unkind about me, will you? You’ll tell the truth.”