At the peak of his nonviolent protest, Gandhi set the stage for world change through the movement for India’s independence. His peaceful civil disobedience showed the power of the citizens of India and also the power he held over them. However, how much of the peaceful facade is real?

Perhaps Gandhi’s most formidable and memorable accomplishment was changing the racial discrimination toward Indians, but the same cannot be said about the Africans. As it seems, his concern only included the natives of his birthplace, not those with whom he lived. He was often mentioned to have called the natives of Africa “Raw Kaffir,” a derogatory term considered far worse than the N-word.

Gandhi went as far as to offer a brigade of Indians to aid the English colonial rulers in stomping out an African rebellion. The history books also fail to mention that because of his efforts in assisting the violent oppression of the South Africans, he was awarded the British Imperial War Medal.

Although history books and his cinematic biography depict Gandhi as pious and devotedly chaste, this is reportedly untrue. Textbooks leave out the accounts of young female followers, or even his family members, fighting each other for the honor of sleeping naked with Gandhi or giving him nude massages daily. This was his way of testing their moral fortitude to remain abstinent.

This attitude was vastly different than the way in which he treated his wife, about whom he wrote, “I simply cannot bear to look at Ba’s face. The expression is often like that on the face of a meek cow and gives one the feeling as a cow occasionally does — that in her own dump manner, she is saying something.”

Furthermore, when Ba fell ill with pneumonia, Gandhi refused to accept the British medical help with her illness, something that could have easily been fixed with a shot of penicillin. He steadfastly refused to have “alien” medicine injected into her. Ba died soon after. After her death, Gandhi was stricken with malaria. Unlike his wife, Gandhi gladly accepted the British medicine that he had denied his wife.

So, the next time you wish to praise the “Father of India” for his piety and unending concern for others, remember how he treated his own followers. Gandhi manipulated followers by using them for sex and refusing to educate children. He denied medicine to even his most loyal followers and treated Africans the same way as the British treated the Indians he worked so hard to free.