# Sabarmati Ashram vows impose patriarchal household rules as public discipline

Date: 1915

## The fact

When Sabarmati Ashram was established in 1915, Gandhi’s vow-list — truth, celibacy, control of the palate, non-possession — became a household constitution that placed him as moral legislator over women residents including Kasturba. Later sex experiments are a distinct Fact.

## Context

An ashram can be a political seminary and a gendered enclosure. Medium confidence on welfare size; high on the vows existing as public rules.

[Mahatma Gandhi](/people/mahatma-gandhi) is not the sole author of every later object, law, or museum label that uses the name. Shared work with courts, excavators, printers, spouses, officials, and later states does not erase a documented role, and it does not make an ancient person the signer of a twentieth-century statute.

## Evidence and sources

Official archival, ashram, or government pages and an independent publisher independently describe this instrument.

Official or archival record: Sabarmati Ashram official site (https://gandhiashramsabarmati.org/; Sabarmati Ashram).

## Significance

A vow is not a penal code. Do not write a unique domestic-violence statistic from the rule-list alone.

A vow is not a penal code. Do not write a unique domestic-violence statistic from the rule-list alone.

## What is established and what is not

Established as a dated public record of this instrument.

What would change the picture: a contradictory original with a different date or name, or a measured series that can be argued, with lag and alternatives, as a consequence of this instrument rather than of later institutions.

The date is the date of this instrument, not a licence to back-date every later harm or benefit.
Later competitions, monuments, translations, UNESCO listings, and museums are not converted into extra lifetime acts. The attached driver is [protection-of-minority-rights](/drivers/protection-of-minority-rights). The welfare reading used in this dossier is worsening. That reading is an impact-path choice, not a property stored on the Fact itself. Confidence is stated on the impact path. A later English edition is not a recovered autograph. If a number is not in the two records named above, it is not supplied here.

## People

- Mahatma Gandhi: https://factrail.ai/people/mahatma-gandhi

## Drivers

- Protection of Minority Rights: https://factrail.ai/drivers/protection-of-minority-rights

## Sources

- https://www.mkgandhi.org/autobio/autobio.htm
- https://gandhiashramsabarmati.org/

## Methodology

https://factrail.ai/methodology

Canonical: https://factrail.ai/facts/ga-ashram-gender-rules