Mahatma controversy evokes anger, outrage

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Why is it that books on the bespectacled, dhoti-clad face of humility, Mahatma Gandhi, often come packed with colourful accusations? The just-published Great Soul: Mahatma Gandhi and His Struggle With India, talks of Gandhi being a “racist homosexual, who left his wife, Kasturba to live with a German bodybuilder”.
The biography by American author, Pulitzer-winning former New York Times executive editor, Joseph Lelyveld has outraged Indians, and may be banned in the country. “The disgraceful statement on the Father of the Nation is demeaning the nation,” Union Law Minister Veerappa Moily said recently.
Many debate whether the father of the nation should be dragged into controversies or should he be insulated from them?
Gandhi’s nephew, Tushar Gandhi says, “Westerners can’t imagine a relationship devoid of sex. Gandhi has written letters to many of his associates asking them, ‘Why haven’t you written a love letter to me in a long time?’ Does that mean that he got physical with all of them?”
“Stuff about Gandhi’s sexuality has been popping up again and again. I am afraid that there must be some semblance of truth in the allegations,” says Neeti Prasad, a student. “We never heard anything like this for any other leader. So, let’s be honest enough to look at this as a probability,” she adds.
Educationist Gazala Amin adds that living in an information era, it’s impossible to curb information of any kind. “But we have to also understand that we don’t have many role models today. And those that we have, why can’t we uphold them and preserve them, especially since Gandhi is a global figure,” she says.
Reviews of the book focus on Gandhi’s relationship with German-Jewish architect and bodybuilder Hermann Kallenbach. Gandhi lived with him in Johannesburg for two years from 1907, before returning to India in 1914.
Tushar adds, “Bapu’s life has been complete and transparent. The whole controversy is not about the book, but the reviews. The author has already refuted the allegations.”