The lie in libel

“Where Modesty is eloquent,
Humility is drama...”
From Pale Shrieks
by Bachchoo

The law of all countries that respect freedom of speech says that you can’t libel the dead. The law of libel, of which I became aware when working for television, rather than through legal study, in the UK is intended to prevent causing someone harm or distress by questioning or ruining their reputation. This remains true even if the denigration of the person’s character or a description of their behaviour happens to be true.

Exposure of a private individual’s foibles, misdemeanours, ridiculous or questionable habits or tastes are not fair game unless it can be proved that the exposure is in the public interest. So the behaviour of politicians and people who presumably, being in the public eye, are considered to have some public responsibility can be probed and exposed. Wanna be a celebrity? Take the flak, you’re stupid enough to be fair game!
If a private individual, for instance, uses prostitutes and a newspaper publishes the fact and thereby ruins his marriage and his business, that’s libel. If the deputy chair of the Conservative Party, such as Jeffrey Archer was, is exposed as using prostitutes, that’s not.
In a democracy the public good is up for constant debate. It is obvious that if a parliamentarian buys votes, the exposure of that fact is good and necessary. If a person entrusted with running a public fund or event sidelines the money set aside for it or takes bribes that too is more than worthy of exposure as it’s criminal activity. No argument.
In India though, where the sacred overlaps with the profane, there seems to be a grey area or even a contradicting confusion about the distinction between libel and blasphemy. Some national figures, some dead and some alive, are presumed to be beyond unfavourable comment because they’ve achieved the status of saints.
Some years ago I wrote a film called The Rising, also known as Mangal Pandey, about the first mutineer in the 1857 Uprising in the East Indian Company army. On the release of the film some litigants sought to sue the producers for bringing a national hero into disrepute. They claimed direct descent from and so a family connection with Mangal Pandey. Denigrating him would denigrate them. The fact that Mangal had been dead for a 150 years should have prevented any such case being filed, but the law in India seems to be flexible and their case was admitted, heard and dismissed. The producers, it was deemed, in an extremely eloquent long and even literary judgment, had no case to answer.
That was Mangal Pandey. But what of living souls of a certain notoriety? A year and some ago I wrote a novel called The Bikini Murders. Its central character was called Johnson Thaat. When it was published, Charles Sobhraj who is, rightly or wrongly, serving a life sentence in a Kathmandu jail, and his French lawyer considered that I had libelled Sobhraj. There is no hiding the fact that my acquaintance with Charles supplied me with suggestions for the life patterns of a fictional serial murderer, but I really don’t know if or how Charles Sobhraj himself murdered anyone. That’s best left to the courts and not to writers of fiction to decide.
Nevertheless both Charles and his lawyer appeared on TV and threatened to sue me (how do Indian TV journalists get into a Kathmandu jail? I demand a parliamentary enquiry!). I don’t know if a convicted murderer can argue that a book of fiction has brought him into disrepute. I suspect the case for libel won’t be filed and, yes, I constantly watch my back.
And now a book that alleges that Mahatma Gandhi was bisexual is in the process of being banned from India. For the reasons that I feel the law of libel should be followed to the letter and that I feel Gandhiji can be acknowledged as a Mahatma but shouldn’t be mythologised and sainted, I don’t agree with the ban. I do, however, understand the sentiment that impels it.
When I was in my teens my father overheard me in a heated discussion with Marxising friends about nationalism in which I said “Gandhi... etc.” My father, an Army officer, uninterested in the argument, approached me frowning.
“You! In this house you say ‘Gandhiji’ or ‘Mahatma Gandhi’ or get out!”
I don’t feel the lesson in respect should extend to American writers. Joseph Lelyveld’s book Great Soul: Mahatma Gandhi and His Struggle With India quotes the correspondence between Gandhi (he was in South Africa and wasn’t “Mahatma” yet!) and his German friend Hermann Kallenbach. The prose is Victorian/Edwardian and overblown: “Your portrait (the only one) stands on my mantelpiece... the corns, cotton wool and Vaseline are a constant reminder”.
And then again “how completely you have taken possession of my body... this is slavery with a vengeance”. Gandhi writes to him later after they form a “contract” by which Gandhi enjoins Kallenbach to “promise not to look lustfully upon any woman”. The two then pledge “more love, and yet more love... such love as we hope the world has not yet seen”.
Apart from the conventions of the prose of the time, there are two elements that Lelyveld may have overlooked. The first is the Sufiesque expression of unchained and intense “love” which need not take any physical form but is expressed physically to denote even a divine devotion. Compare for instance, Rumi’s poetic declarations to Shams-u-Tabriz.
Secondly, Gandhiji imposed several disciplines on himself believing that sexual attractions were distracting from moral purpose and that sexual activity was in some sense sapping moral intent. He certainly believed that abstinence was the path to rectitude and perhaps in that context urges celibacy on his friend Kallenbach.
I don’t know what the corn, cotton and vaseline are about — but honi soit qui mal y pense.
As for India banning the book I can’t see why the American or foreign public should have material available to them which Indians are denied. Surely Indians, most concerned about and most acquainted with Gandhiji’s works and character are best equipped to query, comment on, criticise or refute Lelyveld’s contentions or interpretations?