India-Forums.TV

[aryan]

Mahatma Gandhi never ceases to fascinate. Despite the collected works of Gandhi running into some 90 volumes, writers continue to churn out books on him. And if there's one thing about Gandhi that continues to excite his biographers and stoke controversy, it's his sexuality.

The latest biography of Gandhi, ''Great Soul: Mahatma Gandhi and His Struggle with India'' by former New York Times editor Joseph Lelyveld, sheds light on Gandhi's complicated relationship with Hermann Kallenbach, a compatriot in South Africa.

In what is otherwise an admiring biography, it's the bit about Gandhi's correspondence with Kallenbach that has been picked up and headlined by a British tabloid. Reviewing the book Daily Mail has concluded that Gandhi was bisexual and left his wife to live with a German-Jewish bodybuilder.

Lelyveld quotes Gandhi's letter to Kallenbach where he wrote, ''Your portrait (the only one) stands on my mantelpiece in my bedroom. The mantelpiece is opposite to the bed.'' Another time he wrote to Kallenbach about ''how completely you have taken possession of my body. This is slavery with a vengeance.''

Lelyveld has, however, denied to TOI that he intended making any insinuations about Gandhi's sexuality.

Gandhi's attitude to sex and relationships has always provided grist to the mill. Last year, Jad Adam's ''Gandhi: Naked Ambition'' played up Gandhi's experiments with sex. In particular, it focused on Gandhi's practice of putting his purity to the test by sleeping with young women.

Yet another book, ''Going Native'' by Thomas Weber, which has just hit bookstores, looks at Gandhi's complicated relationship with Western women.

Indeed, Gandhi's sexuality disturbed many, including his followers, during his lifetime. Nirmal Bose, a Gandhian who broke with the Mahatma and later authored ''My Days With Gandhi'', wrote that his sexual experiments left a mark on others who were not of the same moral stature. Gandhi had replied to his critics by saying, ''If I don't let Manu (his grand-niece) sleep with me, though I regard it as essential that she should, wouldn't that be a sign of weakness in me?''

The truth is that Gandhi had too many angularities to box him as the Indian state and many of his followers have sought to. Besides he was brutally frank about all aspects of his life, including his sexual peculiarities. That's why he still retains the ability to shock middle class opinion.