New Book Raises Question: Was Gandhi Gay?

More than six decades after his death, Mahatma Gandhi remains a polarizing figure—either revered or despised. So the arrival of a new book on him is a chance for those with well-formed unflattering opinions of Gandhi to trot out all his trespasses, as those on the other end of the spectrum leap to his defense.

Which is exactly what they did in reactions to a new book by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Joseph Lelyveld "Great Soul: Mahatma Gandhi and His Struggle With India," officially out in the U.S. on Tuesday.

Of course, it's not often a book on Gandhi—even the many revisionist books, plays and films that have come out in recent years and that have highlighted his unkindness to his wife, his remoteness as a father and his odd ways of testing his sexual self-control—has suggested that he might have been gay, or at least had one gay relationship.

The book, published in the U.S. by Knopf, part of Random House Inc., is not yet available in India. A local bookstore said the book was to be released by Random House in India, though a date hadn't yet been set. But a spokeswoman for Random House India said the company didn't have the India rights and could provide no further information. For now, readers in India will have to be content with what they can glean from the overseas reviews of the book.

Most have quoted these words written by Gandhi to one Hermann Kallenbach from Mr. Lelyveld's book: "How completely you have taken possession of my body. This is slavery with a vengeance."

A rather inflammatory review in this newspaper included mention of the passages and quotes relating to Kallenbach as part of a larger polemic on Gandhi that concluded with the suggestion that the man credited with being the architect of India's freedom struggle didn't really achieve all that much since the British were sick of India and departing anyway.

"As Mr. Lelyveld makes abundantly clear, Gandhi's organ probably only rarely became aroused with his naked young ladies, because the love of his life was a German-Jewish architect and bodybuilder, Hermann Kallenbach, for whom Gandhi left his wife in 1908," wrote Andrew Roberts, in a review of the book that categorizes a long list of Gandhi's failings, managing even to work in a mention of the fact that he (Gandhi, not Mr. Roberts, we hasten to add) once suffered from hemorrhoids.

At one point Mr. Roberts notes: "Gandhi denounced lawyers, railways and parliamentary politics, even though he was a professional lawyer who constantly used railways to get to meetings to argue that India deserved its own parliament." Oh, the hypocrisy.

In India, meanwhile, Gandhi relatives and historians have said they are upset by the interpretation of Gandhi's letters to Kallenbach, although it's not clear whether they're upset by the suggestion of homosexuality or by the suggestion that he was cheating on his loyal wife. There has been less reaction to quotes in the book in which Gandhi expresses racist attitudes to black South Africans.

The Mail Today quoted Tushar Gandhi, a great-grandson, as saying Western writers have a "morbid fascination" with Gandhi's sexuality—although this is no doubt because of Gandhi's own repressive attitude towards sex and his adoption of celibacy even though he was married.

"It also helps that no matter what you write about him, there are no repercussions. Let them write such things about a Muslim or a Dalit leader," said Mr. Gandhi. "It is always open season with Gandhi."

In another piece in the same paper, writer Sourish Bhattacharyya quoted from a letter in which a jailed Gandhi expressed distress over his inability to come and help his ill wife to conclude that "these are not the words of a man who had deserted his wife to be with his ‘male lover.'" (It is not clear to this writer why feeling concern for his wife's health would be conclusive proof against a relationship with Kallenbach.)

The Mail Today is a collaboration between weekly magazine India Today and the Daily Mail tabloid of the U.K.