I was shocked to see in yesterday’s paper that the Maharashtra government was considering a ban on Joseph Lelyveld’s Great Soul: Mahatma Gandhi and His Struggle with India–for allegedly calling Gandhi a bisexual and a racist. Congress activists burned books, and Congress member Rajesh Ingle warned “the author should not dare enter India as Congress workers will not spare him for his misdeed.”
This is disgraceful and disgusting. I wonder how many of these Congress “activists” tell their children and grandchildren not to step on or let their feet touch a book or even a slip of paper–because we respect all knowledge and its symbol, the goddess Saraswati.
In fact, actually reading the book (which I plan to do) matters. In the Times of India interview with Lelyveld, he said clearly:”I do not allege that Gandhi is a racist or bisexual in ‘Great Soul’. The word ‘bisexual’ nowhere appears in the book. [...] The word ‘racist’ is used once to characterise comments by Gandhi early in his stay in South Africa, part of a chapter summarising his statements about Africans and his relations with them. The chapter in no way concludes that he was a racist or offers any suggestion of it.”
The entire interview is worth reading, as Indian scholars like Sudhir Kakar, who have already explored the rich topic of Gandhi’s sexuality, also defend Lelyveld.
Beyond this, what really angers me is the equation being made between alternative sexualities and racism. It is as if merely mentioning the topic of sexuality in relation to Gandhi is a crime–even when any reader of Gandhi’s autobiography or his letters and articles can tell you, the topic of sexuality was quite central to how he thought about his private life. (Browse through the Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi Online).
Let’s leave aside the question of finding out that which is hidden. On the very surface itself, Gandhi was a believer in the Hindu concept of brahmacharya and saw the control of lust and desire as crucial to spiritual improvement. In Gandhi’s version, at least, this isn’t just “sexual abstinence” as a practice but the idea that it’s important to control one’s fluids and “redirect” them to other purposes. He recommended this to his followers, saying that it was not enough to simply be a political activist, to believe in non-violence, etc.
I’ll write more about this soon–though it’s already out there in lots of books and articles. For now, let me emphasize that we need to allow people to read and write freely about everything and everyone, even figures we admire.
Yes, its true that the media and others like to find “hidden secrets” of Gandhi and other famous figures in order to titillate the public. Frankly, there’s a certain excitement in seeing that people with so-called “clean” public lives, placed on a pedastal, actually have private lives that raise questions–and the media loves to exploit this.
But that doesn’t mean all research that deals with topics that some may find troubling is the same thing. This is all the more true for a person whose famous saying is “my life is an open book” and who himself wrote publicly and even self-critically about some his sexual experiments, even exploitative ones like sleeping with naked young women to see if he has achieved self-control.
Case in point: the last sentence could certainly be seen as simply written to excite interest–and indeed it does! But that doesn’t make it invalid as a focus for research. You have the option to close your eyes and ears and simply repeat the myths. But if you’re interested in richer understanding of things like the history of sexuality or the anticolonial struggle in India or simply Gandhi as a figure, you’ve got to be open to these complexities and grapple with them.
What an irony! The man says “My life is an open book.” But when someone tries to write a book about his life, some people want to burn and ban it…
