The Importance of Being the Mahatma

Was Mohandas K Gandhi a bisexual? Did he have a homosexual relationship with Hermann Kallenbach, the German-Jewish bodybuilder, who gifted him land to set up an ashram near Johannesburg in the first decade of the twentieth century and lived with him for a couple of years?

I don’t know.

There has been widespread outrage in India and in other countries at the suggestion in Joseph Lelyveld’s just released book, Great Soul: Mahatma Gandhi and his Struggle with India (Knopf), that Gandhi and Hermann Kallenbach were not just close friends but lovers. According to newspaper reports there is also the suggestion that it is for Kallenbach that Gandhi left Kasturba in 1908. The Union Law Minister Veerappa Moily has announced that the Central government was considering banning the book. The government of Gujarat has already banned it because “the writer has portrayed the life of Mahatma Gandhi with a very perverted and despicable mindset, and, as a result of it, the feelings of knowledgeable people have been hurt.”

Gandhi’s sexuality has been studied by others also, but this is the first time that anyone has suggested that he was bisexual. What is the evidence?

According to Daniel Bates of Daily Mail (March 28, 2011), Lelyveld has reproduced a few excerpts from Gandhi’s letters to Kallenbach. Here are a couple of them: "How completely you have taken possession of my body. This is slavery with a vengeance."  "Your portrait (the only one) stands on my mantelpiece in my bedroom. The mantelpiece is opposite to the bed."

We don’t know if these letters have been newly discovered by Lelyveld. If they have been available along with thousands of other pieces that Gandhi wrote, it is surprising that these letters did not catch anyone’s attention so far. Assuming that these are genuine letters, how do we interpret those excerpts? Is homosexuality the only interpretation?

What interests me is the response the book (more precisely the report about it in Daily Mail and MailOnline) has generated. The majority of the 140 international reader responses in MailOnline criticize Lelyveld. Mostl responses in Indian newspapers accuse Lelyveld of cheap sensationalisation to sell the book.

DNA of March 29 reports that Jad Adams, who wrote extensively about Gandhi’s sexual life in his recent book Gandhi - Naked Ambitions, rejects Lelyveld’s interpretation. He says: "If Gandhi committed acts of homosexuality, there would be ample evidence, either justifying them or expressing shame for them."

There is a thick firewall around Gandhi, a wall that consists of his enduring reputation. It is so powerful that a government bans the book even without reading it and finding out if there is any evidence to support the author’s unwelcome inferences. It is as though that wouldn’t be necessary because there couldn’t be any credible evidence in the Mahatma’s case. Would you want to waste your time to check if someone told you that he saw a cow eating a sheep? 

What your words mean depends on who you are. The persuasive power that your promises carry derives from your reputation, that is, the way you are perceived by your targets. It pays to build a good reputation. What you consider evidence may be rubbished by others if isn’t sustained by your reputation.

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Note: My post, The House that Sandweip Built (2) will appear next week.