Published: April 3, 2011, New York Times
‘Great Soul: Mahatma Gandhi and His Struggle With India’ by Joseph Lelyveld - Illustrated. 425 pages. Alfred A. Knopf. $28.95.
GANDHI is still so revered in India that a book about him that few Indians have read and that hasn’t even been published in this country has been banned in one state and may yet be banned nationwide.
The problem, say those who have fanned the flames of popular outrage this week, is that the book suggests that the father of modern India was bisexual.
The book’s author, Joseph Lelyveld, does write extensively about the close relationship Mohandas K. Gandhi had with a German architect, but he denies that the book, “Great Soul: Mahatma Gandhi and His Struggle With India,” makes any such argument.
In an interview Mr. Lelyveld, a former executive editor of The New York Times and a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, said he thought he had “treaded very carefully” with the information, which he knew was delicate.
“I lived in India, and there’s an Indian word called tamasha,” he said, which translates to “spectacle.” “I’m surprised to find myself at the center of one, because I think this is a careful book, and I consider myself a friend of India.”
Still, this week Gujarat, the state where Gandhi was born and grew up, banned the book after reviews and news articles about it appeared in Indian newspapers. Gujarat is particularly conservative — alcohol can’t be sold in there, for instance — and the state is governed by a Hindu nationalist party.
“The writing is perverse in nature,” Narendra Modi, the chief minister of Gujarat, said of the book after the ban. “It has hurt the sentiments of those with capacity for sane and logical thinking.”
India’s law minister, M. Veerappa Moily, said on Tuesday that “the book denigrates the national pride and leadership,” which he said could not be tolerated. Officials “will consider prohibiting the book,” he added.
The crux of the controversy seems to be the intersection of two subjects on which Indians have strong views: sexuality and Gandhi.
Read the rest here.
Earlier review in New York Times.
And another in the Christian Science Monitor.
1 comment:
I wish I can read this book of Gandhi. And travel India.
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