Gandhi a pooter? Who knew?

Vikas Bajaj and Julie Bosman have an article in The New York Times about the Mahatma:

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.”
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 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 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.
On the first point, India is quite conservative, but the recent rapid growth of its economy has helped loosen attitudes, especially among the large youth population. In 2009 the Delhi High Court struck down a British-era law against sodomy, a ruling seen as a watershed for gay rights. Nevertheless most gay Indians would not feel comfortable coming out.
On the second point, Gandhi is revered, even by the young, but there is little significant understanding of the nuances of his philosophy and life. He has been mostly reduced to an idol, and young Indians don’t spend much time studying him. Many of his ideas, like the development of small-scale village industries, have faded.
That doesn’t mean Gandhi can’t be a figure of fun. A few years ago he was made a character in the Munna Bhai film franchise, about a gangster in Mumbai; the character is visited by Gandhi, who tells him to change his ways and give up violence. It’s a comedy.
The controversy also highlights India’s highly circumscribed right to free speech. Indian officials frequently ban and censor books, movies, art, and other works. Under Indian law, any citizen can petition to have a work banned, and activists and political leaders frequently exercise that right. But it is uncommon for even a book a year to be banned nationally. The constitution allows the government to impose “reasonable restrictions” on speech that might be construed as offensive. In 1988 India joined many Muslim countries in banning The Satanic Verses, the novel by Salman Rushdie, a native of India. Last year the Shiv Sena, a regional political party, forced the University of Mumbai to remove Such a Long Journey by Rohinton Mistry from its curriculum, arguing that this acclaimed novel denigrated the dominant Maharashtrian ethnic group.
Certain subjects, like Gandhi, who is often referred to as mahatma, or great soul, are particularly guarded. Gandhi is widely admired, not only in India, but around the world for his advocacy of nonviolent struggle and the austere and celibate life he led when he was fighting for India’s freedom from the British.
Using documents, letters and other research, Mr. Lelyveld writes about how Gandhi came to his particular social vision, first as a lawyer in South Africa and later as a freedom fighter, and how he tried to spread that vision in India, with mixed results.

The controversy appears to have started because of reviews in publications in the United States and Britain, including one in The Wall Street Journal, asserting that the book provides evidence that Gandhi was “a sexual weirdo, a political incompetent and a fanatical faddist.”

That review, by Andrew Roberts, a British historian, argued that Gandhi was in love with Hermann Kallenbach, the German-Jewish architect with whom Gandhi lived in Johannesburg, and it cited letters from Gandhi to Mr. Kallenbach, which are quoted in “Great Soul.”

Gandhi expresses great fondness and yearning for Mr. Kallenbach in the letters, telling him that his was the only portrait on Gandhi’s mantelpiece, opposite the bed, and that cotton wool and Vaseline were “a constant reminder” of him.

The letters were acquired by the National Archives of India in an auction and have been available to scholars; they were sold by descendants of Mr. Kallenbach. Gandhi destroyed Mr. Kallenbach’s letters to him early on, according to the book.

In the book Mr. Lelyveld writes, “One respected Gandhi scholar characterized the relationship as ‘clearly homoerotic’ rather than homosexual, intending through that choice of words to describe a strong mutual attraction, nothing more.”

But Mr. Lelyveld then acknowledges: “The conclusions passed on by word of mouth in South Africa’s small Indian community were sometimes less nuanced. It was no secret then, or later, that Gandhi, leaving his wife behind, had gone to live with a man.”

Although Mr. Lelyveld does not draw a conclusion about the relationship in the book, he writes, “In an age when the concept of Platonic love gains little credence, selectively chosen details of the relationship and quotations from letters can easily be arranged to suggest a conclusion.”

The situation is complicated by the fact that the book is not yet on sale in India, and very few people have read it. It was released in the United States on Tuesday.

While Knopf published the book in the United States, HarperCollins is expected to publish it in India. The considerable negative press has unnerved executives at HarperCollins. V. K. Karthika, the publisher and chief editor of HarperCollins in India, said in an e-mail that a publication date has not been set. “Obviously we are concerned about the situation,” Ms. Karthika said, “but we are committed to the book and the author.”

An editor at HarperCollins suggested that at least one revision be made for the edition in India, but Mr. Lelyveld refused. Ms. Karthika said on Thursday in an e-mail there was no reason to make any revisions.

In the interview Mr. Lelyveld said the information about Gandhi’s relationship with Mr. Kallenbach was not his own discovery and was never intended to be the main focus of his book.

“All I can claim is that I dealt with that material more extensively with an eye to the general public than anyone previously,” Mr. Lelyveld said. “But it’s not a central preoccupation. My book is about Gandhi’s struggle for social justice, not his intimate relationships. But he was a complicated man, and the two are linked.”

The ban in Gujarat and a threatened ban in another state, Maharashtra, whose capital is Mumbai, as well as the threatened national ban, have drawn criticism from scholars, newspapers and some descendants of Gandhi.

“I deplore the culture of bans and burning of books,” said Tushar Gandhi, a great-grandson. “It’s a form of draconian censorship.”

In a telephone interview Mr. Gandhi said he was considering legal options to challenge the ban in Gujarat. Though he has not read the book, he said that his great-grandfather’s letters to Mr. Kallenbach have been in the public domain for years. “The story of his friendship with Hermann Kallenbach was very well documented,” Mr. Gandhi said.