Of sex, sensuality and politics
Farida Shaikh looks at two studies of Gandhi
Great Soul, Mahatma Gandhi and, His Struggle With India, Joseph Lelyveld, Knopf
Two books have gained much prominence in recent times. The common subject in both the books is sexuality and Gandhi's experiment with brahmacharia, abstinence and racism. The writers are well-known scholars and researchers on two sides of the Atlantic, Joseph Lelyveld in America and Jad Adams in Britain. Commenting on Joseph Lelyveld's research on Gandhi, India's celebrity writer Shobhaa De admonished her countrymen, 'Come on, India. Grow up! The modern generation of India should be able to accommodate the attraction of the great soul Gandhi to a young man.' Further, the noted writer remarked, 'We are looking like the biggest fools on earth…' This in light of the refusal of state governments, save that of Gujarat, to ban Lelyveld's Great Soul: Mahatma Gandhi and His Struggle with India. Gandhi was born in Gujarat. On the same note Lelyveld laments: 'In a country (India) that calls itself a democracy, it is shameful to ban a book that no one has read, including the people who are doing the banning.' Defending his work, the writer notes that '… It is a responsible book that is admiring of Gandhi and his struggle for social justice in India and it's been turned into . . . some kind of sensationalist pot boiler. It is not.' This takes us back to: Banned, by N. Gerald (1976). It is a documentation of all books and pamphlets which the British banned in India between 1907 and 1947. Lelyveld, whose 448-page book is a Knopf publication, has in an interview made no comment on what Gandhi would say about present-day India. Instead, he refers to what Gandhi says in a 1915 letter: 'Dear friend Kallenbach, there was all round hypocrisy, humbug and degradation and yet underneath all this was trace of divinity.' His work 'does not say that Gandhi was bisexual; it does not say that he was homosexual.' At age seventy, surly sensuality and sexuality were a minor matter for Gandhi, which is not quite what you can say about uppity, rat race-trapped modern young men and women. Sexuality is central to the lifestyle of the present generation. A commercially complex environment impinges upon the young mind in such a manner that sexual imagery and responses follow freely. Today's entertainment world necessarily needs to integrate visual sexuality into its many folds so as to be successful. It is an avenue for the release of all the pent up emotions that are at the roots of stress and fatigue. Visual sexuality has more and more become a part of media journalism. Lelyveld's book 'scrupulously avoids sensationalism'. Saint Gandhi, as described by Time magazine in 1930, has been the subject, so far, of thirty full-length biographies in English. Pulitzer Prize winner Joseph Lelyveld, who retired as executive editor of the New York Times, previously worked as a correspondent in India and South Africa. He presents Gandhi as a blend of Hinduism and Western spiritualism. Gandhi was profoundly influenced by Tolstoy's creed of universal brotherhood and radical non-violence. There are details on why Gandhi linked the caste system to Hindu-Muslim relations. Biographer and historian Jad Adams, in Gandhi: Naked Ambition, explores the multifaceted life of the political and spiritual radical. A research fellow at the School of Advanced Studies, London University, during an interview he noted that one good reason to read his book is to know 'the man behind (the) Mahatma.' This was followed by one naïve question: 'Is there adult material in (the) book? And the ready answer was that it did not deal with Gandhi's sexuality. Rather it had been an attempt to understand his entire personality, 'a rounded picture of Gandhi, not concentrating on sex but not ignoring it either.' Published by Quercus in 2010, the 288-page book is classified under history and politics. This is a no-nonsense biography of the pioneer of Satyagraha, non-violent resistance to civil disobedience. Adams also examines why Mahatma Gandhi and his teachings are still profoundly relevant. Adams is convinced that historians have the right to address any matter in a subject's life and '…fear cannot play a part in my work.' Gandhi wrote and spoke a great deal about 'sex in general and his own sexual experience in particular.' Tushar Gandhi, grandson of the great man, speaking at the same interview session as Adams, said that he had not read the book. However, he thought the terms 'sex seeker' and 'lothario' were not appropriate in the book. Gandhi's practices were discussed during his lifetime. After his death, in view of his elevated stature as a national icon, discussions on his sexual inclinations and thoughts were suppressed. It naturally gave rise to quite a few questions. Adams has the final say: 'All people have sexual nature and they have different ways of expressing it. Gandhi after his thirties, when he decided to be celibate (talked) a great deal about sex . . . . I think understanding a person's sexual life particularly if it is complex is an integral part of their biography and in no way detracts from their message. I do not think of sexuality as a negative quality. I try to understand, not judge.'
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