Posted on Thursday, March 31, 2011 - 06:12 pm:

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Pulitzer prize-winning author Joseph Lelyveld has opposed the ban on his controversial book on Mahatma Gandhi [ Images ], describing the move as 'shameful'.

"In a country (India [ Images ]) that calls itself a democracy, it is shameful to ban a book that no one has read, including the people who are imposing the ban," Lelyveld said.

He was reacting to the ban imposed by the Gujarat government on his book, which reportedly talks about the sexual preferences of Mahatma Gandhi. The Maharashtra [ Images ] government is also mulling a proposal to ban the book in the state.

"They should at least make an effort to see the pages that they think offend them before they take such an extreme step. I find it very discouraging to think that India would so limit discussion," he said in an interview to a TV channel.

The author of the book titled Great Soul; Mahatma Gandhi and His Struggle With India has triggered a controversy with Gandhi's kin and historians, saying it was an attempt to 'sensationalise' the life of the icon of non-violence and showed the 'negative' mindset of the author.

Defending his work, Lelyveld said, "It is a responsible book, it is a sensitive book, it is a book that is admiring of Gandhi and his struggle for social justice in India and it's been turned into some kind of a sensationalist pot boiler. It is not."

He dismissed reports that his work includes offensive language against the Mahatma, saying the book does not talk about the sexual preferences of the Indian leader.

"It does not say Gandhi was bisexual. It does not say that he was homosexual," Lelyveld said.

"It does not say that he was a racist. The word bisexual never appears in the book and the word racist only appears once in a very limited context; relating to a single phrase and not to Gandhi's attitude or history in South Africa [ Images ]," he clarified, adding "I didn't say these things, so I can hardly defend them."

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Posted on Thursday, March 31, 2011 - 09:34 am:

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A storm has gathered over Joseph Lelyveld's book, Great Soul: Mahatma Gandhi and His Struggle with India. And it's uniting unlikely partners such as Union law minister Veerappa Moily and Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi. Indian politicians are fulminating over the book's purported description of Gandhi's years in South Africa during the early 20th century, particularly that part of the volume carrying letters between Gandhi and his German friend, Hermann Kallenbach. While Moily states that the Centre is outraged enough to consider a ban, Modi has actually proscribed Great Soul in Gujarat. Maharashtra is close to following suit.

The outrage, however, seems based on misunderstandings. Intimate in a typically Victorian manner, mentioning bodies, lust and slavery, Gandhi's letters to Kallenbach contain sections highlighted by reviewers who've implied that Lelyveld may have been suggesting that Gandhi was 'bisexual'. They also said remarks about indigenous Africans attributed to Gandhi showed Lelyveld's understanding of him as 'racist'. Note that the author himself disowns both interpretations. Only, our politicians aren't listening.

Largely choosing to ignore the 'racism' charge and fixated on the sexuality angle, Moily wants a ban to "protect the nation from being taken for a ride", Modi for the book's apparently "perverse writing which has hurt the sentiments of those with capacity for sane and logical thinking". Clearly, neither end of this political rainbow considers average Indian readers intelligent enough to make up their own minds about what offends or doesn't, or mature enough not to require a nanny state to burn, bury or ban books on their behalf. This politically self-serving coddling has a long history. In 1988, claiming to protect 'Muslim sentiments', the Congress government banned Salman Rushdie's The Satanic Verses. In 2003, Taslima Nasreen's work, Dwikhandito, was banned in Bengal by a Left Front shoring up its Muslim votebank. James Laine's book on Shivaji was banned in 2004 and 2006 in Maharashtra, and Javier Moro's 'fictionalised biography' of Sonia Gandhi was targeted in 2010.

Such politics betrays an insecure touchiness about our icons that's out of place in a mature democracy professing to uphold freedom of expression. Ironically, many famous personalities themselves challenged official projections of their image in their own lives. Gandhi himself was passionately honest. He chronicled his trials with "truth" in detail, leaving diaries and letters for future generations to read and interpret for themselves. These writings provide deep and diverse insights into the complexity of the figure of Gandhi. We have seen intolerance of views with regard to other icons as well, from Netaji and Ambedkar to Satyajit Ray. Evidently, the more India marches ahead, the more illiberal its politicians seem to get.

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