'Ghandi was bisexual Book Banned
 Mahatma Gandhi |
A new biography that allegedly suggests Mahatma Gandhi, India's Father of the Nation, had a homosexual affair with a German bodybuilder has been banned from sale in the state of Gujarat, where Gandhi was born.
"Mahatma Gandhi is revered by millions, not just in India but across the world. We can't allow anybody to draw adverse inferences about historical figures and denigrate them. Otherwise history will not forgive us," Law Minister M. Veerappa Moily says.
Author Joseph Lelyveld's Great Soul: Mahatma Gandhi and His Struggle with India details Ghandi's correspondence with Hermann Kallenbach, a German-Jewish bodybuilder. Early reviewers say the book cites a 1908 letter in which Gandhi writes to Kallenbach about "how completely you have taken possession of my body" as proof of his bisexuality.
But the author says his book does not say Ghandi was bisexual. "In a country that calls itself a democracy, it is shameful to ban a book that no one has yet read, including the people who are imposing the ban," Lelyveld said. "It does not say Gandhi was bisexual. It does not say that he was homosexual."
In 2009 the Delhi high court ruled that gay sex is not a crime in India, but colonial-era legislation criminalising homosexual sex has not been repealed and relationships between gay couples remain generally unacceptable.
Ghandi has always been considered to have been at least eccentric sexually. He has long been reported to have regularly slept with young naked women without engaging in any intimate activity, apparently as a test of his willpower.
Posted in: International News
By GayNZ.com Daily News staff
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