[Pak-Media] Gandhi 'gay' slur unites Cong, BJP

Insiya Amir | New Delhi, March 31, 2011

The Mahatma's great grandson, Tushar Gandhi, has vehemently opposed the Gujarat government's decision to ban thecontroversial new bookthat portrays the Father of the Nation as a bisexual who left his wife Kasturba to be with his "lover", Hermann Kallenbach, in South Africa.

"It is the most un-Gandhian thing to do!" Tushar Gandhi said of the ban. "If you have a problem with the claims made in the book, then you have to counter them intellectually. Banning the book, in fact, will give it a halo, the status of a martyr. Banning anything is simply an easy way out for the government."

The ban on Joseph Lelyveld's Great Soul: Mahatma Gandhi And His Struggle was announced in the Gujarat Assembly by the chief minister, Narendra Modi. His announcement was supported by the Congress, which is the party of the Opposition in the Mahatma home state.

Modi said the book had "hurt the sentiments of those with a capacity for sane and logical thinking and the writer (had) indulged in the most reprehensible
act by hurting the sentiments of millions of people."

But another prominent member of the Gandhi family, Tara Gandhi Bhattacharjee, the Mahatma's grand-daughter and vicechairperson, Kasturba Gandhi National Memorial Trust, supported Tushar Gandhi's stand on the ban.

"The more we debate, the more credibility we give (to the claims made in the book)," she said. "We have not even read the book. Everyone, from readers to the government, must make informed decisions," she added.

Apart from the Mahatma's family, prominent historian Romila Thapar, who has had to face the charge of being a "deeply mendacious enemy of the Hindus", has spoken out against the Gujarat ban. "Banning of books is not associated with a free country," Thapar says.

Notwithstanding these sentiments, Union law minister Veerappa Moily has said the Centre was also planning to ban Great Soul. "It is demeaning to the nation," Moily said on Wednesday in Pune in response to a question on the government's response to the book.

The Gujarat government's move brings back memories of a similar action taken against the American scholar James Laine's book, Shivaji: The Hindu King in Muslim India, but the Supreme Court had struck it down on the ground that the ban did not follow the established procedure.

Lelyveld, as reported earlier, has said in a statement circulated by his publisher, Alfred A. Knopf, that media had "grossly distorted" the contents of his book. The Pulitzer Prize-winning author said, "I do not allege that Gandhi is racist or bisexual. "The word 'bisexual' nowhere appears in the book." His denial clearly has not had the intended effect in Gujarat at least.

( India Today )

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