Was Gandhi Gay? Letters And Documents Suggests He May Have Been
Gandhi (left) and his alleged lover Joseph Lelyveld |
Could this be True? Could one of the most influential men of the 20th century and the Father of India been gay, or at least bisexual? Apparently, the Indian Government doesn't want us to know. They just made it interesting.
Via Huffington Post:
Last year, Pulitzer-Prize-winning author Joseph Lelyveld released his book, "Great Soul: Mahatma Gandhi and His Struggle With India," causing controversy with parts some say included implications that Gandhi had a homosexual relationship with architect Hermann Kallenbach.
Gandhi's home state of Gujarat banned the book in March, and now the Indian government has dished out $1.28 million to purchase an archive more than 1,000 letters and documents exchanged between the men, thus removing it from a potential public auction in London, the Wall Street Journal's "India Real Time" blog reports.
According to the Journal, India's Ministry of Culture said experts reviewed the letters and recommended the government obtain them as a matter of "highest priority."
While Lelyveld denies he suggested Gandhi might have been gay, a review of the book by the Wall Street Journal highlights passages imply a homosexual relationship:
Yet as Mr. Lelyveld makes abundantly clear, Gandhi's organ probably only rarely became aroused with his naked young ladies, because the love of his life was a German-Jewish architect and bodybuilder, Hermann Kallenbach, for whom Gandhi left his wife in 1908. "Your portrait (the only one) stands on my mantelpiece in my bedroom," he wrote to Kallenbach. "The mantelpiece is opposite to the bed." For some reason, cotton wool and Vaseline were "a constant reminder" of Kallenbach, which Mr. Lelyveld believes might relate to the enemas Gandhi gave himself, although there could be other, less generous, explanations.
Gandhi wrote to Kallenbach about "how completely you have taken possession of my body. This is slavery with a vengeance." Gandhi nicknamed himself "Upper House" and Kallenbach "Lower House," and he made Lower House promise not to "look lustfully upon any woman." The two then pledged "more love, and yet more love ... such love as they hope the world has not yet seen."
While hetero-centrists are sure to say this could not be, and that it is an effort to smear his good name, I know that seeing him in the light of "normal(I hate that word" human bisexuality would have made him all-the-more a hero in my youthful eyes.
ReplyDeleteVery much agreed. In fact he is not the only religious figure who may have been gay. Here's another. http://www.gaymentothat.com/2012/04/anglican-chaplain-asks-and-answers-was.html
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