![]() Some of the tests of will were neither new nor strange in some of the esoteric ascetic and spiritual traditions of India. One of those "experiments" included sleeping naked with his teenage grand-nieces, Manu and Abha. Alas, very few people knew about his dangerous experiments to test his willpower and ability to withstand sexual temptation. He was considered by many to be a "difficult person," as he insisted that those around him and the people of India follow him in his peculiar "ascetic" ways. Gandhi's peccadilloes and idiosyncrasies drove quite a few people up the wall. Besant told Durga Das, a well-known and influential journalist, that she thought Gandhi was leading the country to anarchy. It was not just the Hindu brigade that quarrelled with him but so did Muhammad Ali Jinnah, Annie Besant, Aurobindo, Ambedkar and others. Many were troubled by his idiosyncratic ways, which we now know included sexually aberrant behaviour. ![]() In all this we ignore the fact that many people quarrelled with Gandhi. The Hindu brigade, overcompensating for their provincialism and feelings of guilt, have included Gandhi in their overly long salutation to Indian greats in the Ek Mata Stotra (their unity hymn). Even now, much of the political discourse in India has to do with charges against the "Hindu brigade" – for allegedly abetting and/or plotting Gandhi's assassination. Some might have chanced upon Erik Erikson's Gandhi's Truth, but one rarely heard a conversation at home or in school about Gandhi's moral dilemmas as well as the aberrant and sometimes cruel behaviour that drove one of his sons to alcohol and some of his staff to quit in disgust. India, it seems, is finally catching up to its neighbour's uses for blasphemy.įor most Indians, the tale of the Mahatma is limited to the expurgated version of The Story of My Experiments with Truth. ![]() In an attempt to outdo the chief minister of Gujarat, the law minister of India contemplated writing into the books a law that would make "insulting" the Mahatma an act of blasphemy. ![]() Lelyveld's book, because of the revelations about the relationship that Gandhi had with the German architect Hermann Kallenbach, has already been banned in Gandhi's home state of Gujarat. That is both the gall and the honesty of the man: while he acknowledged that he was frail and vain like any other man, he got away with idiosyncrasies, foolish projects, unilateral decisions and political manipulation that allowed him to exercise enormous power and influence circumventing democratic processes. But Gandhi was too mesmerised by himself, despite his oft-repeated protestations that he was not a visionary and that he was "prone to many weaknesses". Men such as Aurobindo, who similarly launched their political and public careers in India, wisely took to the hills to contemplate life and the afterlife and provided a much more nuanced understanding of the Hindu/Indian spiritual ethos. What gets confirmed, too, is the moral ambiguity of the man who many people still revere as a saint. We get reaffirmation, however, of Gandhi's sheer presence, persistence and self-creation through self-promotion. J oseph Lelyveld's book Great Soul: Mahatma Gandhi and His Struggle with India does not break new ground, but the Gandhi of hagiographers takes a beating.
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