Thu. March 31, 2011
Mumbai, India -
Pulitzer prize-winning author Joseph Lelyveld is getting a lot of heat for suggesting that Mahatma Gandhi was gay in his new book, "Great Soul: Mahatma Gandhi and His Struggle With India."
The book, released this week in the United States, talks about Gandhi's relationship with German-Jewish architect and bodybuilder Hermann Kallenbach.
The Wall Street Journal said that Lelyveld quotes this from a letter Gandhi wrote to Kallenbach: "How completely you have taken possession of my body. This is slavery with a vengeance."
Lelyveld writes that Gandhi left his wife in 1908 to be with Kallenbach. They lived together for a time, and they called each other "soulmates."
Some of Gandhi's relatives are not convinced.
"I wouldn't put it past any American writer to not be able to understand relationships without adding a sexual connotation," great-grandson Tushar Gandhi told The Mail Today. " These western writers have a morbid fascination for Gandhi's sexuality."
Kallenbach was a wealthy man who donated a thousand acre farm near Johannesburg to Gandhi.
Lelyveld is a former executive editor of the New York Times.
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