Intellectuals slam ban on Gandhi book

Updated on: Friday, April 01, 2011

Intellectuals and Gandhi kin have come out against demands for a ban on the controversial book on Mahatma Gandhi, saying banning is not a “democratic response”.

The Gujarat government has already banned the book, ‘Great Soul: Mahatma Gandhi and His Struggle with India’, by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Joseph Lelyveld while Maharashtra is contemplating such an action. Union law minister M Veerappa Moily had earlier hinted at such a possibility.

Reviews in British and US newspapers had claimed that the book says Gandhi was bisexual and had a German-Jewish bodybuilder lover in Hermann Kallenbach.

Gandhi’s great grandson Tushar Gandhi tweeted, “If the government of Maharashtra bans the book, it will be a greater insult to Bapu than that book or the author might have intended. I will challenge the ban.”

He said he was against the culture of banning books and added “how does it matter if the Mahatma was straight, gay or bisexual? Every time he would still be the man who led India to freedom”.

Writer K Sachidanandan said plans to ban the book should be condemned. “Banning a book is not a democratic action.”

Another writer, Namita Gokhale, noted that “every time a book is banned, it saddens me because you simply cannot ban ideas, you cannot ban thoughts.” She said she was more resigned than upset by the development. “In India a democratic space for ideas is a gift and I think banning a book is the most pointless exercise,”

‘Ban without reading book shameful’

Pulitzer prize-winning author Joseph Lelyveld has said that “In a country (India) that calls itself a democracy, it is shameful to ban a book that no one has read.”

“They should at least make an effort to see the pages that they think offend them." he told a TV channel. He dismissed reports that his work talks of Gandhi’s sexual preferences. “It does not say Gandhi was bisexual. It does not say that he was homosexual. It does not say that he was a racist,”Lelyveld said.

Intellectuals slam ban on Gandhi book

More Education news