Great Soul: Mahatma Gandhi and His Struggle with India

The Legislative Assembly of Gujarat, the lawmaking body of Gandhi's home state, voted unanimously on March 20, 2011, to ban Great Soul because of the Lelyveld’s use of documentary evidence and informed opinion to point to the relationship that Gandhi had developed with a Prussian architect whom the Indian playfully boasted as “having received physical training at the hands of [Eugen] Sandow [the father of modern bodybuilding]”. Lelyveld’s inquiry includes quotes from a letter sent by Gandhi to Kallenbach from London in 1909: “Your portrait (the only one) stands on my mantelpiece in the bedroom. The mantelpiece is opposite to the bed… [The purpose of which] is to show to you and me how completely you have taken possession of my body. This is slavery with a vengeance.”[3]

Lelyveld has stated that the gay interpretation of his work is a mistake. Lelyveld added: "The book does not say that Gandhi was bisexual or homosexual. It says that he was celibate and deeply attached to Kallenbach. This is not news."[4]

Writing for The New York Times, Hari Kunzru finds Great Soul to be "judicious and thoughtful". Lelyveld's book, he writes, will be revelatory to American readers who may only be familiar with the rudiments of Gandhi's life and for those readers, perhaps especially Indian readers, who are better acquainted with the Gandhi story the book's portrait of the man will still be challenging.[2]

Reports of passages within the book regarding the nature of Gandhi and Kallenbach's relationship prompted the Wall Street Journal to ponder "Was Gandhi gay?"[1] Kunzru for the Times observes that modern readers who are less familiar with the concept of Platonic love may interpret the relationship, in particular their romantic-sounding letters, as indicating a sexually charged relationship. However, he adds that Gandhi in 1906 took a vow of celibacy, which both Gandhi and the people of India saw as a cornerstone of his moral authority.[2]

British historian Andrew Roberts, in writing for The Wall Street Journal while noted that the book gives "more than enough information" about sexual life of Gandhi, Roberts adds that it is "nonetheless well-researched and well-written book."[5]

Indrajit Hazra writing for the Hindustan Times described the book to have weaved "the unreceived narratives with the received one, and in the process presents to the reader a more complete picture of a complex, undoubtedly great man".[6]

Christopher Hitchens writing for The Atlantic wrote that the "book provides the evidence for both readings, depending on whether you think Gandhi was a friend of the poor or a friend of poverty".[7]