Mahatma Gandhi’s iconic stature in India is unparalled. So whenever someone tries to reveal a behind-closed-doors picture of the man, it is bound to create a flutter. In other words, it is like stepping into dangerous territory. But author Jad Adams, who in his latest book Gandhi — Naked Ambition, explores the Mahatma’s experiments with celibacy begs to differ.
He says, “Fear cannot play a part in my work. I think historians have the right to address any matter of a subject’s life. In the case of Gandhi, he spoke and wrote a great deal about sex in general and his own sexual experience in particular. If ‘Gandhi and Sex’ were a subject that had to be banned, a good deal of Gandhi’s own work (in the Indian Government’s edition of the Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, for example) would have to go.”
Adam’s feels people should not perceive the book as dealing with Gandhi’s sexuality, but as part of an attempt to understand his entire personality. He says, “Different things possessed him at different times in his life. When he was in London as a student it was vegetarianism (not sex or politics) that interested him. In South Africa his attempts to remain chaste and his creation of ideal communities were more important to him than his work for Indian traders. Back in India he was preoccupied with Indian nationalism and his ashrams in the 1920s and 30s. At the end of his life, his sexual experiments preoccupied his thinking. My interest is in the whole of his life — his political, spiritual and family life as well. I give what I hope is a rounded picture of Gandhi, not concentrating on sex, but not ignoring it either.”
However, Gandhi’s great grandson Tushar Gandhi is upset at the portrayal of the Mahatma as a sex seeker as mentioned in a recent interview. He was disturbed to see his grandfather painted as a sexual lothario. Adams says, “He (Tushar Gandhi) mentions in the same interview that he hasn’t read the book. His opinion on its contents therefore rather depended on the question presented to him. The terms ‘sex seeker’ or ‘lothario’ are not appropriate to this book.”
Gandhi’s practices were commonly discussed when he was alive but they were suppressed after his death while elevating him to the stature of a National icon. So in the context of National heroes, is sex always perceived to be in poor light?
Adams ends saying, “All people have a sexual nature and they have different ways of expressing it. Gandhi’s, after his thirties when he decided to be celibate, was to talk a great deal about sex, to write about it and to control it in others, and to challenge himself with a variety of sexual experiments. I think understanding a person’s sexual life, particularly if it is complex, is an integral part of their biography and in no way detracts from their message. I do not think of sexuality as a negative quality. I try to understand, not judge.”
