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Gandhi's sex life laid bare in new book
- By Adam Plowright
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A new book on Mahatma Gandhi has delved into the intimate life of the Indian icon whose famous vow of chastity did not prevent him sleeping with naked women and conducting bizarre sex "experiments".
"Gandhi: Naked Ambition" by British historian Jad Adams sheds new light on the spiritual leader and independence hero whose spartan existence and resistance to earthly pleasures are an integral part of his popular image.
The book has been released in Britain and will be available soon in India where it is bound to make waves in a country where Gandhi's image is fiercely protected and a source of national pride.
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- "One of things you find about Gandhi is how much he wrote about sex," Adams told AFP by telephone from his home in London. "When we look at his sexuality, what happens is that he has a perfectly normal sex life for the first part of his life, one that would be recognisable to almost anyone in the world.
- Adams says he has no evidence that Gandhi broke his vow of chastity with any of the women, though he was defining the idea in a rather limited way. "He's talking about penetration. However he's defining sex so narrowly that he's ignoring a lot of activities that many people would consider sensual, if not actively sexual.
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Adams believes the "experiments" were like a game of striptease in which there was non-contact sexual activity.
"He wanted to see if sex could be controlled because he felt it was such a powerful force," he said.
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