He didn't think much of black people, referring to South African natives as "Kaffirs" (a term today regarded as highly offensive) and complaining that "they are troublesome, very dirty and live like animals." He seemed weirdly okay with fascists, praising Mussolini and addressing Hitler as "my friend" in a letter.Īnd he was evidently in love with a German architect and bodybuilder named Hermann Kallenbach, for whom he left his wife in 1908 and with whom he spent the next six years. It seems the Indian leader may not have been such a great soul after all.Īmong the juicier tidbits: Gandhi routinely slept nude with his teenage great-niece and other young women. It doesn't seem like Lelyveld set out to pen a hatchet job-The Wall Street Journal characterizes the book as "generally admiring"-but Great Soul has been making headlines for its salacious details and catalogs of Gandhi's hypocrisy. Joseph Lelyveld, a former executive editor of The New York Times, has written a biography of Mohandas Gandhi called Great Soul. This article is from the archive of our partner.
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