Anything to sell a book?

Controversy sells, and who knows it better than Pulitzer prize winner Joseph Lelyveld. Reviews of his latest book "Great Soul: Mahatma Gandhi and His Struggle with India" have appeared in newspapers in England and US. Some of these reviews claim that the book says Mahatma Gandhi was a bisexual and had a German-Jewish bodybuilder lover Hermann Kallenbach. The reviews have already created stir in the cyberspace, specially among the Gandhian.

Lelyveld has denied allegations saying, the word 'bisexual' nowhere appears in the book. The book quotes Gandhi from one of his letters to Kallenbach “how completely you have taken possession of my body, this is slavery with a vengeance”

The book also claims “Gandhi nicknamed himself ‘Upper House’ and Kallenbach ‘Lower House’, and... “made Lower House promise not to ‘look lustfully upon any woman’. The two then pledged ‘more love, and yet more love... such love as they hope the world has not yet seen’.”

The book alleges that as an older man, Gandhi held "nightly cuddles" – without clothes - with seventeen year-old girls in his entourage, including his own niece.

The Wall Street Journal review said the book intends to recast Gandhi as "a sexual weirdo, a political  incompetent, a fanatical faddist, implacably racist, and a ceaseless self-promoter, professing his love for mankind as a concept while actually despising people as individuals."

Now these supposed allegations about Gandhi's sexuality are likely to be acutely contested by his millions of followers around the world.

Will Wikileaks do any good to India?

Simply put, Indian politicians are shameless. We have had many such expose in the past, Tehelka being the foremost. But nothing has changed. Our political leaders suffer from 'denial syndrome' and will continue to do so.

Wikileaks' latest revelation that the Congress lined up money to bribe MPs to win the 2008 parliamentary trust vote has been outrightly denied by none other than the Prime Minister himself. A US diplomatic cable has claimed that an aide of Congress leader Satish Sharma showed a US Embassy employee "two chests containing cash" and said Rs 50-60 crore is ready for use as "pay-offs" to win the support of some MPs ahead of crucial vote of confidence in UPA government over the Indo-US nuke deal.

"I wish to make it clear that no one from the Congress party or the government indulged in any unlawful act during the trust vote in July 2008," the Prime Minister said. Now defending the Congress party is fine, but claiming that no body from the UPA government indulged in any unlawful act would draw criticism. When Mr Singh was not aware of what was cooking in the 2G scam, how could he be so sure about his allies in this case.

The Prime Minister has denied that bribe was paid while the Kishore Chandra Deo committee, which probed the cash- for- votes issue, had insisted that there was exchange of money.

Soon after this, a Wikileaks report accused the BJP leaders for adopting different stands in their public declarations and private conversations on the India-US nuclear deal. According to the cable, the BJP leadership had told US diplomats that its criticism of the US in public was to score 'easy political points' against the ruling UPA. As expected, the BJP straightway denied the allegation and demanded the cables to be probed. It is the same BJP that had previously demanded the Prime Minister's resignation on WikiLeaks revelation that the Congress bribed MPs to win the 2008 parliamentary trust vote.

Our politicians strongly believe in the logical fallacy 'two wrongs make a right'. In the next few days, we will continue to see spokespersons from both the Congress and the BJP, accusing each other of being guilty and questioning the evidential value of Wikileaks.