US author fights back in Gandhi ‘gay lover’ row

AN AMERICAN author has angrily dismissed claims his new book on Mahatma Gandhi alleged that India’s independence leader was a racist bisexual who left his wife for a body-builder.

Indian newspapers were outraged by reviews in the US and Britain of Joseph Lelyveld’s biography that focused on Gandhi’s relationship with German-Jewish architect and amateur body-builder Hermann Kallenbach.

Gandhi lived with Kallenbach in Johannesburg for about two years from 1907 before leaving South Africa to return to India in 1914.