DARK SHADES

DARK SHADES It was advice Gandhi must now wish he had heeded. New Delhi Herald reporters and photographers were hiding in nearby bushes, guarding both the front and rear entrances. Except for a breath of fresh air at 3 A.M., the women had spent the entire night with the erstwhile spiritual leader. If the chronology was indicting, the photographs were positively damning. Wielding telephoto lenses, the Herald photographers snapped shots that seem sure to snuff out a political career. The scene: Gandhi and his cabal sprawled on his rope bed– naked. Late Sunday morning,  a weary Gandhi  (why was he weary) finally spotted the Herald reporters and confronted them. The women were only there as an experiment in self-restraint, he insisted, and nothing sexual transpired between them. “True brachmacharya (celibacy) is this: one who, by constant-attendance upon God, has become capable of lying naked with naked women, however beautiful they may be, without being in any manner...

According to people who knew the leader well, HE WAS! Mohandas Gandhi may be viewed as a great man, but many don’t know about the famed leader of the Indian revolts’ dark side. In a shocking no holds barred account of a side Gandhi probably didn’t want you to know about, author Joseph Lelyveld reveals the lawyer turned leader led a secret sex life fueled by racism and civil disobedience. The former New York Times executive editor brings us the latest biography of Mohandas Gandhi, titled  Great Soul , where he lays it all out. Here’s what Wall Street Journal’s Andrew Roberts had to say about Gandhi in his review of the new read: “Gandhi was therefore the archetypal 20th-century progressive intellectual, professing his love for mankind as a concept while actually despising people as individuals.” Among the key points in  Great Soul : India’s independence could have been achieved much earlier if Gandhi had not kept abandoning his civil disobedience campaigns at...