Naked Ambition :A Book on sex life of MAHATAMA GANDHI

Excerpts from a telephonic interview with Jad Adams: Historian: Jad Adams What inspired you to write this book? I've always been interested in Gandhi and the Independence movement. In 1995, I worked on another book, The Dynasty, where I explored the Gandhi-Nehru story. I wanted to look at his story through original source material that Gandhi himself wrote and of people who wrote about him and knew him. I feel a lot of information about the man has been obscured after his death where people have chosen to mythologise him and lend him an air of sanctity. I wanted to see the real human being, the man behind the Mahatma. He didn't like the term, Mahatma, very much himself. He liked to concentrate on his spiritual nature. He wasn't ambitious to run a country but to spiritually refine himself. Why choose to write about Gandhi's sex life? I'm not implying that this book is only about sex. The truth is that Gandhi as a man liked talking and writing about sex and challenged his own sexual needs, at times. Information shows that he had practical experiments with sex, there are written records of this. My work is not an interpolation of sex into the life of a man whose actions were otherwise non-sexual. In fact, Gandhi's attitude was labelled 'abnormal and unnatural' by Jawaharlal Nehru and during Partition, senior leaders like J Kripalani and Vallabhbhai Patel also distanced themselves from him on account of his sexual attitude. What has been the reaction to the book in England where there is a large Indian diaspora? My book's been very well received there. During the launch of my book at London University, where I am a research fellow, there were many Indian students and they were intrigued and interested at the approach that I had taken. Do you worry that there might be some backlash from Indians and others because of what has been said about Gandhi's sexual encounters? I haven't received any backlash so far. I understand that there could be. But all the things that I'm saying in the book were either things Gandhi said himself or were said to him. What is wrong with that picture? About the book Naked Ambition released in the UK last week. It offers 'the most explicit account yet of Gandhi's sexual experiments with the wives of his followers and his teenaged grand-nieces' . In the book, Gandhi is quoted on the power of semen saying, "One who conserves his vital fluid acquires unfailing power". I have worked with countless records both written by him and about him. Some of the most helpful were those produced by Sushila Nayar, Pyarelal's sister. In fact, she herself said that Gandhi's dwelling on sexuality and his Brahmacharya experiments were 'fundamental and integral to Gandhiji's philosophy of life, and on account of the great importance he himself attached to it and his own injunction to me on that behalf'.

[the author's website - http://www.jadadams .co.uk/4519. html

. He has also written Dynasty: The Nehru-Gandhi Story (with Phillip Whitehead 1997 Penguin)]