5 Books That Decode The Man Behind 'Mahatma'

By siliconindia | Friday, 18 October 2013, 12:53 Hrs

#2 Great Soul: Mahatma Gandhi and His Struggle with India

Author: Joseph Lelyveld

Written by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Joseph Lelyveld, the book is split between the time Gandhi spent in South Africa and his return to India as the Mahatma.

Great Soul has engendered controversy based on early reviews, which portray passages within the book as hinting that the relationship between Gandhi and his friend Hermann Kallenbach was more intimate than previously thought, and possibly sexual in nature.

The supposition raised a furor in India – which made Indian government reportedly making a $1.1 million deal with Sotheby’s to purchase the documents including the letters, which are said to have been written by Gandhi himself.

However the book also depicts a Gandhi’s tough and tumultuous journey to serve a country that succumbs too easily to political insipidity and sectarian violence.