India buys Gandhi’s love letters to Jewish boyfriend

Several pro-Israel Jewish media outlets (WSJ, JTA, etc.) has reported that government of India has bought an archive of Mahtama Gandhi papers and photos which belonged to his Jewish gay boyfriend, Dr. Hermann Kallenbach (d. 1945).

The archive was scheduled to be auctioned on Tuesday at Sotheby’s in London but Indian government stepped in and bought the entire archive for a whopping US$1.28 million.

The controversial letters and photos were saved going into some private hand as a result of backdoor agreement involving India’s Ministry of External Affairs, the National Archives of India and Sotheby’s on behalf of the family of Isa Sarid, the grandniece of the Jewish bodybuilder turned architect Kallenbach.

Most of the letters were written to Gandhi (between 1905-45) by several world political and Zionist leaders including World Zionist Organization president Dr. Chaim Weizman (d. 1952), a Russian Jew, who later became the first president of the Zionist entity in 1948 – and several letters that throw fresh light on the controversial relationship between Gandhi and Kallenbach, one of the foremost associates and friends of Gandhi during his time in South Africa. In the 1940s, British government refused Kallenbach’s request to meet Gandhi in India.

“These letters belong in the public domain, not in private hands, and I hope the government of India make their contents accessible to everyone,” Tushar Gandhi. Gandhi’s great-grandson told French news agency AFP.

Former New York Times’ Jewish executive editor Joseph Lelyveld in Gandhi’s biography ‘Great Soul: Mahatma Gandhi And His Struggle With India’ - has claimed that Gandhi was a sexual weirdo, a political incompetent and a fanatical faddist – one who was often downright cruel to those around him.

The German-born Kallenbach lived in Gandhi’s house in South Africa for two years. He even introduced 17-year-old Jewish girl Sonja Schlesin (d. 1956), whom Gandhi hired as his personal secretary.  (see photo on top).

Gandhi, who had rejected the idea of the so-called “Jewish Homeland” in Palestine – has been honored by Zionist regime in order to steal more Palestinian land. The Jerusalem city is planning to set up a statue of Mahtama Gandhi and a mediation centre on a private land owned by a Palestinian family “to illustrate how to solve the Arab-Israeli conflict through peaceful means, as Gandhi would have wished”.