“My Dear Lower House,” begins one letter, from Hermann Kallenbach, to Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, dated Aug. 20, 1912.
“We are to blame for all the misery in the world and therefore all the imperfections of our surroundings. They will be perfect when we are.”
In the letter, Mr. Kallenbach requests that Gandhi meet him to discuss “Tolstoy Farm,” a project that Mr. Kallenbach, an architect by profession, was financing by giving Gandhi a gift of land in Johannesburg.
It is signed “With love, your sinly [sincerely] — Upper House.”
The letter is one of dozens of documents and photos on display in an exhibition that opened Wednesday at the National Archives of India in New Delhi. The exhibition centers on the intimate and loving friendship between Gandhi and his German-Jewish friend, Mr. Kallenbach.
Wednesday was the 65th anniversary of Gandhi’s assassination in New Delhi.
The “Gandhi-Kallenbach papers,” as the documents that make up the exhibition are known, were purchased by the Indian government from the Kallenbach family for $1.1 million last year, on the back of controversy over the nature of their friendship.
In a book about Gandhi’s time in South Africa, Joseph Lelyveld, a former New York Times executive editor, detailed the relationship between the two men. The book was denounced by some in India, who believed it portrayed the man often called the “father of the nation” as a homosexual.
“It is clear from these letters, there was a deep emotional attachment that Gandhi shared with Kallenbach,” Mushirul Hasan, director general of the National Archives, said in an interview. But Mr. Hasan dismissed the idea that the two men shared a sexual relationship.
“Gandhi as a person tended to get very enthusiastic about certain relationships, and expressed the intensity in words that conveyed the impression that it is more than a normal relationship,” he said.
Most of the documents on display center on Gandhi’s life in South Africa, including the management of Tolstoy farm and the growth of the nonviolent resistance movement that Gandhi led there. The exhibition also includes correspondence between the families of the two men and letters to their acquaintances.
Gandhi was not the only one who had a special term of address for Kallenbach; his secretary Mahadev Desai in a letter dated Aug. 23, 1937, refers to Kallenbach as “dear Uncle Hanuman,” a reference to the Hindu monkey-god.
Also on display are photographs of Gandhi and Kallenbach in their younger years, life on Tolstoy farm and Kallenbach with Gandhi’s sons, grandchildren and other leaders of the Indian national movement.
Spread across two spacious halls at the National Archives, the public exhibition was inaugurated by the minister of culture, Chandresh Kumari Katoch, and will continue until Feb 15.
The Kallenbach family was originally planning to auction the papers through Sotheby’s, but then came the controversy over Mr. Lelyveld’s book, which heightened interest in what they contained.
“It cost us a lot of money,” Mr. Hasan said. “The controversy raised the price of the papers.”
India Ink: Gandhi's Relationship With Kallenbach Focus of New Exhibition in Delhi
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India Ink: Gandhi's Relationship With Kallenbach Focus of New Exhibition in Delhi
