Father India - revisited
Hello Mohan:
I have emotional attachments to India that is why Father India made me sick. Mr Paine trashes everything Indian he comes across.
Last time I was this sick was when I was reading Jean Ganet's "diary of a Thief". Marquis de Sade was ok, even "the story of O" was ok.
1, criticizes Gandhi for the white suit he was wearing when he landed in England as a 19 year old. ( criticize is a mild word, abuse...)
2, Calls King of Dewas a pimp or procurer of young boys for E M Forster ( a Passage to India)
3, I thought Maugham's "Razor's edge" was one of the finest novels in English language, he, along with other things calls, it wooden
4, describing Gandhi's ashram, he says there was less of eating and even less of copulating going on there.
There tons more examples.
There was not a single socially redeemable item in the book. So, applying Supreme Courts criteria, I will have to call the book obscene.
Read non-emotional review in NY times.
search.nytimes.com
Here is the first paragraph from the review...
If you wanted to be terrifically shallow, you could just read Jeffery Paine's seemingly scholarly book for the sex. Or the lack thereof. Never was there such an effusion of Protestant guilt and sublimated libido. Gandhi sleeps with a beautiful 19-year-old just to prove he has no more sexual interest in her than her mother did. E. M. Forster turns a maharajah into his procurer. Christopher Isherwood learns he can have a guru and faceless sexual encounters too. There are pedophiles and couples in ''spiritual marriages,'' princes who like dirty jokes and writers who try not to touch another Indian. It's a rogue's gallery of sexual dysfunction, and Paine seems only too happy to dish.
I hope Shashi Tharoor or Salmon Rushdie will review this book.
Regards,
Satish |
