Fact check: 4 myths about Mahatma Gandhi

January 30 marks the 75th anniversary of the assassination of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi.

Gandhi — better known as "Mahatma" ("great soul" in English) — was one of the leaders of India's struggle for freedom from British colonial rule. Almost six months after India gained its independence in August 1947, Gandhi, 78 years of age at the time, was assassinated by a Hindu fanatic.

Gandhi is still deeply revered worldwide, especially for his philosophy of nonviolence. But his attitudes toward some issues like sexuality and race have come under scrutiny.  

Was Gandhi friends with Adolf Hitler?

Claim: There's a myth circulating on the internet that Mahatma Gandhi and German dictator Adolf Hitler were friends. Letters written by Gandhi to Hitler, addressing him as "Dear Friend" and ending with "Your sincere friend," are referenced as proof of the friendship.

DW fact check: False.

It is true and well-documented that Gandhi wrote letters to Hitler: one was written on July 23, 1939, and the other on December 24, 1940.

But the letters in no way suggest that Gandhi and Hitler were friends. Rather, Gandhi implores Hitler in his first letter not to start a war, and in his second letter, when World War II had already begun, to strive for peace.

Hitler never received the letters because the British colonial administration prevented them from being delivered. Various sources, including Indian historian Vinay Lal and US political scientist Kelly Rae Kraemer, have confirmed this.

Of Gandhi addressing Hitler as "Dear Friend," Lal pointed to Gandhi's conviction that "no human being is a monster" — not even Hitler — even though "a person may commit monstrous acts."

"So there's a reason why Gandhi writes the way he does to Hitler," Lal, who is a professor at the University of California and has done extensive research on Gandhi, told DW.

Kraemer had a similar take. She writes that meeting one's opponent with respect and friendliness — and thereby perhaps being able to convince him — was part of Gandhi's basic philosophy of nonviolent resistance, known as "Satyagraha."

Was Gandhi a racist?

Claim: Many posts on social media have accused Gandhi of racism and prejudice against Black people. In 2018, a statue of Gandhi was removed from the campus of the University of Ghana because of these accusations. In the wake of the "Black Lives Matter" protests in the US in 2020, thousands signed a petition in London for the demolition of Gandhi's statue there.

DW fact check: True (for a certain time period).

Gandhi lived in South Africa from 1893 to 1914, apart from a few visits to India and England. During his time there, he transformed himself into an activist against injustice and discrimination.

However, he initially focused entirely on the sufferings of the Indian diaspora in South Africa and did not stand up for the Black community there. Instead, some of his early writings indicate that he looked down on them.

"Ours is one continual struggle against a degradation sought to be inflicted upon us by the Europeans, who desire to degrade us to the level of the raw Kaffir whose occupation is hunting, and whose sole ambition is to collect a certain number of cattle to buy a wife with and, then, pass his life in indolence and nakedness," Gandhi wrote.

In the passage, Gandhi refers to Black South Africans as "kaffirs," a highly offensive racist slur. 

Lal, the historian, said: "If somebody asks, 'was Gandhi a racist?', if that's a question for some period of his time in South Africa, then the answer is, 'yes'."

Ramachandra Guha, a renowned historian and Gandhi biographer, also shares the same view.

"In his twenties, Gandhi was unquestionably a racist. He believed in a hierarchy of civilizations, with Europeans at the top, Indians just below them, and Africans absolutely at the bottom. He spoke of the native inhabitants of Africa in patronizing and even pejorative language," Guha wrote in an article for the Telegraph India daily.

However, Guha and others who have studied Gandhi's life say he outgrew his racial prejudices as he got older.

"However, by the time he was in his mid-thirties, Gandhi no longer spoke of Africans as inferior to Indians," he said, adding: "by 1908, Gandhi was clear that Africans, as well as Indians, needed to be placed on an absolutely equal footing with Europeans."

Lal noted that Gandhi received four African Americans at his ashram in 1936, and told them he believed the next great phase of nonviolent resistance would be fought by African Americans.

"He had the confidence and the hope that Black people in America would take the idea of nonviolence further, which they did," Lal said. "That is what the civil rights movement is about."

"I do not believe in caste in the modern sense … nor do I believe in inequalities between human beings," a quote attributed to him reads. "Assumption of superiority by any person over any other is a sin against God and man," it continues.

Did Gandhi and the Dalai Lama ever meet?

Claim: A picture circulating on social media shows Gandhi in London with a child dressed in Tibetan clothes, supposedly the Dalai Lama. The two are said to have met in Britain's capital.

DW fact check: False.

The picture shows Gandhi and the Dalai Lama, the spiritual leader of Tibet — but it's a montage (pictures from various places edited together to make it look like they were in each other's company) — because the two never met.

The original picture from Getty Images, dated November 3, 1931, shows Gandhi at No. 10 Downing Street in London. But the Dalai Lama was not born until several years later, in 1935, according to his official website.

An analysis of the photo using tools available online on Forensically, which allows for digital images to be methodically examined, also suggests it has been doctored. When new content is added to an image, it usually leaves visible traces. Error Level Analysis demonstrates that the figure of the Dalai Lama appears brighter than the rest of the image.

In an interview with the Hindustan Times, one of India's largest English-language newspapers, the Dalai Lama also confirmed he had never met Gandhi.

"In this lifetime, I never met him. But at least on one occasion during a winter in Potala palace ... in my dream, I met Mahatma Gandhi."

Did Gandhi sleep naked with women?

Claim: Some social media users claim that in old age, Gandhi slept together with young women — and that both he and the women were naked.

DW fact check: True.

For decades, Gandhi practiced "Brahmacharya," a lifestyle of sexual abstinence. He also did not have sex with his wife Kasturba, whom he married in 1883, according to his own account, but stopped having intercourse with her in 1901.

According to several sources and Gandhi himself, he began sleeping naked with very young women in the same bed after Kasturba's death in 1944. He described it as a way of testing his willpower to abstain from sex, and there is no solid evidence any sexual acts took place.

"I have touched perhaps thousands upon thousands," he wrote. "But my touch has never carried the meaning of lustfulness. I have lain with some naked, never with the intention of having any lustful satisfaction. My touch has been for our mutual uplift."

These experiments were also mentioned in the diaries of Gandhi's grand-niece, Manu, one of the women involved.

How and whether to judge Gandhi's actions is a question that has troubled many people. 

In an interview with the Times of India, historian Kusoom Vadgama slammed Gandhi for abusing his position of power and using women as test subjects for his philosophy.

"It may have been his way of testing his control over his sexual drive," Vadgama said, "but these women were used as guinea pigs."

Lal, the historian, said it is important to consider that the three women involved — Gandhi's grand-nieces Manu and Abha, and his personal physician Sushila Nayar — all belonged to his most intimate contacts and were familiar with his way of thinking.