Maxim gets physical with Gandhi

Maxim gets physical with Gandhi
By Jeet Thayil, India Abroad, 31 January 2003. English Language.

The February issue of Maxim, the leading monthly men’s magazine, depicts Mahatma Gandhi being beaten, throttled, punched, head butted, kicked and stomped—all in the name of a workout and fitness feature.

Titled “Maxim’s Kick-Ass Workout,” the three-page feature has illustrations of a well-built Caucasian man in a muscle t-shirt kneeing and pummeling Gandhi’s face until the blood flows.

During the course of the section, Gandhi’s head is repeatedly smashed on the floor. His front teeth and wire-rimmed glasses are broken in a numbered, step-by-step lesson format.

The accompanying text urges readers to “teach those pacifists a lesson about aggression” with a “vicious, total-body training regimen.”


One step recommends strangulation as a favorable assault technique because it uses “nearly every upper-body muscle.” Since it may take a few minutes for him to pass out, “quickly ask Gandhi if he can see the change in your physique. No response? Keep working out.”

The workout for the abdominal muscles suggest, as a first step, “Grab the offending putz by the head (watch out for slippery skulls!) or ears (watch out for slippery wax).”

The section ends with the man using a marital arts hold to fling his diminutive opponent through the air. Gandhi—wearing a white loincloth and sandals—smiles through it all, despite his missing teeth and bandaged forehead.

Slugged, “Let’s Get Physical,” the article is previewed in the magazine’s contents page. “Hin-don’t, page 74,” says the caption, a play on Gandhi’s religious background.

The feature is accompanied by a “Total Wimp Workout,” which shows Gandhi cowering in shoe closet. “Nobody in here but us loafers, sir,” he says.

The wimp workout consists of three steps: running, hiding and crying. “Lots of people run to add years to their lives,” says the text. “But hiding and crying work, too.”

Billed as an “unapologetically male” magazine, Maxim is owned by Dennis Publishing. CEO Felix Dennis also owns Stuff, a lifestyle magazine, and Blender, a music magazine.

Aimed at the 18-to-34 age group, the magazine claims 1.7 million subscribers. It claims to have achieve enormous growth in the United States over the last five years with a racy mix of entertainment and information.

In its advertisements, the magazine says it addresses what is really on a young man’s mind: “Women, Sex, and Fast Cars.”

“I am not of the opinion Mahatma Gandhi’s reputation will be seriously harmed by anything Maxim may have to say about him,” writer Suketu Mehta, who is working on a new translation of Gandhi’s autobiography, My Experiments with Truth, told India Abroad.

“Even if they devoted every issue to knocking him down or talking about his sex life it would not make one jot of difference.

Obviously it is offensive,” Mehta said. “Can you imagine a similar piece about, say, Martin Luther King?”

Mehta said the feature was of a piece with the militaristic atmosphere in the country. It was new kind of American imperialism.

He said there were two Americas, one was full of “rednecks and trailer parks” and other was “transcendental America.”
Included by permission of India Abroad. Voices © 2002, IPA, all rights reserved.

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