In America, outrage over trashing an American hero may seem strange

After all, most modern scholarship is based on sifting through the annals of American and Western Christian history in order to dredge up any and all negative interpretations of anyone once deemed a hero.  That, of course, apart from Martin Luther King, Jr.  So in a country used to hearing over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over again that our Founding Fathers owned slaves, pilgrims were genocidal sexists, Lincoln was probably a racist, Roosevelt an imperialist, Kennedy - well he was godlike - and we won't even get into Reagan and other military heroes of the past.  And that doesn't count the entire confederacy, colonial period, pre-civil rights America, and our decision to drop Atomic Bombs on Japan.  All of these things occupy some 98% of our history.  So it must seem strange that a book that even suggests Gandhi might have been, you know, a stroller on both sides of the sexual fence has caused outrage across India.  In America, this is just the type of thing the public, Progressives, and academics crave.