Hindol Goswami's Page

Gandhian friends- beware of Jeff Knaebel in the garb of Gandhi

Friends, the Chitralekha Diwali issue in Gujarati carries a long article of Jeff Knaebel ( a foreign expat now living illegally in India) holding a book that shows the picture of the Gandhi statue at the Pune railway station on the cover. It was the picture on our website www.gandhisalt.org which was being run by me on behalf of the Friends of the Gandhi Museum Pune over the last five years. You will recall our website which is now under construction and will be launched again in 2010 under a new name.

Friends, what the Chitralekha magazine forgot to tell its readers is that Jeff Knaebel married me legally - Dr. Delia Maria in Pune in December 2003 with a commitment to join my Gandhian work here in Pune. He even wrote me a pre nuptial agreement with clauses most of which he has broken today. Six years later he has changed his mind, and deserted me and my son in the middle of the night of 28th February 2009.

The Chitralekha magazine , has kept its readers in the dark about Jeff Knaebel’s personal life –how he deceived an Indian woman with false promises and over 100 letters in order to get a foothold in India. It also does not tell of how he has abandoned two US wives and two children, had long drawn out financial squabbles running for years with business partners and is now hiding from his Pune family and friends. It does not tell of how he paid a media agency Planman Rs. one lakh to get his book “My Experiments in moral sovereignty” , press coverage in Delhi.

Early this year, like a thief in the night, he disappeared to Ranchi Jharkhand where he gave huge sums of money from family accounts to strange people there with whom he has later quarelled. He is now touring north India pretending to hold Gandhian values when at the same time he refuses to make peace with family and friends in Pune.
Friends, like me, do not be fooled by people who wear the garb of Gandhi nor judge their books by their covers! Trust not men with no honour or moral ethics, who do not respect women, who lie and then disappear, and for whom charity only begins with the ignorant stranger. That is what Jeff Knaebel has done to me and us here in Pune.

Some of you may have seen a video posted to you on u-tube in June this year by two , hired US media men , showing him desecrating the statue of Gandhi at Rajghat by tearing his passport there, Let me reiterate that India is a democracy, run by a people’s constitution and having an elected government. If Jeff Knaebel , the self professed anarcho-capitalist does not believe in the Indian state, he may quit India and stop deceiving our people, especially our unsuspecting poor.

Thank you for hearing me out
Mrs. Delia Maria Knaebel Ph.D.
Friends of the Gandhi Museum, Pune
NB! On the padyatra website http://gandhipadyatra.com, it states that one of three objectives of the padyatra is “To inspire respect for women, who are far more important than men in the job of saving humanity and our Mother Earth. They are the first gurus of the human child.” Yet sadly Jeff is not even showing the respect to his own wife that she truly deserves.