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Was Gandhi actually a bastard?
Qingu
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Registered User regular
I hang out on a Christian forum and some kid posted an e-mail he received bunch of alleged quotes by Ghandi that portray him as a racist (against Africans), and pretty crazy (he suggested that Jews should just kill themselves to make a point against the Holocaust and that Britain should give in to Hitler to avoid more bloodshed.)
At first I just dismissed them as yet another crazy fundamentalist Christian e-mail ring. But I did a little research. I found a longwinded article in Commentary by Richard Grenier that substantiates many of these claims:
http://history.eserver.org/ghandi-nobody-knows.txt
Some blogs—largely neocon—turned up on Google searches echoing Grenier's claims. I also found another website that also supports this negative portrayal of Ghandi:
http://www.howcomyoucom.com/articles/nov282000.htm
So what's the deal? Has anyone here studied Ghandi? Again, at first I was tempted to dismiss this stuff as anti-Hindu Christian-biased nonsense, or anti-nonviolence neocon-biased nonsense. But on the other hand, our perception of Ghandi is pretty mythologized. Our culture basically revers him like a saint, and that seems pretty unrealistic, now that I think about it. It's certainly possible Ghandi said some pretty nasty shit, and if that's true, we should stop canonizing him as the moral apex of humanity. I'd just like to see some more substantiation than a Commentary article and some blogs.
Ninjedit: I also could find nothing on the internets to refute the claims in either of the above sources.
At first I just dismissed them as yet another crazy fundamentalist Christian e-mail ring. But I did a little research. I found a longwinded article in Commentary by Richard Grenier that substantiates many of these claims:
http://history.eserver.org/ghandi-nobody-knows.txt
Some blogs—largely neocon—turned up on Google searches echoing Grenier's claims. I also found another website that also supports this negative portrayal of Ghandi:
http://www.howcomyoucom.com/articles/nov282000.htm
So what's the deal? Has anyone here studied Ghandi? Again, at first I was tempted to dismiss this stuff as anti-Hindu Christian-biased nonsense, or anti-nonviolence neocon-biased nonsense. But on the other hand, our perception of Ghandi is pretty mythologized. Our culture basically revers him like a saint, and that seems pretty unrealistic, now that I think about it. It's certainly possible Ghandi said some pretty nasty shit, and if that's true, we should stop canonizing him as the moral apex of humanity. I'd just like to see some more substantiation than a Commentary article and some blogs.
Ninjedit: I also could find nothing on the internets to refute the claims in either of the above sources.
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I haven't heard this stuff about Africans though.
So yeah, I never bought that Ghandi was a saint. I just want to know to what extent he was an asshole.
We've all got our vices, but I question as to how much of a racist Ghandi was. He served in a volunteer amulance unit while he was in South Africa because he felt that if he didn't contribute to the country he had no right to claim equality there.
Derangement? I don't see what is deranged.
The only thing I find odd is the thing against Africans.
Can we get a link to this thread?
I guess you could say that he believed in things wholeheartedly . . . If vegetarianism was right, it was right NO MATTER WHAT.
Actually, thinking back to his book again, I'm almost certain he was not racist against Africans. He lived in Africa for a time in an area that had both whites and blacks and was appalled by the segregation. I could be wrong, it's been a while since I read it.
I don't really see what's so bad about that. Your home is your home.
according to Richard Shenkman, his vices/craziness include:
*sleeping in the nude with naked young women who were not his wife
*he felt that people should rarely, if ever ejaculate. when he found out that he had a nocturnal emission, he almost had a nervous breakdown.
*he and his young women loved enemas.
*he didn't let his sons or wife get an education, and he disowned his eldest son when he got married.
*he hated modern medicine, and denied his wife life-saving penicillin. she died of pneumonia. (but he himself took quinine when he had malaria)
*ghandi volunteered to serve in the boer war, the war against the zulus, and world war I, so he wasn't always a peacenik.
*he always approved of violence as a last resort: when hindus and muslims came to deadly blows and the Naweb of Maler Kotla issued an order to shoot ten muslims for every hindu that was killed in the state, he gave it his blessing.
*he felt it would have been better for the czechs to commit collective suicide than to fight hitler.
lincoln didn't hate black people.
He served in the Indian Ambulance Corps. I don't see what's so bad about that or seeing that people recieve medical aid goes against peace.
I mean, for instance, James Fennimore Cooper was rabidly pro-Native American, but if you read Last of the Mohicans, he constantly falls into the realm of describing the "Noble Savage" and other tropes we might now regard as condescending and/or racist. It's probably useful to consider that his position was, in his day, the other end of the see-saw from expansionists who regarded the Native Americans as vermit fit for extermination.
I suspect more or less the same of Gandhi.
Yeah, he believed in chastity. Sleeping in the same bed with the women was ostensibly to test himself I recall. Also, Indian yoga and whatnot has a lot about physically cleansing yourself, I think that is probably where it comes from. I'd file all three of these under Indian folk medicine.
No idea. I guess we'd need more specifics on this.
No idea.
Citizenship was always a very strong theme for him. It took him a long time let go of the British Empire and embrace Indian Nationalism.
My guess is that he believed in the right of the state to forcibly impose order where it had the moral mandate to do so.
I'd have to see the quote. People seem to often mistake Gandhi saying "You must resist even if they shoot and kill you for it" with "You should commit suicide."
nope, not in the least.virtually any hero is going to be human if you look past the legend. barring mass lying about what they were heroes for, they were still heroes, vices or no.
Seriously. Oooh, that rational, pacifist bastard.
I had never read this particular quote of his, but it makes me respect the guy even more. I realize I'm coming at it from a modern perspective, but imagining someone saying this today is hard - not because it's outmoded thinking, but because it's very rational and politically unpopular and would probably get you crucified. It basically sums up my feelings on the matter (well, the Israel/Palestine conflict, at least) perfectly, but I feel like that's an opinion I'm simply not allowed to express today in America.
Also worth remembering how strongly he believed in the Empire, which on the colonial frontier can lead to some blurry statements that seem to be about race but are actually about politics.
he didn't even think that. the only support for any of that might be when he was talking about blacks during his debates with douglas, and even then he was just speaking to the crowd. it was never reflected in his dealings with black leaders.
personally, i just think that people like trying to find fault with past leaders and icons so they can go "OMG WAS YOUR MIND JUST BLOWN?!?!?"
there's a big difference between trying to contextualize a person in his or her timeframe, and just trying to expose what isn't really there.
edit: i'm not even gonna get into a debate about lincoln hating black people. if you know anything about the man, ranging from his stance on the mexican-american war to the emancipation proclamation to his dealings with black leaders, you know that the idea of him hating black people is completely retarded and not even worth talking about.
Exactly.
Yeah? What about this?
"I will be damned if I don't feel almost sorry for being elected when the ni----s is the first thing I have to attend to."
Even as a joke, that's still racist.
I don't think he was extremely racist, but I bet he was like 60%, at least more then half.
yeah, but that doesn't mean he "hated" black people. the colonization thing was a pipe dream, and when you get down to brass tacks, nobody can really say for sure what lincoln exactly felt about black people. all i know is that there is virtually no real evidence to suggest that he did, other than conjecture and various quotes that have been extrapolated into something more than they are.
edit: see above. i mean, 60%? what the hell does that even mean? oh and NO MORE LINCOLN MORE GHANDI, sorry for getting orf topic
He wasn't perfect, but stuff like that was absolutely amazing for that time period.
That's pretty fucking awesome.
It's more like how he refused to free slaves in Union states or areas that were controlled by the Union, but Confederate slaves were technically freed. Also, I think before 1861 he was against the abolishinists, but that doesn't necessarily mean he was racist because it could be more political then that.
His big long quote that gets analyzed a lot says to me that he was just doing what he thought was politically best and it seemed like he did so in a very slow methodical manner. After rereading about him today he also strikes me as a flip flopper.
That sounds more like he was saying "This slavery issue is a mess and it'll be a real head-ache to deal with," rather than "I wish I didn't need to be around these black people."
this is lincon right? Guy who got shot in the head and had to deal with the civil fucking war?
that doesn't sound like anything other than foresight.
*shrug*
Someone photoshop Lincoln on Stephen Colbert's "Best Black Friend" picture.
That's pretty much the textbook definition of the bleeding heart liberal anti-racist of the late 1900's/early 20th century. Among that political stripe, it was very commonly believed that it had been cruel to remove Africans from Africa and that the right thing to do would be to send them home. 'Course, they didn't stop to think that most of their slaves and whatnot had been born and raised in western countries and were far more at home there, and that blindspot was due to all those 'noble savage' myths floating about. It was believed that Africans were naturally inclined to live primitively and couldn't be expected to compete as freedmen in their home countries. Looks stupid to us now of course, but placed next to the other attitudes to blacks at the time, it was radically pro-equality. You need to think in relative terms here, you can't hold beliefs from the past up against current ones.