In Defence of Eccentricity

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/66e3c0e0-4a19-11dc-9ffe-0000779fd2ac.html

The world-view that Dalrymple tries to invite the reader to.. in order to 'oddify' Gandhi.. is telling. To see Gandhi as an eccentric, you have to put yourself in the shoes of a 'normal' person, kind of the 'half-kanjar' that arjun here purports to be. Someone who can easily be shamed by the 'weirdness' and 'achHoot' behaviour of his forefathers..

But before that, take a look at the 2nd paragraph: So the British were DEEPLY rooted, huh? And they were rooted RIGHT FROM THE TIME of the founding of some company in Liverpool? And then Shakespeare? As You Like It?? Bill, you are one to talk about wet dreams!

And the British left peacefully?? Oh, he meant no british lives were lost. Well maybe the Americans too should have distracted Iranians with border diputes, in order to avoid the hostage crisis..

And so preacheth Bill.. of the love between the lords and the aristrocrat brahmins. And the idiot that Dalrymple is, he confuses that as the 'two sides', damn the masses who Nehru and Edwina would have preferred as slave-servants.

'Personal weirdness', 'unusual practices'.. what exactly is the charge here? That Gandhi was more real than the WEIRD fantasy that everyone conjured up? Should we hang the real Gandhi, for prancing around in Bill's imaginations?

Let's list the charges: many dietary fads, saline enemas, testing his self-control with nubile young women as opposed to ugly old transistors (some lookup the meaning of self-control). With no sense of smell, he ventured into equating human excrement with cow excrement.. and simple man as he was, he thought out aloud about it to the press. No sense of properness, oh the poor weirdo!

Readers associated with medical professions probably remember the times they were uneasy talking about sex, touching genitals even dead bodies. But after having grown up, you do talk to your mother about breast cancer and encourage describing your private ailment as descriptively as you can. This may seem like a blatant defense of all weirdness that was Gandhi, but a TRULY ENLIGHTENED person does venture into every 'orifice of the universe' and is not exactly beholden to the standards of high schoolers.

The scholarship on combining esoteric Christian beliefs and Indic religious practises, kaka will leave alone for now..

No matter what Gandhi did think of himself, would it be too far fetched to describe him as 'the pre-ordained and potentially divine world saviour whose coming was implicit in the 'Eastern' religious writings to which so many of his English acquaintances had turned.. [He came to believe that] it was his destiny to lead a troubled world along the path of salvation'? Do we like humilty or do we prefer (perceived) reality?

And one more idiotic BS that sophists typically indulge in.. So Gandhi was somehow associated (agent??) with this ECU (Esoteric Christian Union). So now forget Gandhi and lets concentrate on the founders and their shenanigans and devote another paragraph on their weirdness and crimes IN AN ESSAY ABOUT GANDHI. Bravo! Idiot or poor propagandist, Bill take your pick.

And the 'bizarre beliefs' of preventive medicine and 'bringing oneself into the harmony of natural forces' is as incriminating the early attempts of aviation pioneers to fly without a permit. You can shame teenagers with this 'damning rhetoric', or maybe fellow modern idiots.

Take a look at the note produced about the sick village boy. Oh, weird, weird, weird. Gandhi, the Bapu of the nation acting so non-scientifically..!

The silliest (and most telling of Dalrymple's mindset) statements are the most infuriarating too. Gandhi's 'extreme eccentricity did not stop him from being both a shrewd tactician and a major moral force'. So Bill knows the formula for being a major moral force etc, and it involves no eccentricites. But Bill, the empirical evidence suggests that you need to think outside the box, to stay significant.

In summary, Dalrymple seems to be appealing to a townhall mob of 'normal' idiots who cringe at the thought of half-nakedness, no sense of smell, a man slightly ahead or behind times.. and anyone who does see the idiocy of it all usually sits quietly on the back benches.