The Naked Fakir

Re: # 27
u r right. but can u judge a man by his so-called followers. he need to be understood by what he stood for.

Trying the recall the names of some of the geniuses who appear on Chowk from time to time -

Subhash Gatade

Udaykumar

Revathy Gopal

and above all Arvind Gaur and sanguine (or was it Penguin?)

Do these people have any opinions, or are they just cowardly scum?

Aren`t these the very men and women who use Gandhi`s name to spread all kinds of ``wisdom`` in India?

Re: # 5
i though the same years back. but no more. let years go and u too will veer my way.

Re: # 4
how true are your words? it took me nearly 30 years to understand him. i always had the feeling that marxists were right.

Also this statement:

The question of racial purity

The petition dwells upon ``the co-mingling of the Coloured and white races``. May we inform the members of the conference that, so far as the British Indians are concerned, such a thing is practically unknown. If there is one thing, which the Indian cherishes more than any other, it is the purity of type. Why bring such a question into the controversy at all?

The Transvaal Chambers and British Indians, Indian Opinion 24-12-03, CWOMG Vol. 4, pg 89

In this case there is no ``revocability`` ... no ``progress`` ...

Sadna,

Consider this statement from Gandhi:


`Sanghtan is a really sound movement. Every community is entitled, indeed bound to organize itself as a seperate entity` : Mahatma Gandhi

(Young India January 6th 1927)


That is the most nonsensical argument I have come across... goes to show that you have totally lost your mind. Ofcourse Jinnah had himself resigned from the Muslim League two days before he made the said statement - saying that as the governor general he couldn`t head a communal organisation.

Your laughable claim is soundly defeated when one considers that he appointed a Hindu, scheduled caste at that, on a Muslim League seat in the interim government and made the same Hindu the first Law Minister of Pakistan... The pressure as Jinnah said came from within the party to keep it a communal organisation. So Jinnah quit the party as he didn`t think the governor general of a country could continue to head a community based party.

So Jinnah as the non-member telling a foreign correspondent that time is not right for the Muslim League to change into the Pakistan League but that it could happen in the future is ``racism``... only you Sadna... only you can come up with such specious arguments....
I already listed other such arguments... ``Sadna`s fraudulent tricks`` post...

Yes... saying that the public opinion was not ready for a completely national organisation... but it could happen in the future.... is of NO COMPARISON to Gandhi`s views:


Gandhi`s views

1) Black people are subhuman
2) White race should be superior
3) Black people are savages
4) Women should be closed up in their homes.
5) Women should not have the right to vote

Shame on you sadna... for being you.

Now what next? hindu cultural life is secular.

sunlight #173 has already been posted by me in sadna #69

Mantolives #161

Nice try but the issue was never Jinnah`s own membership of the Muslim League(Jinnah was not the one who needed representation in national affairs, the nonMuslims of Pakistan did).

The issue was the inclusion of nonMuslim members by Muslims in Muslim League or another Muslim-majority organization which would then seek to represent nonMuslims as well. Jinnah clearly says that the time had not come for that.

So not only that he didn`t want the Congress to have any Indian Muslim members, even in a Muslim-majority situation he did not think it was appropriate at that time to include Pakistani nonMuslims in the Muslim League. By advocating total political isolation of the beleagured minority from the majority in Pakistan at that time, Jinnah was certainly in effect, promoting racism.

And Jinnah did so as head of state affecting 10s of millions - there is absolutely no comparison with Gandhi`s efforts as a mere ordinary citizen in S. Africa.

I would love to hear the views of India`s liberals who have destroyed India`s soul, including Rajmohan Gandhi and that gaggle of Gandhi`s descendants who go around the world making absolute asses of themselves, and living off of Gandhi`s name.

It will be great payback to establish that Gandhi was corrupt, a racist, a misogynist, a Muslim-hater, and probably a killer too.

I am all for doing away with Gandhi`s legacy from India. It`s in the fitness of things that the effort is being spearheaded by our talented Pakistani friends. :)

Let Jinnah`s legacy live in Pakistan AND India.

Dear Sunlight...

Thanks for posting these pieces up. They are an important, albeit selective, part of the puzzle.

However Gandhi`s racism is too blatant (as shown in direct quotes from his CW) to be apologised for like this. Nor can his later statements white wash his out racial bigotry.

Please look at the some of the stuff he said... he believed in racial purity, dominance of the white people and that all black people were subhuman.

The only thing one can conclude is that at different times Gandhi was given to saying different things... which made him an unreliable operator.

A wealth of information on this topic is on the African National Congress website (the ANC is the ruling party of South Africa). http://www.anc.org.za/ancdocs/history/people/gandhi/

A particularly good essay is ``Gandhi and the Black People of South Africa`` by James D. Hunt. The summary :
``Gandhi began as a perfectly ordinary intelligent lawyer trying to establish a career. In time he transformed himself into something else. It is that transformation which should interest us.``

Some excerpts:
``Gandhi began as a very conventional Victorian Indian, seeking accomodation and personal success within the British Empire. He shared the prejudices of his class concerning Black people, and his lifestyle and work kept him isolated from them. ``

However, he soon developed close relations with some Colored and Black leaders.

Dr. Abdurrehman: ``Gandhi was in the Strangers` Gallery of the House of Lords the night the South African Bill was under debate, along with Abdurrahman, Schreiner and Jabavu. After the failure to alter the Act, Gandhi recommended that Abdurrahman take up passive resistance and invited him to lunch to talk it over. ... A few weeks later Abdurrahman suggested in his newspaper that the Coloureds adopt the Indian strategy of passive resistance, and Gandhi wrote an article for The APO. ...Gandhi stayed closer in touch with Abdurrahman than with any other leader. Indian Opinion frequently reprinted news from The APO, and they corresponded on issues of mutual concern.``

Dube: ``The one African leader with whom Gandhi and his associates are known to have had some close contact was his neighbor at Phoenix, John L. Dube, the first President of the South African Native National Congress (ANC). ... Dube, ... established his own school in 1901, the Ohlange Institute. It was the first African-controlled industrial school in South Africa. Two years later, Gandhi established his own rural settlement at Phoenix, only a mile or two from Ohlange. Dube began a Zulu newspaper, Ilanga Lase Natal (Light of Natal) in 1903, printing the first copies at the International Printing Press, controlled by Gandhi, which also printed Indian Opinion when it was launched a year later.``

``There is also evidence that Dube respected Gandhi. When Gandhi`s active ``passive resistance`` began in Johannesburg, Dube praisted it in Ilanga, and when Gandhi brought to South Africa his political mentor Gopal Krishna Gokhale, a member of the Viceroy`s Council, he was taken to Ohlange Institute to meet Dube, where they ``spent some time discussing the Native question``. Dube reported on the meeting in Ilanga, telling his readers that ``We have seen and heard a great man whose knowledge is equal to that of the foremost statesmen of our day, and he is a black man.````

These contacts did not deepen because Indians and Blacks did not have any interests in common (apart from enemity with the Whites).

Gandhi: ``This Association of Coloured People does not include Indians .... We believe that the Indian community has been wise in doing so. For, though the hardships suffered by those people and the Indians are almost of the same kind, the remedies are not identical. ... We can cite the Proclamation of 1857 in our favour, which the Coloured people cannot. They can use the powerful argument that they are the children of the soil. ....``

From http://www.anc.org.za/ancdocs/history/people/gandhi/162-199.htm ``INTERVIEW TO THE REV. S.S. TEMA, JANUARY 1, 1939``

``T: Of late there has been some talk of forming an Indo-African united non-white front in South Africa. What do you think about it?

G: It will be a mistake. You will be pooling together not strength but weakness. You will best help one another by each standing on his own legs. The two cases are different. The Indians are a microscopic minority. They can never be a menace to the white population. You, on the other hand, are the sons of the soil who are being robbed of your inheritance. You are bound to resist that. Yours is a far bigger issue. It ought not to be mixed up with that of the Indian. This does not preclude the establishment of the friendliest relations between the two races. The Indians can cooperate with you in a number of ways. They can help you by always acting on the square towards you. They may not put themselves in opposition to your legitimate aspirations, or run you down as ``savages`` while exalting themselves as cultured people in order to secure concessions for themselves at your expense. ``

Finally, as James Hunt sums up,
``None of these should be surprising, except for the tendency to wish that our heroes would have been consistently heroic throughout their lives. Gandhi began as a perfectly ordinary intelligent lawyer trying to establish a career. In time he transformed himself into something else. It is that transformation which should interest us. He did fail to change South Africa very much, but in the attempt he learned a great deal, grew in personal stature, and left behind a legacy of resistance to injustice.``
...
``Instead of enlisting the support of 440,000 Coloured people and 3.4 million Blacks, Gandhi chose to begin his final, and amazingly successful, campaign with 4 women and 12 men. ... Satyagraha, he believed, depended on committed individuals, not on great numbers. ... If the South African Blacks learned that, he believed they could not fail. The demonstration of satyagraha was the greatest gift he had to offer to both the Indian and the Black people of South Africa.``

Thank you...

As a citizen of the world, I am fascinated by this universal icon of humanity, Mahatma Mohandas Gandhi... and therefore I seek to learn more about him and to see for myself if truth is stranger than fiction.

Please refer to #34 for a better over-view of my humble efforts to study this mountain of humanity.

Manto uncle u r taking this personal. If you dont like the man why spend so much time reading him. I say you compile all the things u written and any indian or phoren univ will give u phd in gandhian studies.. :)))

Vagabond

Nothing at all... except that Sadna claimed in her posts denouncing lowly Jinnah (in reaction to imagined affronts to Mahatma Gandhi) that any such position would be racist...

I just wanted to quote Mahatma Gandhi on the issue as well.

#167,

What`s wrong in that statement?

Mahatma Gandhi`s views on Caste system:

A translation of a Gujrati essay he wrote in 1922 for Niya Jawan.


(1) I believe that if Hindu Society has been able to stand it is because it is founded on the caste system.
(2) The seeds of swaraj are to be found in the caste system. Different castes are like different sections of miliary division. Each division is working for the good of the whole....

(3) A community which can create the caste system must be said to possess unique power of organization.

(4) Caste has a ready made means for spreading primary education. Each caste can take the responsibility for the education of the children of the caste. Caste has a political basis. It can work as an electorate for a representative body. Caste can perform judicial functions by electing persons to act as judges to decide disputes among members of the same caste. With castes it is easy to raise a defense force by requiring each caste to raise a brigade.

(5) I believe that interdining or intermarriage are not necessary for promoting national unity. That dining together creates friendship is contrary to experience. If this was true there would have been no war in Europe.... Taking food is as dirty an act as answering the call of nature. The only difference is that after answering call of nature we get peace while after eating food we get discomfort. Just as we perform the act of answering the call of nature in seclusion so also the act of taking food must also be done in seclusion.

(6) In India children of brothers do not intermarry. Do they cease to love because they do not intermarry? Among the Vaishnavas many women are so orthodox that they will not eat with members of the family nor will they drink water from a common water pot. Have they no love? The caste system cannot be said to be bad because it does not allow interdining or intermarriage between different castes.

(7) Caste is another name for control. Caste puts a limit on enjoyment. Caste does not allow a person to transgress caste limits in pursuit of his enjoyment. That is the meaning of such caste restrictions as interdining and intermarriage.

(8) To destroy caste system and adopt Western European social system means that Hindus must give up the principle of hereditary occupation which is the soul of the caste system. Hereditary principle is an eternal principle. To change it is to create disorder. I have no use for a Brahmin if I cannot call him a Brahmin for my life. It will be a chaos if every day a Brahmin is to be changed into a Shudra and a Shudra is to be changed into a Brahmin.

(9) The caste system is a natural order of society. In India it has been given a religious coating. Other countries not having understood the utility of the caste system, it existed only in a loose condition and consequently those countries have not derived from caste system the same degree of advantage which India has derived. These being my views I am opposed to all those who are out to destroy the caste system.

Moving on from Gandhi`s racism that was just point 1 of the issues framed in post 34

Much is being made of pygmy and lowly Jinnah`s late in life conversion (and perhaps only temporary) to the two nation theory... but let us consider what the great Mahatma Gandhi, the icon of humanity and civilisation said.


`Sanghtan is a really sound movement. Every community is entitled, indeed bound to organize itself as a seperate entity` : Mahatma Gandhi

(Young India January 6th 1927)


It must be noted that Sanghtan was a Hindu revivalist movement.