The Bubble Bursts Yasser, the article I quoted says ``he got naked (partly, at least)``. Nothing I have read says the girls or the other women were naked. Yet you persistently repeat that ``they were naked`` and you also said ``they`` shared bowel movements (whatever that means? yuk!)
Who are these they?
It`s strange that you`d be so sloppy given that you`re a lawyer and all and have posted this Gandhi sleeping naked with his nieces story ad nauseum. When asked to cite you say look it up. Not very honest of you.
I haven`t found any report that Nirmal Bose quit in disgust either, as you have claimed. He didn`t approve of it and yet he says there was no ``hanky panky.``
It`s a certainly weird episode but you are, like some shiv sainiks and bajrang dal troopers, exaggerating it to demonize Gandhiji.

I can understand you disliking or hating the man but posting unsubstantiated rumors and claiming he ``slept with them`` knowing fully well what sleeping with implies, is bad, very bad.

The Bubble Bursts zeemax
as a short, dark and ugly hindu dravidian, i`d say most of them ;)
Specifically #214. I realize you intended it to be humorous but it falls flat on its face.
Feel free to skewer any icons any time - including short, dark, etc..

The Bubble Bursts Yasser, please stay on this subject
It was a communal room yes. Plus it had an Indian-style shitter as well .. and I don`t mean Gandhi. Not only would sleep naked but they would share their bowel movements as well.

Slept naked and they would share their bowel movements - we were talking about Gandhiji and his nieces. Please substantiate what you said especially since you have made a semi-career out of this topic.

The Bubble Bursts Yasser,
You have not smeared just Gandhiji but pretty much everyone else who was with him by claiming that they slept naked and used the bathroom together, etc. You better substantiate what you have said.
In the rural india where i grew up, there were no hang ups about bowel movements, where a bunch of boys or men would be squatting in the fields carrying on normal conversation. Gender mixing would be unthinkable of course.
Gandhiji felt he had conquered normal inhibitions and since he was not into interesting chemicals, unlike our friend Zeemax here, he didn`t consider enemas ``kinky.``
Let`s stay with the subject and not go off into other things you find troubling about Gandhiji.

The Bubble Bursts zeemax,
you should get advice from hamidmji on how to make funny posts while drunk. You should lay off the booze or that bong while visiting chowk. You get all nasty & mean.

The Bubble Bursts #213 who was this ghandi? was this a bbc documentary by Yasser Hamdani?

The Bubble Bursts Yasser, please post the relevant parts. What I do remember from Ved Mehta`s book is that Gandhiji was unashamed by his bowel movements and carried on conversations even when he was in the latrine. His ashrams had communal latrines not to be confused with sleeping rooms. I don`t believe it was so far advanced as present-day Lahore. But seriously , ``attached`` bath rooms are a relatively recent arrival to india.

The Bubble Bursts Yasser, i know that`s the image you want everyone to believe. You`re a lawyer after all.

The Bubble Bursts A few things to note:
this was a communal room where a lot of people slept;
it was highly improbable that anyone, and especially, any of the women was naked.
True, this was a very weird ``experiment``. What`s interesting is the use of intentional use of the ambiguous phrase ``slept with.``

The Bubble Bursts Lifted wholesale from elsewhere:

Mohandas Gandhi`s sleeping arrangements attracted public attention during the winter of 1946-47, when he was trying to quell violence between Muslims and Hindus in the Noakhali district in what is now Bangladesh. It came out that Gandhi was bunking nightly with his 19-year-old grandniece, Manu. In part this was an effort to stay warm in the winter chill, but Gandhi soon acknowledged there was more to it: he was testing his vow of brahmacharya, or total chastity in thought and deed. If he could spend the night in a woman`s embrace without feeling sexual stirrings, it would demonstrate that he had conquered his carnal impulses and become ``God`s eunuch.`` It turned out that Manu was not his first brahmacharya lab partner--he`d also recently gotten naked (partly, at least) with another young woman in his extended family, starting when she was 18.
Unschooled as you are in the mysteries of the East, David, you scoff--and to be frank, there were quite a few raised eyebrows in India. One of the most vocal critics was Nirmal Kumar Bose, a university lecturer who served as Gandhi`s interpreter in Noakhali. While conceding that no hanky-panky had taken place (Gandhi and his entourage typically all slept in the same room) Bose protested that the master was exploiting the women, each of whom felt she had a special place in his affections and became ``hysterical`` if slighted. (Here I follow the account by author Ved Mehta in his 1976 New Yorker series on Gandhi and his followers.) Gandhi, far from being abashed, vigorously defended himself in meetings, letters, and articles, arguing that making a woman ``the instrument of my lust`` would be far more exploitative than what he actually did.
Remarkably, the critics eventually quieted down. Even Bose, who quit in protest and later discussed the issue in a book, My Days With Gandhi, remained an admirer. Gandhi continued to sleep with women until his assassination in 1948, and the matter is little remembered today. The esteem in which Gandhi was held no doubt partly accounts for the lack of repercussions, along with his advanced age. His notoriously eccentric views on sex may have been a factor too. Gandhi believed that sex for pleasure was sinful (for that matter, he felt eating chocolate was sinful), that sexual attraction between men and women was unnatural, and that husband and wife should live together as brother and sister, having sex only for purposes of procreation. (I take most of this from a memoir by journalist William Shirer, another admirer.) He swore off sex at age 36, required a similar vow of his disciples, and publicly freaked when he had a nocturnal emission in 1936 at age 67. Many hearing him rationalize his unusual blanket substitute probably figured, eh, that`s the mahatma for you. (For what it`s worth, the kinkier takes on the story--e.g., that Gandhi was regularly massaged by naked women--have no basis in fact that I can discover.)

The Bubble Bursts #137 mohar11
Gandhiji was to be a perfect Brahmachari. To this end, he believed he should be able to have complete self control and should not be afraid of mixing freely with women. For about a year or so he tested his self control by ``sleeping with`` Manu bhen (?) and another girl. If I remember correctly, he reported having an erection once and deemed his experiment a failure. I don`t believe there was any nudity involved. At any rate, subjecting young girls to his experiments was not a bright idea.

Rifts, Fissures, Cracks, Gaping Holes Netizen, Mrs. Gopal is in india where it is pre dawn..

If I may interject, I went to government schools in rural tamil nadu where classes were often held under a banyan tree. We had a mix of teachers, some dedicated and very good, but for some others this was just a govt job with guaranteed salary and pension that also gave access to students who would come to their after-school coaching classes. Teachers running coaching classes ranked among the richest. They could afford to buy land and would be gone missing for days during harvesting, transplanting, etc. They also were usually knee deep in party politics.
In contrast, it was the poor, low-caste students who had to be absent from school for days during important crop seasons for that`s when you help out your family financially by working the fields.
If the infrastructure of the schools was bad then, it`s much worse now. The government seems to have abandoned primary education to the private sector.

Rifts, Fissures, Cracks, Gaping Holes Funnily tho mohar11, it`s the commies of china who are making a difference.
Chinese official: communism will succeed only when people are tired of bourgeoise, hence we are trying to create as many bourgeois as possible :)

Rifts, Fissures, Cracks, Gaping Holes mohar11
Haven`t you flogged this particular dead horse enough already? Your commie strawman was funny for a while but now it`s getting boring. Commies are you kafirs or what?
China consistently understates its trade surplus. Nothing like we exported 200 b dollars worth more than we imported from the US, etc. Except perhaps with the japanese, china doesn`t go around telling everyone how big they are.

Rifts, Fissures, Cracks, Gaping Holes Ah well, the usual suspects...
Mrs. Gopal, this article is shot thru with compassion and I salute you for it.
However, isn`t it easier for the government to issue orders to private schools rather than try to improve public schools? In essence the government is saying we don`t know how to fix things but since you have done it, we command you to oblige us. The intent is good but the government admitting incompetance and asserting its authority at the same time does not bode well. Besides, who is going to subsidize the tution of the quota students?

Regarding india`s ``time in the sun,`` what makes me uncomfortable is all the bragging that goes with it. The chinese and even the japanese up until a decade ago, have been very circumspect, cautious and given to understate their accomplishment. Empty vessels and all that, but from a practical standpoint you don`t want to antagonize other nations by flaunting which they may see as a threat to their way of life.

Indians should emphasize how we are a dirt poor nation and we are not stealing jobs from anybody. How can money help when the air is choking with poison and the water, when it`s available, is polluted? We are like a beggar who found a 10 rupee note in the street and suddenly felt wealthy.

#10 swarrier, thanks for the quote.

Images and Symbols -- Deconstructing the Iraq War #72 I don`t know how israel enters into this. There was some chatter right after the attacks on WTC that israel may have been aware that the attacks were coming. The evidence, ostensibly, were israelis who had been seen videotaping the burning towers from some distance. They were arrested, questioned and subsequently released. ABC and Fox News initially reported the story and subsequently pulled it from their web sites.
Adding to all the mystery is Dubya`s claim that he had seen the first attack on TV. Some have interpreted this to mean that he had been privy to the impending attack since it was not until much later that an amateur video of the first attack surfaced.
The US has steadfastly refused to disclose any proof of Osama`s involvement altho they apparently shared it with Pakistan`s dictator (along with a cattle prod) who found it convincing enough to agree to cooperate with the americans.
The conspiracy theories swirling around this will never be put to rest. As with conspiracies in general, the more vigorously someone denies it, the more convinced does the conspiracy theorist become.