Former Senator, occasional actor, and potential GOP presidential contender Fred D. Thompson recently delivered a radio address titled “Gandhi’s Way isn’t the American Way” (mp3 here; transcript here).
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To Be or Not To Be, That Is the Question |
..At what point is it okay to fight dictators like Saddam or the al Qaeda terrorists who want to take his place?It turns out that the answer, according to Gandhi, is NEVER. During World War II, Gandhi penned an open letter to the British people, urging them to surrender to the Nazis. Later, when the extent of the holocaust was known, he criticized Jews who had tried to escape or fight for their lives as they did in Warsaw and Treblinka. “The Jews should have offered themselves to the butcher’s knife,” he said. “They should have thrown themselves into the sea from cliffs.”
There’s an old saying that had the Brits been Nazi’s, Gandhi would’ve been a lampshade. Macabre as the humor might be, it underscores a key reason for Gandhi’s success with passive, non-violent resistance - it depends on your opponent’s moral code as much as your own. The problem here however, paraphrasing Thompson, is that Gandhi’s enemies aren’t America’s enemies.
Still, Gandhi’s direct statements about the Jews was a bit startling to me and worth some googling around…
Another They’d be dead but at least they’d have the moral high ground…guy who was also likely surprised by Gandhi’s determination to prescribe his strategy to the bitter end (well, for the Jews at least) was one Louis Fisher. He asked Gandhi to clarify his position which he did rather unequivocally -
Louis Fisher, Gandhi’s biographer asked him: “You mean that the Jews should have committed collective suicide?”Gandhi responded, “Yes, that would have been heroism.”
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If Nature made it, it’s gotta be Good, right? “Charles Darwin found the grisly life histories of Ichneumons incompatible with the central notion of natural theology…” |
It’s clear that when considering the age old problem of mind-body duality, Gandhi entirely favors the mind at the expense of recklessly discarding the body. Sticks and stones may break his bones but homey’s still not gonna give you the time of day and that’ll make you, his enemy, sad. Eventually. But perhaps only after 6 millionth casualty. Or if you run out of sticks & stones.
“Evil” in his sense thus comes from too much application of volition via the body and not enough going with the flow of nature. And in this orgy of nihilism, Gandhi found nobility and a “joyful sleep” which he implored the Jews to partake in -
…suffering voluntarily undergone will bring [Jews] an inner strength and joy….if the Jewish mind could be prepared for voluntary suffering, even the massacre I have imagined could be turned into a day of thanksgiving..to the godfearing death has no terror. It is a joyful sleep to be followed by a waking that would be all the more refreshing for the long sleep.
Lest we accuse Gandhi of anti-semitism we must first note that, in a manner echoed by our modern day Mel Gibson’s and Michael Richards’, Gandhi assures us that not only does he sympathize with the Jews, but that some of his best friends are Jewish -
My sympathies are all with the Jews. I have known them intimately in South Africa. Some of them became life-long companions. Through these friends I came to learn much of their age-long persecution.
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…didn’t believe Ichnuemons existed in Human Nature too… |
“I would like you to lay down the arms you have as being useless for saving you or humanity. You will invite Herr Hitler and Signor Mussolini to take what they want of the countries you call your possessions…“If these gentlemen choose to occupy your homes you will vacate them. If they do not give you free passage out, you will allow yourselves, man, woman and child to be slaughtered, but you will refuse to owe allegiance to them.”
Oh yeah. Let the Gestapo torture & kill you but refuse to owe them allegiance. That’ll show ‘em. Needless to say, you can put me on Fred Thompson’s side on this particular debate.
Still, the world does occasionally need Gandhi and his modern-day sign-toting adherents…. Putting aside their well-intentioned blinders towards human nature, I agree that peace more than has its place as does a firm aversion to the carnage of war. I just wish they’d put more energy into getting their message in front of these guys first.
Gandhi was a fool. His stupid policy of non-violence played into the hands of the Brits. No wonder they were happy to hold him up as a shining example of Indian heroism. Ugh, to think that Indian schoolchildren even today are brainwashed on a steady diet of pro-Gandhi propaganda.
I don't espouse violence for the sake of it, but Gandhi's espousal of turning the other cheek is just insulting to millions of people throughout history who have had to fight and die in order to overthrow oppression.
Thanks Vinod for shedding light on the foolishness of Gandhi!
Can you please work on exposing the naivete of Martin Luther King. As they say, if the US Government were the Nazis then Martin Luther King would end up as a burnt toast.
Well, I think part of the reason Gandhi's policy of ahimsa is so all-pervasive in his world-view is because it ties into his sprituality.
For somebody who believes that violence is morally wrong no matter the cause, ahimsa is not just a moral high ground, it is bad karma in the rebirth cycle. If death is not something to be avoided or to be afraid of, and this life decides what happens after death, it would be the logical conclusion to make this life the best lived-life you can.
I believe that would be very hard to do consistently and require tremendous courage.
Well, what exactly were the peace protesters protesting? Going after OBL or the invasion and continued occupation of Iraq? My guess is the latter. Thompson again lumps the two together.
Thompson asks, "At what point is it okay to fight dictators like Saddam or the al Qaeda terrorists who want to take his place?"
The point at which it is ok to fight them is when they pose a real, credible threat, which Iraq never did.
The point at which it is ok to fight them is when they pose a real, credible threat, which Iraq never did.
We are fighting them over there so we dont have to fight them here.
Tough one - I agree that Gandhi benefitted greatly from the nature of his opponents. Leave aside the Nazis, even the Belgians had bloody hands in the Congo. The Japanese were barbaric in China, the Philippines, and Korea.
Just as protestors can understandably ask, "What gives one man the right to order thousands of others into battle?" you could also ask, "What gives one man the right to order thousands to commit collective suicide?" as would have been the case if the Jews heeded his advice. Just as Gandhi argued that Britain had no place in India, so Gandhi's pacifism had no place in Europe.
While Gandhi was able to use shame against the British, and benefitted from British exhaustion after WWII, he had zero luck with Jinnah. Jinnah saw a goal, and was not won over by appeals to Hindu-Muslim amity. Same tactic, different opponent, different result.
As a good Bengali and Netaji supporter, I can't agree with GandhiJI about the higher morality of self-sacrifice but I'm with the skinny guy on his ideas about sleeping naked with the girls. (Wait till the DA hears about that!)
It's one thing to acknowledge how puny Satyagraha seems in the face of the concentration camps, but it's quite another to suggest that Mohandas Gandhi is of a class with Mel Gibson and Michael Richards. The comparison is simply bizarre, and seems to be more about your anger at Gandhi than about anything substantive.
Gandhi, The Jews And Palestine
Well, the Jews have been there, done that, so to speak.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masada
"Well, the Jews have been there, done that, so to speak.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masada"
slightly off-topic, but "masada" was one of the best tv mini-series, in my opinion.
I don't get the mandatory ji suffix and the Mahatma prefix. Gandhi was a man, not a God. Call him Mohandas Gandhi and let's leave it at that.
Pish posh. Of course you didn't. ;)
I agree with Mr. Kobayashi. Gandhi's ideas of non-violence may not have applied to conventional wisdom in the case of European Jews. But then what you're witnessing here is a conservative hit job in progress. Take a few ambigious quotes and quote them out of context and implicitly suggest he is an anti-Semite. He did not preach anything different to the Jews than what he preached to the Indian people.
Pssst. “Gandhi was a fool” belongs to Nas Uncle. Biters make him grumpy.
These quotes go to show that Gandhi was a philosopher in addition to being a human rights activist. Philosophers don't always take into account the reality of the day because they are talking about metaphysical ideas that are spiritual goals that can't be grounded in reality. We are all therefore free to reject this philosophy just as we are free to reject existentialism or any other philosophical outlook. Rejecting Gandhi's philosophy, or parts of it any way, is not inconsistent with accepting his accomplishments as a human rights activist.
Whatever the merits of the arguments for or against Gandhi's position on the Nazis, it has exactly zero relevance to the so-called "war on terror". As people have pointed out above, the Nazis were a real threat, at least after their invasion of Poland.I think even linking the Gandhi position to Fred Thompson's speech is a huge logical boo boo. We can expect the likes of Fred 'greatness of America' Thompson commit such elementary errors (indeed one can argue that politicians literally depend on such willful errors for their bread and butter) but to fall for it ourselves would be abandoning independent thought and letting others frame the issues.
Typo: should be likes of Fred 'greatness of America' Thompson to commit such elementary errors (indeed one can argue that politicians literally depend on such willful errors for their bread and butter)
I hate these typos, (this is what happens when you try to type while watching cricket): should be it has exactly zero relevance for the so-called "war on terror"
Gandhi is really just a straw man in Thompson's argument. Even for Gandhi to be relevant in such a discussion, the terms would have to be reversed -- not what would Gandhi suggest Americans do to tin pot dictators abroad, but what should the Iraqis do in the face of American occupation? Ol' Fred should stick to his day job, offering up pithy bourbon-soaked bits of Tennessee wisdom on Law & Order.
Gandhi had a certain worldview as a philosopher, and the opinions he expressed were completely consistent with his philosophy. I think it is too much to expect a certain philosophy to be applicable without change in every context.
I do not think anyone who puts up a poster saying 'what would Gandhi do' means that the US should dismantle their border security mechanisms and invite the Al Qaeda to come over and blow things up. That would be an absurdly literalist interpretation. But the US can certainly take something from Gandhi's philosophy of treating the enemy with love and dignity by cutting down on the demonization of the Islamic world and offering better treatment to the prisoners at Gitmo.
As for accusing Gandhi of anti-semitism based on these remarks, well, what can I say: if the gun don't fire, you just hit him with the butt.
"If Gandhi was a fool then Bose was a coward. Gandhi was way more courageous and intelligent than any of his contemporaries."
both were flawed and sometimes naive men who had good intentions and different thoughts about how to achieve their goals. there's no need to devalue either of their contributions (or those of others of that era) because they chose different routes. for bose, the british were the reality, not hitler, hence his misguided attempts to seek help from germany. for gandhi, the british were the reality, not hitler. for the jews, hitler was the reality, not the british (except in Palestine). i think gandhi's attitudes towards palestine should also be seen in light of the ground realities of india and his attempts to prevent a split of india. same with his advice to indians in general and hindus in particular. it stemmed from a mix of belief in ahimsa and being philosophical and a down-to-earth practicality and reality. whether you agree with it or not, is another matter.
I think the point hasn't been emphasized adequately enough that Gandhi held these views all-round and not just with respect to the Jews. One time someone asked him if he would ever, under any circumstances, commit violence – like say if someone was about to rape his niece or something. Gandhi's response was that under those circumstances he would have no choice but to kill his niece! (Since he had to show compassion towards the wrongdoer). This is about the only time as far as I can recall that he agreed he might have to commit a violent act. I don't think it is out of line to call this type of thinking utter foolishness, in fact, evil. Any ideology pursued in the extreme is evil and this is no exception. Many lives were actually lost because of Gandhi's stubborn insistence on non-violence. Of course, he was interesting and unique and inspiring in many other ways.
Before asking, "what would Gandhi do", I would like someone to explain why the question is relevant in this context. I think Preston is right. Iraqis should be asking themselves this question (at least those participating in armed resistance). I also think that a non-violent resistance against the occupation along with non-cooperation is a far better and indeed, moral method. In fact it can be argued that it was the non-violent protests led by grand ayatollah Sistani that compelled the U.S. to hold elections in the first place (I'm not going to go through the details here).
I think the survival of the fittest applies here to some degree.
Before independence, there were a lot of different kind of Independence movements in fashion. Some people were trying to use armed rebellion and had very limited success (they did provide a lot of stimulus though, like Bhagat Singh), some were working with English in government, considering themselves as opposition, but English hardly gave them anything substantial.
Gandhi had its own way of opposing British , just like others. But it was more suitable for Indian independence movement because of the nature of his opponent as well as number and position of Indians in British Rule. And it worked beautifully, despite some stupid decisions (like taking back andolen after Chauri Chaura) he still was very instrumental in getting us Independence. He made us pay a big price for it in terms of partition (which a lot of people believe was actually good for India in log run), but he gets the MVP for independence movement nonetheless.
Does it make him universally applicable, hell no! Specially if your oppressors think that you are vermins.
If he was doing the same thing in Nazi Germany, he would have been nipped in the bud and converted into soap long time before he could become a great man, just like Bhagat Sing was killed before he can become a great leader (he was already a legend though).
On the side note I have a feeling if he was alive at the time of later wars with Pakistan, he might have caused India a lot of grief.
some quickie responses...
thank god the US Govt weren't/aren't Nazi's.The focus isn't on the [collude / don't collude] decision but on the choice he advocates earlier. How about not laying down in the first place?the quotes are neither ambiguous ("offer themselves to the butcher's knife") nor out of context (Follow the links and see for yourself.)This is the essence of the mind-body duality problem. SOME - but certainly not all - philosophers avoid the body (and thus, as you point out, reality). Fred Thomspon et. al. didn't introduce Gandhi into the debate, the anti-war activists did. They asked "what would Gandhi do?" Fred's responding. If there's a "logical boo boo" - Thompson's pointing out it's on the side of the activists / Gandhi.
I have a hard time believing that regardless of which society one is in, the "suffering is good for the soul" mentality is positive.
Because I am a bengali, my parochial sentiments urge me to not converse with you but do something physical. Sometimes, actions speak louder than words (that's giving away my biases).
Whoever engages in the tired debate of Gandhi/Netaji fail to see the positive things in either of them. It is neither Gandhi's nor Bose's fault, it's our jaundiced eye. Both gave up their lives for the country.
But what do I know? My guess is both of you are way better than Gandhi and/or Bose. Show us the path. Should Indians run away to Amrika?
Gandhi was a humanist. Yes, he used shame and guilt of his opponents. But he could connect to the masses, and Indians could see him as one of their own, and he was used by other politicians. His ideas were incongruent with the self-interest inherent in the idea of nation-states (which got reified afer World War II; we have hindsight bias). The idea of India is far greater the narrow notion of a nation-sate.
I think it was Gandhi who said, "If Bose was here, this partition wouldn't have happened."
Fred Thomspon et. al. didn't introduce Gandhi into the debate, the anti-war activists did
If they did, then it was a mistake. But Fred's response is equally a mistake. As Preston said (and I am inclined to agree), the question is far more relevantly asked of the Iraqi's who are fighting the occupation (not the one's fighting each other).
naiverealist's assertion that many of India's freedom-fighters were cosmopolitan humanists at heart applies more to Nehru than Gandhi (not that it does not apply to Gandhi), note the italicized part in Nehru's "tryst with destiny" speech:
Long years ago we made a tryst with destiny, and now the time comes when we shall redeem our pledge, not wholly or in full measure, but very substantially. At the stroke of the midnight hour, when the world sleeps, India will awake to life and freedom. A moment comes, which comes but rarely in history, when we step out from the old to the new, when an age ends, and when the soul of a nation, long suppressed, finds utterance. It is fitting that at this solemn moment we take the pledge of dedication to the service of India and her people and to the still larger cause of humanity.
We might go a little tangential here, so wouldn't argue too much on it. I am not saying he was an outright supporter of partition, but considering the amount of power he had over Indian masses, he didn't do enough. He concentrated more on stopping violence and riots, but got played nicely by Jinnah.
Hmm..I think it is Vallab Bhai Patel you should thank.
They did. And Fred has all the right in the world to respond
You missed my point. I did not say that Fred had no right to respond, but that his response was logically mistaken (as was the original argument of the activists; and sure, they also had the right to link Gandhi with "the war on terror").
Harry Turtledove's alternate history tale "The Last Article" describes a Nazi invasion of India and the reaction of the Germans to the non-violent resistance and pacifism of Gandhi and his followers.
I was reading by and saw this comment by Divya. I thought I should respond to it. It is not true that Gandhiji would have killed the person who was about to rape his neice. In his book "My Experiments with truth", Gandhiji has specifically stated that violence in any form cannot be justified, even at times when not involving in violence may cost us our lives. So the statement that someone raping his/her neice was justified by Gandhiji in resorting to violence is just plain lies. Please do not fool us here.
Divya Said:
I think the point hasn't been emphasized adequately enough that Gandhi held these views all-round and not just with respect to the Jews. One time someone asked him if he would ever, under any circumstances, commit violence – like say if someone was about to rape his niece or something. Gandhi's response was that under those circumstances he would have no choice but to kill his niece! (Since he had to show compassion towards the wrongdoer). This is about the only time as far as I can recall that he agreed he might have to commit a violent act. I don't think it is out of line to call this type of thinking utter foolishness, in fact, evil. Any ideology pursued in the extreme is evil and this is no exception. Many lives were actually lost because of Gandhi's stubborn insistence on non-violence. Of course, he was interesting and unique and inspiring in many other ways.
I don't understand all the hate and bitterness directed towards Gandhi. He may not have been perfect, but how many other leaders (historical or current) can anyone name besides Mandela to be in his leauge.
1. RSS/Hindutva propaganda.
2. His ideology fly in the face of neocons/right-wing hawks ideas.
3. He was eccentric, his ideas largely impractical and not a perfect human being. Oh the horror of it all!
Divya sez:
Divya, do you have a link to a refernce where Gandhiji's (Dr. C, the -ji is a sign of respect, not a sign of Godhood, and I don't think anybody is forced to do it) response to rape? It seems very different from what I understand of his world view. His stand was ahimsa at all times. I can see Gandhi placing himself between his neice and the rapist allowing her to escape or something like that.
Philosphy/Sprituality is only foolishness if you subscribe to it without believing. Gandhi believed in his philosphy and advocated it, but if you didnt belive in the spritual concept, it would be wrong to follow it.
Vikram – Please do not assume that I am out to fool anyone. There's no need for malice. Besides I can just as easily accuse you of not only foolishly treating his biography like the gospel truth but also trying to fool us into believing it.
So your comment was based on a reading of My Experiments with Truth? Dig around some more and you will find a lot of stuff that doesn't gel with his autobiography. There is a very interesting collection of letters between Gandhi and a bunch of people he sought advice from around the time he was in a dilemma whether he should kill this baby calf that was in great agony and had no hope for survival. He mulled it over for several days while the calf lay in great pain and eventually did kill it. I respect him for that.
RSS/Hindutva propaganda on Gandhi is quite successful, its the same with anti-Muslim propaganda. I think anti-Gandhi, anti-Muslim propaganda was part of larger hindutva ideology followed by RSS/BJP/VHP etc. At one point I myself believed it and voted for BJP in 98 parliament elections.
Vikram,
I would like to add further that Gandhi was honest to himself and he was honest about his opinions on Jews, Nazis, violence etc. Anybody who read his Autobiography will know that.
Gandhi's policies are very powerful IN THE RIGHT CONTEXT. I advocate violence as a form of getting rid of terrorism and the Red threat in India. A Superior battleforce is the best way of getting rid of unwanted elements who have no fear of the system.
However, the PALESTINIANS COULD USE A GANDHI. I support Israel in its actions in Gaza to root out Mortar Launching Militants and this gives them the moral high ground, just like Munich did for "Wrath of God" operations. However if the Palestinians did the whole non violence thing and Israel supposedly being a civilized nation would have no excuse whatsover for military operations and hence would come under scathing criticism which would "hypothetically and hopefully" force it to vacate areas and give it to the Palestinians. The one thing that they claim stops them now is the fear that militants could use it as an attack base.
Venu - I spent 10 minutes searching for the link to reply to Vikram, before even reading your comment, but couldn't find it. In any case that was just meant to highlight the ridiculous heights he went to with his belief in ahimsa and there is plenty of evidence of that even without that example.
Som I've been reading all the New York Times news items and statements on Gandhi from 1940 to 1946. It gets with Vinod's points. At one point, he even criticises the US for fighting the Japanese. There is clearly a break within the Congress party vis-a-vis Gandhi's policies, with a lot of senior leaders endorsing the British stance. Interesting times.
You can access the NY Times archives from you local library site. e.g. this one from the Santa Clara County.
"I don't understand all the hate and bitterness directed towards Gandhi. He may not have been perfect, but how many other leaders (historical or current) can anyone name besides Mandela to be in his league."
Ah but you have to understand the Ayn Rand Brigade, Gandhi does not gel with their view of "rational egoism and individualism" so hence the hit piece.
Fred Thompson deserves to be discredited for making this statement - although it will probably appeal to the bulk of the American public and shows he's a smart politician.
I'm willing to bet you can find evidence on both sides of the issue. Both showing that Gandhi meant this in a literal sense and that he meant it in some figurative sense.
At the end of the day, Gandhi is credit with accomplishing much. Pretty silly on Mr. Thompson's part to try to make him a caricature of the anti-war crowd. (Even outside of the appropriateness of using him as a symbol and using his quote, Thompson's underlying message lacks precision. Of course, he's using a straw man.)
Ayn Rand Brigade, the hit piece, neocons/right-wing hawks ideas, conservative hit job in progress
Signs of hitting against the intellectual wall, eh!
Analyzing Mahatma Gandhi is never easy. But please do not trot out the trite phrases to gain support from the 65,000 readers!
Gandhi was particular about the means, not only the end. This is why he stopped agitating after the Chauri Chaura incident.
In contrast, compare Jinnah's Direct Action Day statement. Jinnah was ambiguous about the means. Direction Action Day quickly degenerated into the Calcutta riots.
This link suggests that many preparations had been done long before the Calcutta riots actually began--see, in particular, the paragraph titled "Comparison with Earlier Riots". Surely, Jinnah had a suspicion that these preparations were on. Yet he made an ambiguous statement---he failed to insist Muslims' direct action would be nonviolent.
Aye P.G. Wodehouse, well said
see that's the problem with people not knowing their own history. Commenting on Sepia Mutiny without knowing anything about Sepoy Mutiny/Indian Rebellion of 1857 and its brutal suppression. Please do click that link to know how well British kicked Indian ass.
BTW, Indian leaders did try violence, well it didn't work out well with their heads hanging at the doors of their own palaces/forts.
On a lighter note, here is a conversation between Irish peeps
Son: Dad, my teacher told me that the sun never used to set on the British empire.
Dad: That's because God would never trust the British in the dark
I think that to give the context that this article is coming from a libertarian is hardly hitting a intellectual wall. It provides context for someone who was asking why Gandhi is being called out. Ideologies/perspectives do offer context.
it requires more strength and tolerance to live every day, under circumstances as miserable as those at concentration camps, than to commit collective suicide.
collective suicide only feeds statistics but accounts of those who survived the camps tell the real story, they arouse the world to take action.
and yes, the world does occasionally need gandhi- more specifically we all need a bit of gandhi in ourselves (not the 'turn the other cheek' part :)
That essay by Orwell, "Reflections on Gandhi," is worth reading in full. It's the last thing Orwell completed before his death. Here's a link: http://www.online-literature.com/orwell/898/
Highlights:
Orwell is one of my personal heroes-- even if you disagreed with him, his commitment to absolute intellectual honesty was inspiring. Anyway, read the essay. It's really good.
Speedy
Protestors carry signs and have short amounts of message bandwidth. Their missions live and die by brief slogans and attention-grabbing antics. Personally this genre of discourse does little for either my aesthetic or my mind, but it's very American and very important to some people, and one might as well complain about professional sports or sugary soda. Their slogans are not meant to be taken point blank literally so much as to signify a larger, archetypal train of thought. As long as they're not blatantly offensive ("Kill all the ---") I they deserve a little room for reasoanble interpreation.
Nobody knows what Gandhi would do any better than anybody knows what Jesus would do; furthermore it is widely accepted type of hyperbole. It is a stand-in abbreviation for a much larger set of ideas. (I presume that Fred Thompson does not write scathing NR articles everytime he sees a WWJD mood ring; I look forward to his next Matthew-despising screed against all the Christians who want Americans to visit the imprisoned, clothe the homeless, or feed the starving, citing the lonely prisoners, 1.44 million food-insecure househollds with children, and dozens of exposure-related homeless deaths each year as an integral part of The American Dream.)
You can take an eduated guess about what Gandhi would do in this case, and I grant you that Thompson is probably right--Gandhi would not have gone to war. I even grant you that Gandhi's fundamental philosophy for not going to war is one that Thompson is basically assessing correctly, and which I, in fact do oppose because I am not a pacifist. Thompson's tonal implication, however, is that this philosophy is particularly anti-Semitic and particularly unAmerican, when it is not. Gandhi's philosophy had nothing to do with it being Jews who were being killed, and it was not a unique thought to Gandhi. Nonviolent martyrdom has been glorified by pacifist schools of thought at least since the early days of the Christian church, and any Christian who worships in a church of St. Denis or St. Stephen or St. Paul (just the martyrdoms I'm more familiar with) or, you know, Jesus of Nazareth, has accepted that sometimes yielding one's life without violent opposition to an unjust and merciless killing can have a lasting and valuable impact on the world, and that such martyrs are worth glorifying and learning from. It's not exactly a totally new idea. It wasn't until Constantine became a Christian that you had Christians fighting instead of being sacrificed on a wide scale.
This is not about "Gandhi and THE JEWS," it's about "Gandhi and Oppression." I find recasting this strain in Gandhi's thought as being bout "Gandhi and the Jews" to be distastefully close to calling wolf and baselessly playing the anti-Semitism card. Given the trend of jingoistically pitting Judeo-Christian culture against other belief-systems, and constantly referring to the "war of civilization" that we find ourselves in, I find that particularly troubling. Gandhi is consistent about his principals as a function of race---you can argue against their practicality, as I do, but this is not about THE JEWS. It is not enough to grudgingly acknowledge this while mentioning Mel Gibson in the same breath and emphasizing, in the post-title, a spin that is entirely irrelevent.
When a protestor carries a sign "What would Gandhi do?" that does not embody the sum and total of the anti-war movement. That singifies that particular group's main touchstone of ideology--the image with which they wish to chasten the wealthy and the comfortable who make expenditure and deployment decisions well-insulated from dead and wounded soldiers, dead and wounded Iraqis, and a bleeding treasury. Protestors are reminding those comfortable people that there are other ways to live one's life. This man, this "half naked fakir", exhibited focus and self-sacrifice and sheer physical dedication to his cause that the winers and diners and schmoozers who claim the label "leader" cannot even conceive of taking on. If Thompson respectfully disagreed with the full implications of Gandhi's pacifist philosophy, that would be one thing. But his contemptuous "swinging" language at the end gives away the fact that he is intentionally dismissing all that dedication, courage, and focus. His target is not the impracticality of Gandhi's pacifism but the force of his dedication. He wants you to laugh at Gandhi. He wants you to stop taking this khadhi-wearing man seriously. He wants readers to stop taking idealism and peace seriously. I can't respect that.
When I am confronted with a "What Would Gandhi Do" sign, I don't mentallly set up a GandhiSimulation2000 XP emulator based on his every action and comment. Instead there are some basic tools and ideas that spring up in my mind:
--a moral, important cause is worth suffering and sacrificing for
--forcing your opponent to directly confront the harm they are causing can
set off their conscience
--one's entire life and set of habits have moral and economic consequences for others
--nonviolence can work
--believing the best of people can sometimes make it real
These are the principals and ideals that I, as an Indian-American, an American, and a human being am proud of and draw inspiration and strength from. I guarantee you that if you did a survey of all Americans who claim to admire Gandhi and then interviewed them as to why they admire Gandhi, their reasons would basically average out to these. I guarantee you that these are the things most reasonable people think of when they think of "Gandhian" ideals. There is nothing unAmerican about any of this. For all that I disagree with it, for that matter, there is nothing unAmerican about pacifism itself. QUAKERS anyone? Thoreau? I mean, come on. Implying that these things aren't a part of the American condition, are not part of the American way, is prima facie absurd. This is not about Gandhi's specific ideas in foreign policy. This is about Gandhi's habit of leading a considered, deliberate life. "What would Gandhi do" means that---would Gandhi think about the full economic implications of his policies and lifestyle? Would Gandhi give full weight to the death and violence his actions might cause? Would Gandhi hold morals above practical gain or a desire for revenge or a violent aesthetic? Are our leaders doing enough of these things? Can you honestly say me these values are necessarily unAmerican? No, and Thompson cannot, and so he reaches for the most absurd interpretation of the sign and then tries to make a lifetime of work and effort and accomplishment seem dismissively, laughably stupid. I can't respect that.
Code Pink could have come up with a better slogan, but capitalizing on their inarticulate methods to imply that Gandhi was an anti-Semite and that anyone who draws on his work for inspiration is unAmerican is just cheap. It's a strawman argument instead of addressing the serious critics of the war. One does not need to accept Gandhi's ideas 100% or even 25% to draw inspiration from his life, ideas, and works. I know it's an amazing concept but people don't need to perfectly embody their ideas and methods, or even be totally agreeable, to still be worth citing. Another amazing idea--people don't need to be pacifists to oppose a a specific war. Another amazing idea: there are other ways to be a hero besides kill people or die while trying to kill people.
Regarding the minimal acknowledgement of the idea that peace might be a good thing: Iraqis are the best people to go around trying to convince "those people" that they should be more like Gandhi. They also seem to think it would help if we left.
I'm sorry for the long, scroll-requiring comment but the title of this post deeply upset me. The back-handed compliment about "best friends being Jews" and totaly dysfunnctional parallel with Gibson and Richards was also upsetting. So it's not a very funny comment, and if anyone wants to lend me some wit, I'd be grateful.
Thanks,
Saheli
An aside:
I think many miss out on this part. The strategy worked for those particular set of circumstances, as it did for MLK here and others who have adopted non violent resistance against somewhat civilized power structures. This type of passive aggressive strategy attacks the center of gravity of the powerful they are fighting. In the case of the Brits, it made them reflect on their moral code and it's target was the public support for keeping India colonized. Without civil cooperation, Brits had no chance of controlling a country as vast as India.
Strategies involved in conflict (violent or not) are diverse and need to be fluid. Taking a linear predictable approach to conflict only gives those who won't play by those rules an opportunity to exploit the rules of the game. Each situation has it's own dynamic that will result in a strategy fit for the scenario. Sometimes violences works, sometimes it doesn't, at times it's a combination of it, other times one uses methods of deception.
Well said.
And I think the side by side picture (Gandhi and Fred) is especially silly (just my aesthetic preference, I realize, so feel free to disagree).
Wow. Well said, Saheli.
Gandhi was a moron,
whose followers have no neurons
Just like the followers of
A din I like to slam
with the name thats not glam
Many who rote it
say that indeed he wrote it
They say he was prophetic
Indeed thats pathetic
for he was illetrate eplileptic
One of his wife had a good behind
her name was Hind.
In the land of Hind
there was fellow whose said to be a
without ever knowing if there is an .
The man had had a tiny schtik(Well had to have a jewish connection somewhere)
who learned that his wife faked it.
His anger was with kaama
and he let go of his pajama
He heard of a temple
where sensuality was in ample
He gave his blessings to those who wanted to deface it
But they only wanted to hammer off the breasts and penises
Not that unlike the blessings given
by Hinds husband for butshikani
for butparasti is shaitani.
Didnt know Michael Richards antisemite but the anti dentite Jerry was there to lend support on letterman.
PS Gandhi engaged in calling South African Blacks Kafir(he did not even realise etymology of the word and how it applied to him)
Gandhi is a very smart man who used the right strategy for the right time against the right opponent. Maybe just for consistency's sake he advocated the same solution for all the world's problems. There is no "one solution fits all" for all problems.
Ayn Rand Brigade, the hit piece, neocons/right-wing hawks ideas, conservative hit job in progress
ooh ooh ooh, let me try.
sardar patel and bush
tecumseh and ann coulter
shivaji and rush
vivekananda and rove
Well said, Saheli.
People forget Gandhi was a whole iconoclast package - warts and all - some of his closest followers disagreed with him all the time (Nehru, Tagore, Patel, etc) yet looked him as their inspiration - but none of them doubted his dedication to a certain set of beliefs - as Orwell's article linked earlier also implies.
He rationalized a lot of things - some made sense, some didn't but he was one of the few people who "practiced what their preached", and was willing walk to the end of the earth for his cause - it was certainly not hate.
Although it's been mentioned already, well said Saheli.
Putting Gandhi in the same category as Mel Gibson and Michael Richards is completely ridiculous.
is british occupation in india comparable to american's occupation in iraq?
did indian's fight among themselves killing atleast 60 ppl a day ever in the 200 year history?
did they kill british 4/day for 4 continuous years?
is the purpose of british in india same as the purpose of usa in iraq?
i think it is apples vs oranges. fred thompson can be equated to an idiot for not understanding the what gandhi preached. but we can't really blame these ppl..they are educated by Fox News!
Well, from the little history that I have read, I disagree with the names thrown in within the bracket. I don't know who else belongs to 'etc', but I know Tagore was not Gandhi's follower by any stretch of imagination. Tagore started calling him the Mahatma and I think it was Gandhi who called Tagore Gurudev. That mutual admiration apart, they had different motivations altogether.
And yes, Jawahar Nehru was Gandhi's follower. No, a more accurate term would be 'user'.
I know Tagore was not Gandhi's follower by any stretch of imagination.
Sure, if you want to nitpick then Tagore was not Gandhi's follower, but they both respected each other, and, yet openly disagreed on many issues.
So be it, use "friends/ confidant/ admirer/ your favorite word". Ok, not follower.
etc........= long list but we are going tangential to Mr. Vinod's post.
Great post Saheli!!!
Accusing Gandhi of being anti-semite is beyond cheap. Why is "semite" only used for Jewish people anyways?? If you go by the dictionary meaning of the word, it would include some muslims too. Anyways, calling someone anti-semite is probably the cheapest way to get attention in the US.
Gandhi was above all a spiritual leader and NOT a political leader and that is why as Kush points out, Nehru and Patel disagreed with him frequently.
And I am sick of this self congratulating "American Way" people. For example, UPI reporter Pamela Hess was on C-SPAN describing the Iraq war and she said: "Iraqi society has higher acceptance for violence" ..... and I went WTF WTF out of my chair !!!! I guess killing 100,000 people from 30,000 feet using 500 tonne clusetr bombs is not violent enough for Ms Hess. WTF !!!
This is the kind of delusion Americans are about "their way".
I'm sure Mr. Thompson is a "good" Christian. What would Jesus do? Is Jesus' way the American way? Stupid hypocrit.
Hehe Saheli, kicked some brown ass with your comment.
Others on this board have read/know more about Gandhi's philosophies and how they changed over time than I do, and unfortunately I don't have a year for these quotes. I found them in Walter Wink's book on non-violent resistance 'The Powers That Be' (based in Christianity and Jesus - I'm not Christian, but I really loved it).
From Wink (p. 118):
"Gandhi was adamant that nothing could be done with a coward, but from a violent person one could make a nonviolent one. Even though he believed that nonviolence is infinitely superior to violence, Gandhi argued that 'where there is only a choice between cowardice and violence, I would advise violence.' He even went so far as to say, 'At every meeting I repeated the warning that unless they felt that in non-violence they had come into possession of a force infinitely superior to the one they had and in the use of which they were adept, they should have nothing to do with non-violence and resume the arms they possessed before.'"
That sure doesn't sound like his advice to WWII-era Great Britain and the Jewish people. I'm not sure what to make of the contradiction. Maybe he was holding out for an ideal, or putting forth a radical alternative to the violence of WWII to try and get folks to ponder their choices?
And yeah, Saheli gets a cyber-"right on!" from me too.
Absolutes in any philosophy or religion are often difficult to deal with. We can say that we would never do this or that. "I would never lie." "I would never steal." etc.
The reality is that we are human, and humans are imperfect and frail.
It's always easier to deal with hypothetical possibilities rather than realities. I also cannot help but wonder if some of Gandhi's points were allegorical or if he were using hyperbole in order to emphasize his philosophy regarding non-violence. Jesus didn't really mean for you to pull an actual plank of wood out of your own eye when he tried to make his point about looking inward before criticizing others.
Just some thoughts.
"We're all gonna be like a bunch of little Fonzies right now, and Yolanda, what's Fonzie like?"
"He's cool?"
"Correct-a-mundo!"
As a card carrying member of the vast right wing conspiracy, I was thrilled to see Thompson hit piece on Gandhi even before Vinod’s excellent post. After all, critical, non-fawning, and non-patronizing views of Gandhi are so hard to find in the West these days.
That Gandhi’s philosophy would never liberate Iraq from a dictator who tortured children is obvious, to say the least. As Vinod wisely notes, “success with passive, non-violent resistance …depends on your opponent’s moral code…” King understood this, and pleaded America to live up to her own creed. If only the Palestinians understood this, but of course, if they did the Israelis wouldn’t have to isolate them in the first place.
As for the charges of anti-Semitism, Thomson clearly comes up short of labeling Gandhi one, though he cleverly associates the two, not unlike those who conflate neo-colonialism with colonialism itself, or anti-illegal immigration policies with being anti-immigrant. Turnaround is fair play, and has useful purposes, such as revealing to Mutineers the absurdity of liberally labeling views one disagrees with as bigotry.
Those who saw the Rand influence in Vinod’s post are right. Rand abhorred self-sacrifice and rejected the other-worldly asceticism of both Gandhi and Jesus. That these two giants are rarely attacked by serious thinkers who clearly disagree with their respective philosophies is a great shame. After all, neither represents the American Way.
And yet, when Jatin Das became a convert to non-violence, and fasted for more than sixty days till his death (age 25), Gandhi had no words for him, or for that fearless mind.
Such was his politics, and adamant attitude. Read this excellent piece by Balbir Punj. Bhagat Singh (lived till he was 24) did write a letter to the Home Member, Government of India. More about that incident here.
So, Gandhi is now a complete racist. His anti-black remarks are fairly well documented. And now here is coming off as an anti-semite. I wonder how long before his idols are pulled down from north american public places.
It is interesting to note that a lot of people study / analyze / discuss people like Gandhi (and Netaji) without shedding any of their prejudices and with a closed mind regarding what they want to hear and learn. Thus people like Gandhi are either heroes or stupid and moronic.
Gandhi had somethings that made him extraordinary and also some weaknesses which made him come across as someone completely out of touch with reality. He was a great man to many (and thus the 'Mahatma', someone here did not like calling that), a man with a very strong belief in his principles and also a man of very strong character. It takes a lot of character to follow what he preached and he did in fact do it a lot better than most men. If he believed what he was doing was right and throughout his later life his attempt was always to do what was right, he would do it undeterred and at the same time despite everything he never wavered from what he called the path of truth (I don't know enough about this and quite possibly may be wrong, but I suspect what he called Truth would be akin to Dharma in Hindu philosophy?) Unfortunately, when people start disparaging him, they totally ignore these qualities of his which made him nothing less than great.
On the other hand, he had weaknesses too. The very things that made him great also made him weak in other ways. His statements about a moral high ground are a classic example of that. He so strongly believed in the path of ahimsa that nothing else mattered. Similarly, he was quite inflexible in his views at times and quite impractical. Thus the disagreements with his colleagues. Unfortunately when people deify him, he becomes this totally flawless human being and we forget to consider that he was a one just as prone and capable of mistakes.
As for his being racist or anti-semitic, thats just a load of BS not worth discussing!
Naiverealist:
Gandhi(like Jesus) suffered from some kind of messiah complex: he believed he was in some way chosen to lead India to independence. He demanded complete submission to his will, and was uncharitable with anyone whose views differed from his own.
This is interesting. The British with their 'divine burden to reign God's empire on earth' certainly had a God complex. Who could bring them to their knees except someone with an even greater God complex. Ser ko sava ser ;) .
Gandhi may have been a fool, he obviously wasn't, but I basically agree with Vinods crtitism of him. An even biger fool was Subash Chandra Bose, and I say that as a Bengali. He rolled out the red carpet for the Japaneese and if he would have succeeded some of us indeed would have been lampshades. What a bloody idiot.
Why are people focusing only on the Holocaust? We have an example much closer to home...the Partition. Gandhi actually asked the Hindus and Sikhs of Pakistan to peacefully allow themselves to be slaughtered rather than fight back against Muslims. Fortunately they ignored him. He also called Guru Gobind Singh a 'misguided patriot'. I think it was rather unfair to ask those upon whom he (Gandhi) had some influence (Hindus and to a lesser extent Sikhs) to be annihilated, whereas to those upon whom he had little to no influence (Muslims in the 1930s and 1940s) he said nothing. His hunger fasts were just immature, manipulative tricks to get his worshipping followers (who unfortunately were a big portion of Indians in those days) to capitulate to his demands.
Another question to ask is how much India's independance actually owes itself to Gandhi. How about the possibility that a post-war Britain, in a changing world (where colonialism was becoming a bad word), no longer had the will/desire to hold on to a far-flung Empire, especially a nation like India where a new, educated, aware generation was not likely to allow them to remain for long?
I will grant that he was amazing in many ways, he walked the talk, and he did prevent India from becoming a war zone or a country run by warlords. He had a lot of lofty ideals. He was a good person. But as people have said, impractical and inflexible...and if his directives were carried out to there logical conclusion, then only his own followers would suffer.
Well said , Saheli . Lucid .
That Gandhi’s philosophy would never liberate Iraq from a dictator who tortured children is obvious, to say the least.
The question is would Gandhi's philosophy liberate Iraq from a brutal occupation, one that flattens an entire city as revenge for the brutal deaths of three contractors? It surely did not liberate Vietnam from a brutal occupation (perhaps more brutal than the Iraqi one, this one killed between 2-3 million Vietnamese and practically destroyed a whole country and basically poisoned acres of land). I guess supporters of Gandhi would argue that the occupation would not have been that barbaric and uncivilized if the Vietnamese had not reacted violently. Perhaps appeal could have been made to the occupiers' better natures. Perhaps Ho chi Minh could have pointed out that the occupiers were not living up to their proclaimed ideals (but I think he did, after all Thomas Jefferson was one of Ho chi Minh's heroes, but I digress).
And as for moral compass, I think it is unheard of for an an oppressor to acknowledge that he/she is one. The cognitive dissonance would be too much. Powerful oppressors therefore invariably justify their deeds in high sounding moral language. You merely have to read the speeches of the imperial Japanese (which I highly recommend, especially in the original Japanese) to realize this; remember that they were creating an Asian "co-prosperity sphere", and unfortunately had to slaughter those Chinese who would not see their own interest in being in such a sphere). Same with Andrew Jackson who thought he was doing the noblest thing in the world while slaughtering native American women and children in Florida. Now in all these cases a Gandhian would argue that the oppressor should be confronted with the inconsistency between proclaimed principles and deeds, so that the cognitive dissonance becomes manifest. Will this work, and if it does, under what conditions? These questions are worth debating and I think, in Gandhi's case, the evidence is inconclusive.
You being a Bengali is inconsequential. Bose was a national leader, and there is no need for your regional indulgence. Criticism is one thing, and calling a national figure revered by many a bloody idiot is another. I am little taken aback by your nonchalant pretentious swagger.
It was under Bose Muslims, Hindus, Sikhs fought together. Women gave away their jewelry, and for the first time a women's combat force - the Rani of Jhansi regiment - was formed.
Kindly read about the Azad Hind Fauj, and the Bombay Mutiny before writing rubbish comments to an opinion of another person's opinion of a dumbed down slogan. And read what Clement Atlee had to say about the reason behind Britain's final decision to quit India.
(from Nirad Chaudhuri's Autobiography of an Unknown Indian).
Saheli, thank you for that cogent, well-reasoned and, most importantly, well supported response. I read this article yesterday and was so disgusted with the Micheal Moore analysis/theatrics that I came close to striking this site off my list. Who knows, it still may happen--I recently discovered this site, and while I love the spectrum of topics, I 've been more than a little uncomfortable with an approach that I perceive takes criticism or identification of the author's intent or subtext rapidly becoming text biases as a personal attack, worthy of implicit and explicit threats.
Regarding the specifics of the attack, Gandhi was human, he never purported otherwise, with all kinds of frailties and foibles that form part of the human condition. Most of my readings seem to indicate that he was much less hyprocritical than most of us, including many other shining beacons to humanity (insert obligatory Thomas Jefferson reference here). Through a combination of many factors, including luck and the ability to analyze and capitalize on his particular environment, he accomplished something that most thought unthinkable when he first started out and inspired a lot of other people to try his approach as well. He successfully played the "White Man's Burden" against its proponents. His point regarding the Jews was passive resistance--they shouldn't just line up and nicely move into the cattle cars in an attempt to prove that they were good Germans, but actually do something to draw attention to immorality of the situation and hopefully inspire local and international outrage and if need be die on principle rather than leave their survival to the whim of their oppressors. As Saheli has beautifully pointed out, dying on principle shouldn't be considered something incompatible with Western thought. For the record, some Jews have themselves have raised/debated the issue of what could be construed as an excessively passive (without the resistance part) approach to the Nazi threat.
I tend to agree with those who suggest his approach would not have worked in Nazi Germany where the point was extermination, not rule, and where the population in question was a demographic minority--but since when has naivete (especially in the context of 20/20 hindsight) equated with anti-semitism? Maybe Gandhi was in fact an anti-Semite but citing that particular statement does nothing to prove the assertion. Call him out for being wrong, naive, a geo-political idiot if you want (and I'd have to disagree with you on the latter), but do not use snippets of a statement out of context to accuse the man of being an anti-Semite. It's sloppy thinking, and helps to give credence to those who argue that logic and critical thought is the sole purview of the West.
Sorry, I should be clear: my reference to the anti-Semitism comment, was in direct response to the "some of my best friends are Jews" swipe, as well as to the charming "Gandhi and the Jews" title--there is an implicit suggestion that Gandhi made his statements BECAUSE the people in question were Jews. You know, sort of like repeatedly mentioning "Al Quaeda" and "weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq" in the same sentence implies there is a link between the two. But then, no one would do that.
Manju @ 78 says:
No it's not. It is intellectual dishonesty of the most blitheringly, gawdawfully (am using all these big words so as not to offend our oh-so-sensitive right wing by using a shorter, more effective participle) nasty sort. It's a tactic that's equally distasteful whether used by the left or the right. A bit off-topic, but pertininent IMHO: why does the present-day right wing, to a far greater extent than the present-day left, tout such Machiavellian notions as the one above as though they were a sign of great virtue ?
Sorry we hurt your feelings but how come your "intellectual wall" does not hesitate to trot out trite phrases like anti-semite, unAmerican, unChristian, evil. Save those for your religious discourses and radio talk shows.
This is embarrassing. Please ignore my comment #83. It seemed like a brainwave yesterday night, but I was not v sober(in fact, not sober at all) when I wrote that, and now it just looks stupid. #82 fortunately turned out better.
The general point I was trying to make was made far more lucidly by sigh!(#88) and also ente: Gandhi used the British's own belief in their civilizing mission against them. What is interesting is that he did not do it as a clever ploy, as a smart politician might, but he seemed to genuinely believe,at least in his formative years, that the British, and indeed the entire human race, was essentially well-intentioned, and only needed to be shown the right path. This was the reason for his hostility to anyone who wanted to take a harder line against the British than him.
How far this belief was part of his innate psychology and how far it was due to his experiences of the British order as part of an affluent Indian family, it is hard to say. It is interesting that most of the violent radicals came from a lower social class than Gandhi, Nehru, etc, and perhaps their experience of the British empire was markedly different. If Gandhi had been born lower in the social order, or not spent many years studying to be a lawyer in Britain, we might never have known the Gandhi we know now.
BTW, They were "mercenaries". And that is the "American way" that a lot of people here are beating their chests about.
Vinod- We agree on many things here but your suggestion that Gandhi was an anti-Semite is disappointing. He was a monomaniac over ahimsa and his suggestion vis a vis the Nazis a grotesque over extension of this inherently limited tactic, but anti-semite he was not. I think there is a better case to be made that he was dismissive of the aspirations of the African people...
Gandhi I think is on the right track, but may not be the best with words, or at least can easily have his words manipulated. Even the Europeans learned not to humiliate your opponent completely, a mistake they made after WWI to the Germans, as Hitler used the Treaty of Versailles and the War Guilt cause to galvanize the German "ordinary men" into becoming merciless killers. But Gandhi takes it to an extreme with saying, never strike your oponent, for it gives him reason to strike back.
I just hope all the people here staunchly against Gandhi's strict non violence would take an equal stand and call Dr. King a loony toon for advocating the same tactic for Black civil rights, and understand the tactics of say, the Nation of Islam, the Black Panthers, the UNIA, and OAAU. yet when Malcolm X says statements like this:
"It doesn't mean that I advocate violence, but at the same time, I am not against using violence in self-defense. I don't call it violence when it's self-defense, I call it intelligence."
he's "advocating violence" or "terrorist" acts. Pure hypocrisy.
heroes are for inspiring not imitating.
it is useful to have iconic images of Gandhi, Jesus etc.
it is useful to have iconic images of King Leonidas of Sparta (good film no?)
If all of humanity completely imitates these highly non-normative icons,
or even applies their prescriptions as rigid principles,
then the results would not be normative, and would not be pretty.
Thompson and Vinod are spot on.
Naiverealist
Bose was a bloody idiot, and being Bengali has everything to do about it because we have a tendency to support bloody idiots, be it Bose or Basu.
First and foremost, excellent post by Amitabh (#85).
Gandhi ji was a good man. I'm referring to his fundamental nature, his "heart"; he was benevolent, without hatred (as far as I can tell), and very well-meaning. He cared deeply about people in general, was pained by the suffering evident in India, and had a genuine interest in attempting to increase his own spiritual awareness.
So his intentions were good, although his methods in both spiritual and political matters were sometimes misguided. Occasionally extremely misguided.
He was obviously also very intelligent and, in the case of the British at least, realised what would be the most effective revolutionary strategy in order to turn their own consciences against them. The fact that the Brits were exhausted -- on multiple levels -- by this time due the WW2 of course substantially helped matters.
However, depending on your point of view, there is a way of thinking where passively allowing an unwarranted aggressor to attack you (and others) is as great a sin as attacking an innocent party yourself. There is not necessarily any great moral victory in allowing such a party to wipe you out and (more pertinently) then continue attacking others because you did not attempt to stop or at least delay them.
"Offerring yourself to the butcher's knife" is one possible response. Another would be to fight back and try to take as many of them as possible with you before they finally wear you down and defeat you. Or you can retreat, regroup, and live to fight abother day. I'm sure I don't need to repeat the cliche about dying on your feet rather than living a lifetime on your knees.
Amitabh's quote about Gandhi ji somewhat misguidedly (and, frankly, ignorantly) referring to Guru Gobind Singh as a "misguided patriot", if true, can also be applied to Gandhi ji himself if one were so inclined.
Again, let me stress that I think he was a genuinely good man. Until relatively recently, I had elderly relatives who were a part of the Quit India movement, knew Gandhi ji, Nehru and Sardar Patel personally, and had even spent some time in jail with Gandhi after they'd all been incarcerated by the British for various seditionary activities. The man was obviously very idealistic and "one of the good guys". However, he was not a saint, not some kind of divinely-ordained prophet (his habit in his later years of sleeping naked with young girls as a way of testing his sexual self-restraint is proof enough of this -- imagine the disconcerting effect it would have had on the unfortunate girls who had to lie next to him), and should not be viewed as such.
What he should be viewed as, nevertheless, is an extraordinary, albeit flawed, human being, who achieved extraordinary results during his lifetime and who was in moral courage and conviction certainly considerably superior in many ways to the "average" person. But again, not saintly in the true sense of the term, and obviously not infallible.
At the end of the day, we can admire him for his positive qualities, the successful outcomes of many of his actions, and put all of this into its proper context so that an accurate picture of the man is perceived. So no character-assassination hit jobs, but not glorified blindly as a "living saint, a rishi who took birth" either.
I do not know where you belong, who you identify with, who taught you history, or by what age you have acquired your worldview only to defend it with a nagging consistency for the rest of your life; but please use the 'we' sparingly, and talk about yourself only.
Hint: Bose was an Indian, and he was supported by Indians, not just Bengalis.
Anyway, I don't think you deserve any conversation, and this one is off-topic anyway. I only wanted to react because I thought silence would mean granting you some sort of legitimacy. I do not even hate you. I ignore you, and I leave you with the turmoil of your brain.
Hmm, didn't we go through this a few years ago on a SM thread about Churchill and the Bengali famine, when (*cough* yours truly *cough* :) brought up this Gandhi quote? Great men are still only men and therefore fallible; I remember saying that you had to judge the men by their times and what they were trying to do. That's why phrases like, "What would Gandhi do?" or "What would Reagan do?" are really just short-cuts to thinking and not good ones, either. Gandhi is a man, not a secular-god, but then the Code-Pinks of the world aren't exactly the most subtle of thinkers. Or thinkers at all.
I just read Thompson's piece again. There is absolutely no accustion, implyed or otherwise, of Gandhi being an anti-semite. He even states explicity that Gandhi would never advocate violence in any sitution, not just ones involving jews:
.OK. You're right GB. And Vinod is being a very bad boy. I guess he gave into the temptation of wanting to call Joe McCarthy a communist, if you catch my drift. But I read him as being toungue in cheek. Saheli, on the other hand seems earnest in her view that Thompson's implying Gandhi's an anti-semite. But falsely labling someone a McCarthyist is McCarthyism too.
I don't think anyone here worships Gandhi as a god, or is unaware of his weaknesses. I am irked that the "resistance" part of noviolent resistance is so easily ignored, and that nonviolence continues to be seen as evidence of cowardice, stupidity and/or suicidalism. You don't have to worship Gandhi, or be rigidly idealistic, or insist that nonviolence is appropriate in absolutely every situation, to acknowledge that nonviolent resistance is a good idea.
Nina P - I don't think anyone here worships Gandhi as a secular god - what I mean is that reverance of a historical figure can go too far. I know this crowd is not going to take criticism of an idea as a personal attack on the public figure espousing the idea, past or present. Slogans are fine, but what have they to do with life as it is lived? When is non-violence a good idea and when is it not? Gandhi's advice to the jews takes non-violence too far, which is pretty much the consensus here, and is a pretty obvious conclusion. Code Pink is asking what would Gandhi do and Thompson is pointing out that non-violent resistance can lead to a lot of violence. How far is non-violent resistance going to take you against a chlorine-filled car bomb? Violent resistance is a means to a political end in Iraq and while I wish that non-violence were the currency of the jihadists or sectarian militias, I don't think they are on message with Code Pink in this arena.
HMF: What?
And while we are at it, what's up with International ANSWR and the anti-war movement? Those pro North Korea creeps are just stone cold wierd. If I have to see one more of those ugly ANSWR (?sp) flags up here in Boston.....ugh. Always some white haired retiree waving flags in the middle of the street and everyone ignores the poor things. They always try to hand me some ridiculous literature. I only once spoke to one of the protestors and his grasp of current events, or indeed the day or time, were shaky. Look, I know lots of intelligent people who are against the war and actively involved in the protest movement. Why don't you get better fronts? These guys are not doing you any favors.
MD:
I am pointing out that people like to selectively criticize and applaud non-violence, stating things like, "It's success depends on the nobility of the enemy" and other such nonsensities. I guarantee you Thompson staunchly supports Dr. Kings efforts of non-violence as the method of civil rights acquisition.
You ask what good can nonviolence do against a chlorine filled bomb?
what good can it do against a high power firehose that strips bark from trees?
what good can it do against dogs being sicked on you by a state police force?
what good can it do against being hanged for walking on the same side of the street as a white woman?
If non-violence is going to be dismissed as an ineffective tactic, then it should be done so whole heartedly and not selectively.
This is a really ridiculous post that decontextualizes statements, reduces a complex political ideology to a few easily-skewered decontextualized statements, and relies on really offensive innuendo (Gandhi = Mel Gibson? Ugly). Bill O'Reilly or Michael Moore could have written it. I expect better from this site.
Haha man. "Decontextualized!" say it again. I should have previewed that, my bad.
Thompson's analogy is completely nonsensical as well. Do you really think al-Qaeda presents the same threat to us as the Nazis did to the Jews? That's insane.
Although hey, considering how well non-violent resistance in the Guantanamo Bay torture camp has gone, maybe you're correct that the utility of non-violence depends on the morality of your opponent.
I've been hearing how Gandhi harboured racist sentiments against black Africans when he was living in South Africa but in my off and online research of his writings have not yet been able to find any evidence for such. Is this something downplayed in "Gandhian culture" by his enthusiasts, or is it completely made up?
I could imagine that for someone coming from an early 20th century upper-caste, orthodox-veg-Hindu cultural background, the general lifestyle of financially struggling and marginalized black South Africans may have been a shocker for Gandhi, but then someone coming from such a sheltered background would be more or less shocked by any culture that did not resemble their own - white, black or whatever.
My experience with global racism is that it is really "behaviourism" or "culture-bias" --- people appear to behave in ways different from us, coming from different cultures and having different habits, and thus a bias is developed. It's not really the color of the skin that irks us about the individual or persons, but rather the way they act.
I have never heard anything like that. My impression was always that his efforts in SA were focused on the evils of apartheid generally, rather than just for Indians. But I'd be interested in reading any contradictory information if you find it.
I have trouble seeing Gandhi as a racist, frankly. Even Thompson's characterization, contrary to the ugly reductionism in this post, was about his perceived naivete rather than any anti-Semitism. Gandhi may have generalized too much, and assumed that his experience of brutal, racist colonialism would apply to the Germans, but it's a stretch to turn that misunderstanding of the situation into some sort of generalized antipathy for Jewish people.
But, sadly, Gandhi's legacy has entered American politics, so apparently it's time for us to shit all over it in order to support whichever axe we want to grind at the moment (and I'm referring to the original here, not your post, MoS).
Neal, here's just one of many writings regarding the issue that I found just now via google.
http://www.anc.org.za/ancdocs/history/people/gandhi/hunt.html
To ground this rather depressing and largely hypothetical thread somewhat, let's take a look at what modern-day Ghandians have been doing in India and abroad regarding the 22-year-old Bhopal gas tragedy:
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/NEWS/India/Hunger_strikers_removed_from_venue_in_Bhopal/articleshow/1775765.cms
http://www.bhopal.net/blog_pr/archives/2007/03/bhopal_hunger_s.html
It's true that the terms and methods of resistance need be couched in the "ground rules" at least tokenistically respected by the oppressor. And yes, many of Ghandian principles assume a "larger morality" of humanity that will ultimately intervene following revelations of moral failure by the oppressor. That doesn't apply in much of the world, yet many of us strive to hope, feeling that the alternatives (largely Hobbesian solutions) are ethically inferior to more Ghandian solutions.
That said, I have mixed feelings about the method of hunger strike, and the victories on Bhopal/Union Carbide/Dow Chemical have been depressingly far and few between over the years. But it's still a remarkable thing that sometimes these methods yield such wonderful results, in the face of all odds logically pointing towards failure.
Gandhi was from a rich family, *not* "upper caste" - i have seen many people assume that, dunno why. he was from vaishya or merchant caste actually.
the brits tourtured children, gandhi harboured racist sentiments...but don't call him an anti-semite, ho chi min practiced non-violent resistence, non violence works...except against america, gandhi is like kramer, the US is like the nazis, but al quaeda is not.
Vinod has turned the world upside down. He's bad that way.
If you truly believe in the simplistic reduction that non-violence is doomed to failure unless one is dealing with morally enlightened/"liberal pussy" foes like Brits or Americans, you start running into some painful contradictions (eg: the relative indifference to the Guantanamo hunger strikes/suicides). Gandhi believed non-violence always worked. He was wrong. But consider: the alternative view is that taking up arms is the ONLY logical response to oppression. Every oppressed group sees its oppressor as The Worst Possible, so this attitude is one that simply calls for total war. We see that line of thought in much of the world today, and it has tragic, often avoidable consequences. The world would be a lot safer today if disaffected Palestinian youth were hunger striking rather than throwing rocks, wouldn't it?
This post just reduces a very complex issue into a desire to score points by bashing a well-respected historical figure. There is no evidence that Mohandas Gandhi bore any particular animosity towards Jews (even the linked information about racism above is really iffy, IMHO -- there's not even a bibliography attached, and "James Hunt" of "Shaw University" isn't a household name to me). Bad advice is not anti-Semitism.
Finally, I really believe Vinod is missing the point when it comes to Gandhian strategy when he says this:
The whole point of the strategy was asymmetrical warfare, albeit in a political sense. You cripple the economy and force the enemy to compromise his morals. This advice probably wouldn't have helped the Jews in Nazi Germany (but would the military version of asymmetric warfare, terrorism, have been any better?), but the ideology is not the silly symbolic gesture Vinod pretends.
the brits tourtured children, gandhi harboured racist sentiments...but don't call him an anti-semite, ho chi min practiced non-violent resistence, non violence works...except against america, gandhi is like kramer, the US is like the nazis, but al quaeda is not.
Vinod has turned the world upside down. He's bad that way.
sigh! .nice way to completely miss the point of each and every post linked....I am not going to correct such frankly sophomoric (and perhaps willful) misunderstanding. Only one advice/hint: perhaps reading more carefully would help.
Just as a minimum, V, as I've asked for years, please identify your sources' biases. This post is rife. Just a "(conservative)" would suffice. Thought-provoking otherwise, nice find.
The only options are apparently unthinking use of violence and "nihilism".
Personally, I think all this talk of anti-semitism is quite indicative of western, and in particular American societies tendency to assume any mention of Jewish history, and the Jewish holocaust not in the most apologetic, tear-gushing, and gut-wrenching fashion is somehow tantamount to the most vile anti-semitism. This is how pervasive the white Jewish perspective (notice, you never hear about the non-white Jewish victims of antisemitism) has infiltrated our media and even our ethos as an American society.
So quote a Gandhi archive rather than National Review, Belmont and 'neo-neocon.blogspot.com.' Else the quotes are auotmatically suspect. American wingers have been aiming at Gandhi for decades. In Massachusetts they tried to take down a statue, calling him a hippie.
I might conclude that too had I read only the sources quoted.
That's what I meant by upper-caste.
Gandhi's view on rape always bothered me;
Gandhi wrote that women “must develop courage enough to die rather than yield to the brute in man.” Gandhi claimed, if women are fearless, “However beastly the man, he will bow in shame before the flame of her dazzling purity.”
Sati-Savitri type complex.
I've read alot more but now I can't find it.
He was also against the use of contraception and promoted celibacy as an ideal for married couples. Come on! How realistic is that?
His views on sexuality, from what I read in his auto-biography, were also very male-centered.
There were different laws in place in South Africa for different groups. Whites, coloreds, blacks and indians all had different laws. They were all fighting a different set of laws. Gandhi's struggle was for indians. According to the link i provided above he did not join hands with black activists or network with them. If anyone has any evidence to the contrary i'd like to see it.
Just to be clear, the apartheid codes came into force in South Africa in 1948, the year Gandhi was murdered in India. His activism in South Africa was from 1893-1814. At that time, the equation was not equal rights for non-white people but giving Indians the same rights as other British subjects--like India, South Africa was for most of that time British colony (it later became a dominion). The National Party (dominated by Dutch Afrikaners) in 1948 enacted the apartheid laws, which were a long collection of statutes that changed over time. The status of Indians during apartheid changed, as color codes were refined and political issues evolved.
This is not to say that racial issues were not operative during the time Gandhi was in South Africa, but Gandhi didn't have anything to do with apartheid. He wasn't campaigning for general civil rights but to protect a small minority of workers, British subjects, who enjoyed more freedoms and protections in another British colony (India).
It is true, however, that Gandhi's legacy--not just his philosophy but his community organizing and activism--were consciously part of the anti-apartheid movement, and there were Indian activists jailed on Robben Island with Tutu and Mandela (it's interesting to note in today's climate that Mandela was sentenced to prison on a terrorism charge).
The image of Gandhi as universal peacenik is a much later development.
Did anyone else hear "ba-ba-ba-bennny and the jets" playing when they read the title of this post?
In fact, the contrary. Applaud them. I certainly do.
i assumed you were under the mistaken impression he was a brahmin, as i have encountered many who think the same.
ps: upper caste usually means brahmin...
"Pervasive." "Infiltrated our media." Infiltrated?
HMF, this is straight up racism and, yes, anti-Semitism.
Man, this site has gotten ugly.
Mr. K:
Touche, bad choice of words, I agree.
What I really meant was, "...entered the public consciousness in far greater proportion to their population.." or something like that. Call it anti-semitism if you wish, but even the word "anti-semitism" used to descibe anti-Jewish diatribe is a testament to exactly what I've said.
The word Semetic is derived from "Shem" a biblical figure, and was used to describe a class of languages, including, "Amharic, Arabic, Aramaic, Akkadian, Ge'ez, Hebrew, Maltese, Tigre and Tigrinya" [link]
Semetic doesn't mean Jewish. But somehow, it does.
Isn't this the whole point of Sepia Mutiny, too? Indians are "infiltrating" everything these days--the media, Wall Street, Silicon Valley, the Ivy League, the convenience stores where you can't walk in without an accent and get your gas pumped by Mr. Gandhi. What's the world coming to?
Heh
"are "infiltrating" everything these days--the media, Wall Street, Silicon Valley, the Ivy League, the convenience stores where you can't walk in without an accent and get your gas pumped by Mr. Gandhi. What's the world coming to? "
I agree, because much of how we perceive the world and it's dynamic subtleties, in fact the very schema of our thought processes is so closely correlated with where and how we buy a Nestle Crunch.
TV, news, online news sites, radio, print, movie production? bah! that's nothing.
What I really meant was, "...entered the public consciousness in far greater proportion to their population.." or something like that. Call it anti-semitism if you wish, but even the word "anti-semitism" used to descibe anti-Jewish diatribe is a testament to exactly what I've said.
Whats wrong in the view point entering in far greater proportion than the population of that view point peddlers?
Whats concerning is when that viewpoint of 'Holocaust changed everything' is used to de-humanize victims of Israeli crimes, mostly Palestinians.
Absolutely nothing, in theory.
But what sometimes might happen, is it tends to edge out other perspectives that are parallel but in entirely different space. So as I've commented before, I learned about the Jewish holocaust when I was 10, I learned about the Massacre at Nanking nearly 15 years later (on my own), I was lead to believe the Black holocaust and Native American holocaust on US soil didn't even occur, or at the very least, shouldn't be classified as such.
I agree with your statement as well. Anti-Zionism and Anti-"Semitism" are not the same thing.
Like the representation of "muslim" in the media that reaches public consciousness is that of arabs, when in reality, arabs are a minority in the worldwide umma. There are more African muslims far outnumber Arab muslims.
Not only did he have such an outcome for the Jews, he also wanted the Hindus to let themselves be killed by Muslims.
http://agneya.wordpress.com/2007/01/15/saving-hinduism-by-killing-all-the-hindus/
African muslims can also speak arabic, for example, the muslims in tunisia. But what is your point?
I have often been the black sheep in my extended family for openly criticizing Gandhi. Some of the sanctimonious hogwash he preached to Hitler's victims about "offering themselves to the butcher's knife" was obscenely preposterous. Had I been a relative of those Hitler murdered, I'd probably want to kill Gandhi as well as Hitler for preaching such outrage.
Gandhi was a well-intentioned dreamer. His ideas and tactics, to be sure, did have a fair amount of thought and merit. But that civil disobedience game can only last more than a few minutes under an oppressor with democratic due process of law. Moreover, non-violence is a myth. India only got free because Germany and Japan left Britain so militarily weakened that though she emerged victorious, she could no longer control her colonies by force. Gandhi weakened the British hold on India somewhat by non-co-operation, but simply does not deserve credit for India's independence.
Non violence has not completely lost its importance in today's world. OK, maybe we cannot use non-violence to fight Osama, but the Muslim world (PLO, Hamas, Fatah) can benefit immensely if they come together and come forward as a cohesive non-violent voice. I am pretty sure that international pressure will be on Israel to accede to the wishes of such a united, non-violent voice. Similarly, what has the LTTE achieved after years of non-violence in Sri Lanka? Could non-violent Satyagraha be a different viable solution? The Khalistan non-violent revolution in Punjab did not sustain itself.
I think it is inappropriate of Gandhi to suggest Jews to commit mass-suicide. However, had Hitler won (and he almost did), what would he had gained had the entire world not-cooperated with him, i.e not buy any of he goods that he trades.
In modern world, it is "war" that has lost its significance. Economics is the real thing. Consider Iraq. Bush declared "misson accomplished" on a fighter vessel, but he has still not won the war as he has to restore the economy (and trust among people) to pre-war eras.
Sometimes its more hard to be foolish & do what u preach (ahimsa) than to go with the natural instincts. This dichotomy is expressed beautifully in 'Machhis' [the solution is wanted now, not generations later & that ..only violence can achieve].But imagine how a violent freedom movement wud have manifested in future .. not at all in line with the ethos of peaceful India.
Prabhu asks what would a victorious Hitler have gained had all his conquered victims refused to buy his goods. That's just it! Hitler was a racist-imperialist, not a capitalist-imperialist. He just wanted land and natural resources so those he classified as Aryan could expand. He would have simply and gradually mass-murdered all conquered people he considered subhuman. Except maybe for using their human fat to manufacture soap and human skins to make lampshades, Hitler had no economic use for "non-Aryans."
My Uncle Krishna (God rest his soul) was a great Gandhi-believer, and tried to tell me that Hitler could never have killed 300 million Indians had they used non-violent disobedience. He was aghast and speechless when I told him of Tabun gas, a Nazi invention. Just one cannister could kill 100,000 people as it spread. Therefore 3000 cannisters of tabun --- something Germany could easily produce ---- would easily wipe human life off the Indian subcontinent.Uncle had no rebuttal for that!
Forget all that satyagraha and ahimsa bullshit! That only works against democracies, not Stalins or Hitlers. To devout Hindus or Indian nationalists, Mohandas Gandhi was "Mahatma", or Great Soul. But there are others of Indian background who call him "Mohan Sundaas Gandhi." Ask some other Indic person to tell you what "sundaas" means.
OK geniuses, so why did Jesus say love your enemy ?
For the early Christians, the Romans were the enemies and they were brutal.
"Loving them" was the only strategy since opposing them by force was not possible.
So for Christians, why is is Jesus right and Gandhi wrong ?
Perhaps Frederick Dalton Thompson the Christian GOP candidate can now explain why its OK for Jesus to become a "lampshade" by loving a brutal enemy ? While Gandhi's position is so laughable ?
The answer is that Christian exclusivists and fundamantilists are scared of Gandhi..the idea that a extraordinary spiritual force can exist outside christianity is very disorienting to someone brought up from childood brainwashed with the idea that Jesus was the inventor of all things good.
I agree with those who say Gandhi was great for what he accomplished. But his attitude towards Jews was nothing personal. It was part of his overall philosophy which can get kooky at times. That is why one does not blindly follow leaders. You take what works from different leaders and adjust it according to the situation.
You could have substituted jews with some other group being oppressed and Gandhi would have the same inane ideas.
If you delve into many world leaders, you will find some weird stuff.
Rahul, I agree with you totally regards the exclusivism and hypocrisy of fundamentalist Christianity. They send missionaries all over allegedly to "save our souls from Satan." Yet in the history, traditional culture and society of the United States, evangelical or hard-core Christianity itself has been the real "Satan" that America needs salvation from. The Mother of Lies in our ethos, just as Stalinist or diluted Stalinist doctrines were in the USSR. Both the whore and the pimp of racism, sexism, imperialism, virulent persecution of gays...you name it.
It is no coincidence that the current George W. Bush administration is so devoutly evangelism-oriented. It was the evangelist vote that gave Georgie Porgie a second term in the close voting of 2004. It is to be hoped that the evangelical vote block, which is now beginning to feel that Bush and the Republican Party have let them down, will go to some independent candidate or third party. That would bring the Democrats back to the helm.
Dear friends, I read all the above comments. And till now I have come to only one unified, moral, logical answer. I believe, indirectly the question most of you are trying to ask is that "Is non-violence always the right way to fight injustice?"
I say yes, even for a man like Hitler and the actions he performed. One has to be non-violent in order to stop the the violence from violent individuals. I have read much about both WW1 and WW2, and from what I know there was a non -violent solution for every event that took place during those years. For it was violence that gave birth to a character and emotions that Hitler possessed. It would take great sacrifices and losses but in the end each and every German who killed someone would feel guilty of doing so. It would have taken longer time that usual, but the result would not be any similar to what we have today. The aftermath of WW2, USA and USSR became superpowers and the cold war began and a lot of people lost lives in that. USA gained a lot of power and thought that they would never face defeat if on war with any nation. After that we saw the Vietnam war and USA lost a great number of men and wealth, we saw the first middle east war that caused the deaths of many Iraqis. Even USSR did not sit quietly, they tried to take over Afghanistan, even that caused a great amount of bloodshed. And why are we all forgetting the nuclear explosions. Now, if there had been a peaceful but time consuming solution for WW1, WW2 or Hitler, most of these events would not have occurred. And the men who would have sacrificed themselves in the cause, their lives would not have been lost for no reason and the future generation would have much or less but respect for them.
"The law an eye for an eye makes the whole world blind."
Well I think there would be at least one person with one eye, but still its not worth it.
""Many lives were actually lost because of Gandhi's stubborn insistence on non-violence.""
This sort of misses the point. Gandhi never viewed non-violence as a mere "tactic" or "strategy" to defeat the British. It was instead a non-negotiable moral imperative, a way of living life. It was a purpose, not a means to an end. He viewed violence as a form of spiritual pollution that degraded the perpetrator. Gandhi would have preferred that he and all his followers die, and the dream of an independent India die with them, than that they degrade themselves by engaging in grubby violence. He was enough of an optimist about human nature to believe this was not the choice one normally faced, but he probably would not have shrank from the kind of martyrdom he urged on the Jews of Warsaw Ghetto.
/shrug
Personally, I don't particularly agree. But there is no denying that Gandhi was on to something. If the last century ought to hold any lesson at all, its that the social structures and institutions put into place with violence are fleeting.
Well, if you address WHAT the peace protesters were rallying for, they were protesting our INVASION of a country that 1) did not attack us, 2) had no weapons of mass destruction, 3) did not have any Al Qaeda (but they do now, thanks to our intervention in their territory). What right do we have to do this? None!
Our founding fathers would be rolling in their graves if they saw that we regularly entangle ourselves in other nations' business, much to everyone's detriment and our financial ruin. What happened to the Monroe doctrine as applied to the rest of the world? What about live and let live? It is not our responsibility to police the world and take out all the bad boys.
We have 700 military bases in 130 countries, 9 trillion in foreign debt and 70 trillion in entitlement debt. What on earth are we doing meddling in other nations business when we are bankrupt and on the verge of economic collapse? Wake up people! Look into Ron Paul, the only man running for president who is smart enough to know what is going on and courageous enough to speak the truth.
Passage from India: How Westerners Rewrote Gandhi's Message
By Richard G. Fox
Fifty years ago this January, Mahatma Gandhi was shot down in a prayer garden in New Delhi. He was seventy-nine years old, and had lived to see India win independence from Britain. His leadership of India's masses reverberated on the world stage, not least in the United States, and changed profoundly how protesters dealt with those in power.
How well his adaptors in the West understood Gandhi's message, or how faithfully they adopted his philosophy, is a matter still being debated by historians. Revolutionary ideologies cross the world in steerage or even as stowaways, passing from place to place unheeded by those in power. Only afterward, when the actions and the actors are forgotten, can they come to appear as an inevitable and obvious flow of the culture.
In the 1950s Gandhi's legacy passed to the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., who took up the philosophy of nonviolence in his long march for civil rights. With King came the Congress on Racial Equality and other civil rights groups, then the Berrigans, Dellinger, and anti-Vietnam activists; Cesar Chavez and his farm workers; Mitch Snyder and the homeless; and the rights advocates for ecology, animals, reproduction, and gays today.
However, what happens if we look at a time before King, and if we set aside the after-the-fact certainty that Gandhian nonviolence was inevitable? The methodology is one that Clifford Geertz calls "doing history backwards."
Gandhi and his methods were easily misinterpreted by Westerners. In order to fathom what he was about, Westerners fluctuated between hyper-difference, in which Gandhi was seen as the inexplicable product of a foreign culture; and over-likeness, in which they found similarities that were not really there. The real Gandhi lay somewhere in between.
Gandhi departed from Hindu orthodoxy in two significant ways: on nonviolence and on caste. Ahimsa, or nonviolence, maintained that all killing should be avoided to accrue spiritual merit. Gandhi, who had encounters with poisonous snakes in South Africa and rabid dogs in India, redefined the concept and mandated killing for humanitarian purposes, as in the euthanasia of rabid dogs. If some Hindus were alienated by his lack of orthodoxy on ahisma, many more fell out with him over his championing of the untouchables, the lowest of India's castes. In traditional Hindu belief, an untouchable's contact with the person, food, or drink of a member of a higher caste would defile that person. For orthodox Hindus, it was a scripturally enjoined inequality, a product of individual karma (action) and performance of dharma (dedication to a calling), and a proof of the cycle of sansar (reincarnation). Gandhi never succeeded in justifying his stance against untouchability; in the end, he simply asserted that Hinduism needed to change.
Attempting to understand Gandhi fares no better if he is misconstrued as a product of Indian asceticism. Although Gandhi followed various ascetic regimens such as brahmacharya (celibacy), his purpose was to gain the strength for successful worldly action, rather than to accumulate spiritual merit.
Just as mistakenly, Gandhian protest can take on the guise of things Westerners already know well. Attempting to see in Gandhian nonviolence a form of Christian nonresistance glosses over the activist, confrontational element in Gandhism. Gandhi wanted worldly success, the independence of India, not divine martyrdom. He made salt, he burned cloth, he led boycotts, he was thrown in prison, but he never waited around to be thrown to the lions.
The concepts of Gandhian nonviolence and pacifism are not at all close. Gandhi did not believe in turning the other cheek in every situation--evil had to be resisted, best done nonviolently, but better by violence than not at all. Passive resistance was the term that Gandhi originally used for his South African protest, but he soon disowned the term in favor of his neolocution, satyagraha or soul-force. For Gandhi, passive resistance was a weapon of the weak, used expediently, not morally, when violence was impossible or too costly. When Gandhi pondered the case of the British suffragettes and Irish Republican hunger-strikers offering passive resistance in jail, he saw an essential coercive element in the protests, which made them akin to violent resistance. Such passive resistors were perpetrating nonviolence to extract concessions from their enemies. The purpose of India's nonviolent resisters, in Gandhi's terms, was to suffer nonviolently to engender trust and respect in their opponents.
Civil disobedience against the state, and the anarchist spirit of protest it represented, was also a departure from the Gandhian concept. Civil disobedience as proposed by Thoreau and practiced by anarchists depended on individual acts. Mass action was suspect because participants might not share the same conviction or some might feel coerced into action. (The anarchist U.S. Catholic Worker movement was never reconciled to Gandhism). In Gandhian protest, civil disobedience could begin with individual acts, but only for the purpose of mobilizing mass protest. Otherwise, civil disobedience was an ego trip, not a moral action.
Gandhi's truth was not just a product of his Indian tradition; nor was he parroting methods already known in the West. It was a syncretism of Western and Indian practices that drew upon Gandhi's experiences living in England, South Africa, and India. By 1918 Gandhi had put together the three most important elements of his philosophy--namely, morally informed nonviolence, mass civil disobedience, and courageous suffering. The concept was almost as strange to Indians as it was later to Americans.
In the West, Gandhi was perceived as powerful for his ability to hold back threatened violence from the Indian masses. That power was taken as spiritual. Gandhi "suffers himself to be adored," as one New York Times commentator put it. Another commented that Gandhi's penitential fasting for political ends illustrated the "difference between East and West."
A Gandhi sanctified in this manner spoke to American social activists only as a saint--which meant that he was heard best by Christian militants, rather than by secular ones, and that his work was taken as prophecy, not politics. Even this depended on seeing Christlike qualities in Gandhi and in tailoring nonviolent resistance to Christian nonresistance and pacifism. This over- likeness grew stronger from the 1920s on as Gandhi's influence over Indian nationalism developed and as more and more American clergymen went to India to meet the Mahatma and bring his ideas home.
John Haynes Holmes, a Protestant minister, pacifist, and activist with A. J. Muste's Fellowship of Reconciliation (FOR) was a major agent of Western over-likeness. He began to preach a Christianized version of Gandhi and Gandhism as early as 1918 and met the Mahatma in 1931. In a 1922 sermon, Holmes said that "Gandhi is thus undertaking to do exactly what Jesus did when He proclaimed the kingdom of God on earth."
For many U.S. activists in the 1930s, even Christian ones, a Christ-like Gandhi gave no political direction. A. J. Muste remembered the period with regret: "In the thirties . . . we faced a terrible situation . . . .I did not know how to apply nonviolent methods effectively to the situation. The effort to apply Gandhian methods to American conditions had scarcely begun. Pacifism was mostly a middle-class and individualistic phenomenon." Rejecting Christ and a Christ-like Gandhi, Muste turned to Trotsky and Communism for a period.
In 1943, W.E.B. Du Bois disputed with Ralph Templin of the Harlem Ashram and the Kristagraha movement, over the worth of launching a Gandhian mass action. Du Bois argued that austerities--fasting, prayer, self-sacrifice, and personal abnegation--had been bred into "the very bone" of India for more than three thousand years, whereas a U.S. movement that embraced such tactics would be judged a joke or an insanity. "Our culture patterns in East and West differ so vastly," he contended, "that what is sense in one world may be nonsense in the other."
Templin replied that Gandhian protest took its methods from Thoreau and the American abolitionists, so it was eminently suitable to the United States.
In the fall of 1941, James Farmer began to plan a Gandhian campaign for racial equality in the United States. At that time, he worked for the Fellowship of Reconciliation, the Christian pacifist organization run by Muste. Farmer sent Muste a memo asking FOR to support a major effort at reforming U.S. race relations. Farmer wrote that "we must withhold our support and participation from the institution of segregation in every area of American life--not an individual witness to purity of conscience, as Thoreau used it, but a coordinated movement of mass noncooperation as with Gandhi. . . .Like Gandhi's army, it must be nonviolent . . . .Gandhi has the key for me to unlock the door to the American dream."
By that fall, Gandhian rhetoric had spread to the March on Washington Movement (MOWM) and its leader, A. Philip Randolph. Gandhian nonviolence had begun to remake existing forms of protest in the United States in its own likeness. Randolph's metamorphosis is a good example. Randolph's roots were in the labor movement, and they emphasized mass action over spirituality and passive resistance. In July 1941, Randolph had called for a mass march on Washington to convince Roosevelt of the need for antidiscrimination laws in the war industry. He exhorted his followers to concerted action, such as marches and petitions. There was no mention of Gandhi or Gandhian technique; instead, Randolph invoked earlier black leaders such as Nat Turner, Denmark Vesey, and Harriet Tubman.
Soon after, Randolph came to a more radical consciousness and rhetoric, strongly influenced by Gandhian methods. In his September 1942 address to his March on Washington organization, Randolph spoke of a "Negro Liberation Movement," and he had Indian nationalism in mind. "Witness the strategy and maneuver of the people of India," he exhorted, ". . .mass civil disobedience and noncooperation and the marches to the sea to make salt." He called for marches, picketing, and civil disobedience-- and for the courage to accept courtroom battles and even imprisonment. By 1943, Randolph described his method as "nonviolent, good-will direct action," which he said was a modification of "the principle of nonviolent civil disobedience and noncooperation set forth by Gandhi in India."
Bayard Rustin seems to have incorporated philosophical elements of Farmer's CORE, Muste's FOR, and Randolph's MOWM. Like Muste, Rustin had renounced secular radicalism for Christian activism. On a bus trip through Tennessee, he refused to sit at the back and ended up in jail. In his article "The Negro and Nonviolence," written in October 1942, Rustin rejects what he called the "pink tea" protests of the black middle class and white intellectuals. He argued for what he called "nonviolent direct action." Rustin, the intermediary among several U.S. protest groups, was also an intermediary in his understanding of Gandhian nonviolence: he demystified it and put it into practice. He also placed something of a Christian likeness on it, which neither CORE nor MOWM did.
The initial effort to relocate Gandhian nonviolence to the United States came from Richard Gregg, a lawyer who specialized in dispute settlement on the Labor Relations Board during World War I. Gregg traveled to India and lived in Gandhi's Sbarmati ashram for several months in the mid-1920s; he returned to India as an observer during the 1930 Salt March. In Gregg's Power of Nonviolence, published in 1934, he introduced a powerful image of Gandhian protest: he called it "moral jiu-jitsu" because it used active protest and love against an opponent to throw him off-balance rather than to beat him down by violence. The martial arts image dislocated Gandhism from Indian spirituality and ascetic practice. By moral, Gregg wished to emphasize that Gandhian nonviolence was not coercive; it compelled through superior social leverage, personal dedication, and moral balance.
Gregg also began to shape Gandhian protest in the United States by emphasizing how unlike existing ones it was. He condemned American pacifists as ineffectual, selling out to the government whenever their beliefs were tested. Although Gregg minimized their otherworldly and ascetic elements, he still thought Gandhian methods depended on religion and faith.
Jay Holmes Smith, a missionary to India, also helped establish Gandhian methods through the Harlem Ashram he established in 1940. He formed the Non-Violence Direct Action Committee "to study the application of Gandhi's way to American life." Their protests against draft registration and participation in mass marches began at the same time. By later instigating nonviolent resistance he also used the ashram as a staging ground for such protests against discriminatory hiring by Harlem businesses. Smith's application of Gandhism was confrontational and, in practice, as subordinated spiritual merit to secular action.
Moral jiu-jitsu and Kristagraha, or Christ-force movement, still conserved many notions of "Oriental" self- discipline or, alternatively, Christ-like understandings. When James Farmer left Chicago in 1943 and went to New York, he initially stayed in the Harlem Ashram but was soon put off by the voluntary poverty and renunciation. Farmer says he was "not one for asceticism," and the final step in dislocating Gandhian nonviolence was to remove the fasting and personal austerities. The faith in it had to be made a secular and political, not religious, one.
To do so required relocating Gandhism even more outside Orientalism and even further from existing Christian protest methods. The moving force turned out to be Krishnalal Shridharani, who acted with profound albeit brief influence on would-be Gandhian activists in the United States. Self-exiled from India in 1934, a Gandhian nationalist from childhood, poet and playwright in his native Gujarati language, Shridharani completed a Ph.D. in sociology from Columbia University with a dissertation on Gandhian nonviolence and its application to the United States. It was published in 1939.
Shridharani defined Gandhian nonviolence as distinct from passive resistance, nonresistance, pacifism, and conscientious objection. Harshly condemning American pacifists for their lack of any activist program, he accused them of "religious appeasement." In Shridharani's view, nonviolent resistance was basically a secular technique and the religious trappings were mainly there to satisfy Gandhi. The irony of Shridharani's de- Orientalizing was obvious to one reviewer: "we are confronted with the curious anomaly of having to learn from a follower of Gandhi . . . that American pacifism is too `unworldly' and `essentially religious and mystical.'"
Shridharani made the rounds of American protest organizations. In 1943, he spoke in Chicago to James Farmer and thirty others involved with CORE. A.J. Muste also convened a meeting with him and American activists, and he advised a nonviolent direct action in Pennsylvania.
Farmer was surprised at Shridharani's dapper appearance and the cigars he smoked. Shridharani dispelled stereotypes about Indian abnegation at the same time he asserted his comfort with Western forms of pleasure.
Richard Gregg and Jay Holmes Smith also had uncommon lives. Both were self-exiles. Gregg went to India to find new ways of managing disputes and returned with an empowering Gandhism. Smith's original Christian mission to India radicalized him, and when he was exiled from that mission and forced to go home to the United States, he returned filled with a Gandhian Christ-force that had no place in his church but was to have a future place in U.S. social protest. Dislocation and relocation in terms of Gandhian nonviolent resistance echoed their own dislocation and relocation. That was true of Gandhi, also. On the path to satayagraha, he wore top hats in England, then the turban of an indentured laborer in South Africa, until finally, he bared his head in India.
This article is adapted from a chapter in Between Resistance and Revolution, edited by Richard G. Fox and Orin Starn, ©1997 by Rutgers, the State University. Reprinted by permission.
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Humanities, January/February 1998, Volume 19/Number 1
quiet strange, a number of people have run their mouth by calling Gandhi stupid and a fool, strange that list would incluse nelson mandela and martin luther king and many many many others.
FYI gandhi was heavily a religious person and so that self surrender to the suffering only enlightens the self. e.g. jesus christ, lord mahavir, lord buddha etc....so in your idea all these people are fools and stupid....because jesus allowed himself to be crusified for the sake of the people, that is probably why almost 2/3 of the world considers him GOD. the heroism and glory that gandhi ment when he said the jews should surrender to the nazi's.
AHIMSA was, is and always will be the greatest weapon a man can possess!!!!
pls do not blabber crap without knowing the full story, and do not take things out of context and comment on it.
rigs
puli
Subhash Chandra Bose did not "roll out the red carpet" for the Japanese Empire, Samjay. He knew full well what creeps both the Nazis and Japan's leaders were. Accordingly, he arranged his invasion-liberation of India in such a way that only Indians would be in charge of policy-making and commands.
The real reason Subhash failed is that the timetable of World War Two rolled against him. Had the USA developed the atomic bomb a year later than it did, or had he been able to begin his invasion of the Raj a year earlier than occured, Azad Hind Fauj troops would have reached Delhi successfully. And all along the way, millions of Indians would risen up to support them, using weapons Japan supplied because it suited Japan's interests.
They liberated the Andaman Islands, and at the Battles of Kohima and Imphal, inflicted thumping defeats on the British. But just when they were getting on a roll, Hiroshima and Nagasaki were bombed, and Japan --- the source of his supplies --- dried up. Subhash anxiously flew back to Japan to size up the situation, and died in a 'plane crash. Possibly the Allies had planted a bomb in the 'plane.
Subhash was the true cause of India's freedom, not that ugly bufoon they call "Mahatma." It was exactly violence, and nothing but violence, that cut off the hands of British control. What Gandhi and Nehru did in fact achieve was the creation of a political culture and national consciousness, and the laying of the foundations for a mature democracy.
"War is an ugly thing but not the ugliest of things; the decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feelings which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse. A man who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself."
- John Stuart Mill
You what is really funny? Gandhi said all that to Europeans and Jews, but he supported India going to war with Pakistan. That was one reason for denying him a Nobel Peace prize. He also believed in the caste system with all his heart. He equated the caste system with the natural law of gravity. He was also quite racist. Even in his late thirties he wrote terrible things against black people and joined the British in some war against black people, as a stretcher bearer. He even wrote about helping British individuals who were wounded. Later, however, he said he helped wounded black people. A liar, a hypocrite, a racist, and a castist, and a Hindu extremist. That was Gandhi.