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Thread: A More Complex Mahatma Ghandi?

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    A More Complex Mahatma Ghandi?

    I found this fascinating. It turns out that your average Westerner's appreciation of Gandhi may be just as superficial as their appreciation of Eastern spirituality. Apparently, Gandhi was not just a traditionalist who championed the Indian caste system but he was also a racist.

    https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-34265882

    Ramachandra Guha, writer of the magisterial Gandhi Before India, writes that "to speak of comprehensive equality for coloured people was premature in early 20th Century South Africa". Attacking Gandhi for racism, wrote another commentator, "takes a simplistic view of a complex life".
    The authors of the new book disagree.
    "Gandhi believed in the Aryan brotherhood. This involved whites and Indians higher up than Africans on the civilised scale. To that extent he was a racist. To the extent that he wrote Africans out of history or was keen to join with whites in their subjugation he was a racist," Ashwin Desai told me.
    Here is a collection of some rather interesting quotes.

    Whoever criticizes capitalism, while approving immigration, whose working class is its first victim, had better shut up. Whoever criticizes immigration, while remaining silent about capitalism, should do the same.


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    Chris's Avatar Senior Member
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    You mean the great and inspirational civil rights leader was a racist? Say it isn't so, Joe!
    Tradition is not the worship of ashes, but the preservation of fire. ― Gustav Mahler

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    Quote Originally Posted by Chris View Post
    You mean the great and inspirational civil rights leader was a racist? Say it isn't so, Joe!
    Yes, it appears so and a racist in the strict sense. I came upon this quite by accident. I'm glad I did. A man of his times they may say but they wouldn't say that about most of his contemporaries.
    Whoever criticizes capitalism, while approving immigration, whose working class is its first victim, had better shut up. Whoever criticizes immigration, while remaining silent about capitalism, should do the same.


    ~Alain de Benoist


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    This has been known about Ghandi for some time. People have ignored that aspect of him much in the way many leaders are deified.

    It reminds me of how people idealize Tibetan Buddhism. They too had a caste system, virtual slavery and engaged in brutality.

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    @Chris I decided to buy Louis Dumont's Homo Hierarchicus. Dumont was actually a student of Indian culture and this study of the caste system was his seminal work.
    Whoever criticizes capitalism, while approving immigration, whose working class is its first victim, had better shut up. Whoever criticizes immigration, while remaining silent about capitalism, should do the same.


    ~Alain de Benoist


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    Quote Originally Posted by Chris View Post
    You mean the great and inspirational civil rights leader was a racist? Say it isn't so, Joe!
    The world's most familiar pacifist also recruited combat soldiers for WW1.

    In April 1918, during the latter part of World War I, the Viceroy invited Gandhi to a War Conference [wherein] Gandhi agreed to actively recruit Indians for the war effort. In contrast to the Zulu War of 1906 and the outbreak of World War I in 1914, when he [Gandhi] recruited volunteers for the Ambulance Corps, this time Gandhi attempted to recruit combatants. In a June 1918 leaflet entitled "Appeal for Enlistment", Gandhi wrote "To bring about such a state of things we should have the ability to defend ourselves, that is, the ability to bear arms and to use them...If we want to learn the use of arms with the greatest possible despatch, it is our duty to enlist ourselves in the army." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahatma_Gandhi
    He informed the Viceroy, however, that he "personally will not kill or injure anybody, friend or foe."

    The obvious hypocrisy has been a bone of contention with lefty pacifists (haters) in recent years.

    Gandhi's war recruitment campaign brought into question his consistency on nonviolence. Gandhi's private secretary noted that "The question of the consistency between his creed of 'Ahimsa' (nonviolence) and his recruiting campaign was raised not only then but has been discussed ever since."
    It's enough to spoil your yoga meditation.

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    And this.


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