The Mahatma
As lots of people seems to be excited about today being the 140th anniversary of the birth of Gandhi...
This humble Indian leader not only changed the direction of his country, but also transformed the entire world with his message of love, peace and non-violence
yet I am minded to recall Sir Winston's words to the West Essex Conservatives on February 23, 1930
It is alarming and also nauseating to see Mr. Gandhi, a seditious Middle Temple lawyer, now posing as a fakir of a type well known in the East, striding half-naked up the steps of the Vice Regal palace, while he is still organising and conducting a campaign of civil disobedience, to parley on equal terms with the representative of King-Emperor
Comments
As has been so ably pointed out by so many commentators before me, his tactics would not have worked against, for example, the Russians, the Chinese, the Japanese...
Posted by: D.W. Drang | October 3, 2009 3:07 AM
What is rather more disturbing is what happened after it worked. I wonder if we have even seen racism on such a grand scale.
Not his fault of course I am sure, another hero of the middle classes.
Posted by: Ghostrifle | October 3, 2009 10:05 AM
cut from the same sh*tty cloth as Mandela.
Posted by: thud | October 3, 2009 10:18 AM
It may very well have been a mistake for the British to not grant India its independence after WWII. Fighting to liberate the world from oppression doesn't jibe with continued hegemony over unwilling colonists. The British might have been able to formulate an exit strategy which maintained the Indian bureaucracy for stability and the productive economy as a viable trading partner.
Successful divestment of Britain's colonies in Canada, Australia, and New Zealand seem to have worked. Counterexamples, though, include the tragic results of decolonization (willful or otherwise) of Palestine, Iraq, Africa, Vietnam, Latin America. Even the United States suffered mightily from it's own revolution in our Civil War.
That said, Gandhi's brand of socialism and naivete with respect to the politics of ethnic and religious diversity doomed four nations to six decades of poverty and bloodshed: India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Afghanistan.
The man of peace killed far more people than the British.
The best parts of India today are relics of British civil government. The sun still doesn't set over the Anglo-American empire of democracy and capitalism.
Posted by: POWinCA | October 4, 2009 4:27 AM
When in 1938 leading Jews wrote to Gandhi for support he replied that they should challenge the Germans to shoot or imprison them rather than submit to "discriminatory treatment". Voluntary suffering would bring them "inner strength and joy" and if they were all massacred it would be a lasting victory for it would bring the Nazis to "an appreciation of human dignity". As for those who had escaped to Palestine, well they should "offer themselves to the Arabs to be shot or thrown into the Dead Sea without raising a little finger".
He handed out similar advice to us during WW2 - bascally not to fight against Hitler - which would win us a moral victory.
Nice chap. But completely hatstand.
Posted by: Laban Tall | October 4, 2009 8:43 PM
he was perhaps instrumental in the blackmail of the brits when India threatened to join the japs instead of fighting with us (how well would that have worked??) however the deaths he caused to muslims was epic, I forgive the rest!!
Posted by: chris Edwards | October 5, 2009 3:24 AM