The Gandhi Myth

• The Gandhi Myth

• http://www.diigo.com/06loh

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  • British colonialists often cultivated an admiration for Gandhi because he was their least dangerous adversary; today Westerners are enthralled by Gandhi because they see him as a global prophet of non-violence and anti-racism.
  
  • Our idealized image of Gandhi is a reflection of our own naivety. By any objective standard Gandhi's legacy, on the issues that concerned him most, was a series of failures with disastrous results:
  • Gandhi's Pacifism

    "We should with a cool mind reflect when we are being swept away. Hindus should never be angry against the Muslims even if the latter might make up their minds to undo even their existence. If they put all of us to the sword, we should court death bravely; may they even rule the world, we shall inhabit the world. At least we should never fear death. We are destined to be born and die; then why need we feel gloomy over it? If all of us die with a smile on our lips, we shall enter a new life. We shall originate a new Hindustan" (6th April 1947).

    "Not one of those [Hindus] who have died in Punjab is going to return. In the end we too have to go there. It is true that they were murdered but then some others die of cholera or due to other causes. He who is born must die. If those killed have died bravely, they have not lost anything but earned something ... After all, the killers will be none other than our Muslim brothers" (23rd September 1947).

    (Quoted by Nathuram Godse, Gandhi's assassin, in his court defense.)

  • Hindu ethno-nationalists were political losers in the debates and infighting during the decade leading up to Indian independence, but subsequent history has demonstrated that their analysis was correc
  • Nationalism and multiculturalism are indeed antonyms. It is, as a matter of fact, "well-nigh impossible ... for races and cultures, having differences going to the root, to be assimilated into one united whole." Gandhi believed otherwise, and history proved his error.
  • Indian Hindus, still suffering today from a restive Muslim minority, received their reward in a secularist ("multicultural") India, which denies the Hindu majority any institutional expression of their ethno-cultural character. Hindu leaders may have profited from secularism, but the Hindu masses they nominally represented did not.
  • The lesson of Gandhi's failure is clear: In interracial relations a group that defines itself by its tolerance will lose against a group that doggedly pursues its own self-interest. Shrewd ethnocentrism is more politically powerful than compromising tolerance. We could call that a sociological law, if it were not so obvious.
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  • Some Critical Views of Gandhi
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  • Alain Daniélou, Histoire de l'Inde, Fayard, 1971:
  • The Congress party ... was a nonreligious political movement, comprised principally of Indians of Anglo-Saxon education and ideology. To obtain the approval of the Indian masses required the cover of a religious exterior.... Mohandas Gandhi gradually altered his character and appearance. The young anglicized revolutionary lawyer, from South Africa, transformed himself into a half-naked Indian monk.
  • The death of Gandhi was celebrated by ceremonies of thanksgiving in many Hindu cities.
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  • Ranjan Borra, "Subhas Chandra Bose, the Indian National Army, and the War of India's Liberation," Journal of Historical Review, no. 3, 4 (Winter 1982):
  • My direct question to him was that since Gandhi's "Quit India" movement had tapered off quite some time ago and in 1947 no such new compelling situation had arisen that would necessitate a hasty British departure, why did they have to leave?
  • In his reply Atlee cited several reasons, the principal among them being the erosion of loyalty to the British Crown among the Indian army and navy personnel as a result of the military activities of Netaji [Bose].
  • Toward the end of our discussion I asked Atlee what was the extent of Gandhi's influence upon the British decision to quit India. Hearing this question, Atlee's lips became twisted in a sarcastic smile as he slowly chewed out the word, "m-i-n-i-m-a-l!"
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  • Alain Daniélou, Les Quatre Sens de la vie, Editions du Rocher, 1992:
  • The use made by Mahatma Gandhi of the theory of non-violence as a political weapon has nothing to do with Hindu tradition. Non-violence is a strictly individual technique of personal improvement.
  • Gandhi was in fact, thanks to his theories on non-violence, the instrument of massacres on a scale almost without historical precedent, which preceded and followed the partition of India, which he had accepted.
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  • François Gautier, Un autre regard sur l'Inde, Editions du Tricorne, 2000:
  • It should be said, whatever Gandhi's holiness, that his moral rigidity... and his asceticism caused enormous evils in India, in particular his approach to the question of the Untouchables and the Muslims. He always felt compelled to yield before the demands of the latter, and he obstinately refused to see that the Muslims were always the source of the riots, the Hindus doing nothing but respond.
  • You speak of non-violence? But Gandhi exerted the greatest violence with his body in fasting throughout his life to subject others to his will. There was in this not only a very Christian element of self-mortification, but also a blackmail which no one dared resist.
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  • Savitri Devi, The Lightning and the Sun, 1958:
  • The late Mahatma Gandhi's much admired "nonviolence" was moral violence; not: "Do this, or else I kill you!" but: "Do this, or else I kill myself! ... knowing that you hold my life as indispensable."
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  • Excerpts from Nathuram Godse's formerly prohibited defense plea are now online, along with a recent interview with his brother and co-conspirator. The assassination of Gandhi was, we should keep in mind, both wrong and pointless, since Godse's real enemy was a mistaken idea, not its most visible spokesman. Godse was an intelligent and articulate man, and he should have employed his talents productively.