The new issue of Prospect comes out on the 60th anniversary of the murder of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, and so it’s worth remembering the reasons why he has become a moral touchstone. His genius was to develop, during his 21-year stay in South Africa from 1893-1914, the strategy of non-violent, or passive, resistance: the confrontation of authority with masses of people who refused to work, or to move, or to obey orders—but peacefully, offering no physical resistance to the police or army. It made him the model for many of the figures of resistance in the 20th century—including Martin Luther King Jr in the US and Aung San Suu Kyi in Burma; it ensured that the mass movement against the British was largely without violence; and it offered a benign alternative to the revolutions and coups with which the last century was marked. But above all, it did what it was designed to do: it shamed the British out of India, and out of empire.
As an inspiration and a symbol, Gandhi has no peer in the 20th century; as a practical politician, he was a despair to his colleagues in the Indian national movement. His insistence on non-violence grew more extreme as he aged: during the war, he recommended to the British that they should “invite Herr Hitler and Signor Mussolini to take what they want of the countries you call your possessions.” And in an interview given after the war, he went so far as to say that “the Jews [in Europe] should have offered themselves to the butcher’s knife. They should have thrown themselves into the sea from cliffs.” To attempt to overthrow tyranny, or even to oppose genocide, became for Gandhi an act almost as bad as tyranny or genocide itself—a view which finds an echo today in those who oppose any action of intervention to stop massacres.
Yet more than any other figure, Gandhi destroyed not just the British empire, but the very idea of empire. He did it by holding up to the British and to the world a mirror in which they could see themselves—preaching law, democracy and rights at home, while oppressing abroad. It is that vision which won out, in the latter half of the 20th century.
Great!
“He did it by holding up to the British and to the world a mirror in which they could see themselves—preaching law, democracy and rights at home, while oppressing abroad.”
All very well and good for the liberal Biritish Empire, but law, democracy and rights at home is not an image in the mirror Saddam Hussain would have ever recognised.
I’m wondering if he was a Christian or if he just follow the non-resistance to evil principle.
Liberal British Empire? The empire that pioineered concentration camps while Gandhi was in South Africa, and then left the empire with nothing but cricket?
How can you actually think it no big deal that Gandhi believed Jews should walk softly to the gallows? THAT ALONE is proof that his ideology is extremely limited in its scope and thoroughly unrighteous.
Pacifism = the monsters win
It is the right and DUTY of people to defend themselves, because no one otherwise will.
This is what the ‘peace studies’ departments fail to recognize. There are ideologies out there that glorify and delight in death. Offering yourself up to the executioner would then do nothing to weaken the executioner’s resolve, rather it emboldens them.
For telling Indians to not fight the Nazis, for not supporting Jews as they were being annhilated and then for his extreme antizionism, Gandhi will forever live in infamy. It is said that his ideology is what enabled India to get its independence; this is patently untrue. India’s independence occurred after World War II, when England was dumping its colonies left and right. And even if one could say that Gandhi’s ideology made a positive impact upon India’s fight for independence, this is only because England, unlike Nazi Germany or Islamists, had (and has) some degree of humanity, and English people were horrified at the prospect of mass murdering Indians.
I will go a few steps further. Gandhi claimed to represent the Hindu philosophy, but this is a lie; Hinduism does not represent nonviolence, rather it says that if you fight, you need to fight for the right reasons. His ideology was closer to Buddhism. As far as Buddhists go, let’s all examine how successful those Buddhists have been in their struggle in Tibet. Moreover, Gandhi’s economic policies of “swadeshi” have held India back decades in its struggle to modernize. And his total appeasement to the Muslim League did nothing to prevent the rise of Pakistan.
So what exactly is Gandhi’s positive legacy? What of it? His nonviolence was accepted by Martin Luther King, Jr. and worked in the USA during the struggle for civil rights, but again, this was a country that believed in humanity.
What proof is there that Gandhi’s ideology has any relevance when dealing with enemies whose goal is annhilation? I see none at all, and following his ideology will only lead to our destruction.
A soundbyte or casual quote is not really appropriate to discussing the invidious situation, for both sides, in Palestine and Israel.
However, I do think Gandhi may have been misinterpreted. The passive resistance was evidently due to his spiritual creed. The illusion of this life, presumably, could be fast forwarded with the offering up of self.
As for a Jewish homeland, although I firmly back Israel’s right to exist, Gandhi put his views somewhat differently from the quotes above.
http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/51/207.html
Great Britain was forced to abandon its South Asian Empire not because of Indian resistance, passive or otherwise, but due to insolvency. Britain became economically exhausted by its external tussles with Germany and its internal tussles with Fabian Socialism. Gandhi’s mercy didn’t unstiffen the British upper lip, or reduce their propensity for brutality.The Raj allowed 3 million Indians to starve to death during the Great Bengal Famine in 1943, well after Gandhi’s Quit India and Salt Satyagraha. It was not shame, or the “image in the mirror” that cowed Lord Mountbatten, it was a fractured Current Account.
Gandhi, Father of India. In his autobiography My experiments with Truth Gandhi
rcalls that his childhood and teen age years were characterized by education in a
local school, marriage to Kasturba at the age of 13 and an intrinsic love for ‘truth’
and ‘duty’.Gandhi Jayanti is national holiday celebrated in India to mark the
occasion.
Gandhi Friend.
http://www.desievite.com/Desi-Indian-ecards.asp