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| Also listed in: Campus Progress Blog |
60 years ago, on August 15th, 1947, India declared independence from Great Britain. We've come a long way, and there are marvelous things and horrible things that have happened in our post-indpendence years. Check out the Hindustan Times feature on "India at 60" for more.
I believe that in the history of the world, there has not been a more genuinely democratic struggle for freedom than ours. I read Carlyle’s French Resolution while I was in prison, and Pandit Jawaharlal has told me something about the Russian revolution. But it is my conviction that inasmuch as these struggles were fought with the weapon of violence they failed to realize the democratic ideal. In the democracy which I have envisaged, a democracy established by non-violence, there will be equal freedom for all. Everybody will be his own master. It is to join a struggle for such democracy that I invite you today. Once you realize this you will forget the differences between the Hindus and Muslims, and think of yourselves as Indians only, engaged in the common struggle for independence.
-Mohandas Karamchand (Mahatma) Gandhi
He did a lot of good, sure, but a lot of it was done for the wrong reasons, and he did enough harm to the world that his overall moral legacy is a checkerboard at best.
Like the significantly more reprehensible Mother Theresa, however, he's got a damn good posthumous PR team. The name "Gandhi" will continue to serve as a facile stand-in for "Whatever we currently happen to believe in" for many years hence.
If you think that Gandhi helped to free anyone at all, you are extremely naive and ignorant of Indian history. Gandhi did nothing to hasten Indian independence whatsoever, and according to V.S. Naipal, was so erratic and counterproductive to the independence movement, that he probably delayed Indian independence by about 20 years.
Gandhi forced little girls to get buck naked and sleep in his bed while he was buck naked. That is what I call a sexual predator.
Gandhi never bothered to consult his wife before unilaterally deciding that they had had sex for the last time.
Gandhi killed his wife by forbidding her to be injected with penicillin when she was sick. And he had the audacity to write her a letter telling her that she ought to be happy about dying.
Gandhi disowned his son for wanting an education that consisted of anything other than sitting and listening to Gandhi's musings on the nature of God and existence, and wanting to get married. He never spoke to him again and forbade his family from ever corresponding with him again.
Gandhi said that the Jews of Europe should have thrown themselves off the cliffs into the sea, that they should have offered their throats up to the butchers' knives. He urged Churchill to surrender to Hitler.
Etc. etc. etc. I could go on all night, but I won't. Educate yourself about the real Gandhi, not the myth of Gandhi and you might feel foolish that you had been deceived for so long by the Indian establishment. Gandhi was pure evil. He makes me nauseous.