gandhi

Michael McIntyre mmcintyr at depaul.edu
Thu Apr 25 14:47:17 PDT 2002


Hell, let's be more specific than that. Yes, Gandhi called off the satyagraha in 1921 after an incident at Chauri Chaura where a crowd of protestors burned down a police station. This incident is the basic source of the Gandhi as saint myth. Independence was within India's grasp, but because it would have been achieved by impure means, Gandhi called off the movement that could have brought it about. Or so the story goes.

Move forward two decades to 1942 and the Quit India movement. There, Gandhi's famous comment (I paraphrase from memory): "Leave India to god or to the devil, but leave!" - has to be understood against the background of what he knew very well was about to happen. Within two days, he and the entire leadership of the Congress, were arrested and interned for the duration of the war. Gandhi knew very well that meant that Congress would be unable to impose nonviolent discipline on the ensuing movement. And still, he went forward. And so did the Quit India movement, often with significant violence.

Hey, I wonder what our Dean Wormer wannabe would say if SJP acted this cagily?

Michael McIntyre


>>> gadfly at exitleft.org 04/25/02 04:11PM >>>
Max Sawicky wrote:
>
> Everything I know about Gandhi I learned at the movies,
> but I would guess that the Mahatma would never go for the
> line about 'do what I demand or these other dudes will shoot
> you' either, assuming you are being fair to MLK in this regard.
>

if by the movies you mean the attenborough film "gandhi", i am afraid attenborough did not quite follow nehru's alleged advice to not paint the man as a saint. while some of the criticisms levelled against gandhi (the man, not the movie; for excessive criticism of both see any of the rants by grenier) has been excessive and patronizing (naipaul qualifies eminently in both categories), there is more than a grain of truth to the notion that gandhi was a shrewd politician and adept at pointing out the alternative ([10,000] britishers cannot keep [100] million indians under control, to quote roughly).

expanding the scope a bit, a quick search on the net yielded a couple of pieces (one by ashish nandy and another by george orwell):

http://www.littlemag.com/nandy.htm http://www.k-1.com/Orwell/ghandi.htm

perhaps something by ambedkar would also be informative.

http://www.ambedkar.org/research/GandhiAmbedkar.htm

--ravi



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