Gandhi a Pedophile???

[Death By Starbucks.]

Watched a program about Ghandi and it said he said his wife could not take medicine and she died because of it but he took it when ill.
He also slept with 3 minors claiming some religeous reason.
WTF if this is true do you support this fuck.

[bailey_187]

He also refused his son to be married, leading to him becoming an alcoholic and homeless (i think)

Here's an article about a greater (qualitatively, but not quantitatively) Indian revolutionary that Ghandi denouced
http://www.lalkar.org/issues/contents/sep2009/madanlaldhingra.html

[Random Precision]

Watched a program about Ghandi and it said he said his wife could not take medicine and she died because of it but he took it when ill.
He also slept with 3 minors claiming some religeous reason.

Yes. Gandhi treated his family pretty terribly. He admits this himself in his autobiography I think.

It is documented as well that he slept next to young girls on occasion to test his vow of brahmacharya, or complete chastity. What is not documented is that he had sex with any of them - nor do I think he was ever accused of this.

[spiltteeth]

Actually his grandsons, although not coming out and saying that he actually had sex with children, wrote that they suspected such. Also they say the young girls he did sleep with were fairly traumatized, being forced to sleep naked with him.

Ghandi has a terrible racist as well, supporting the upper class Indians, and supporting much injustice.
Pretty much, he was shit.

[Uncle Ho]

Gandhi was also incredibly racist and a hardline supporter of the caste system. All he succeeded in doing was changing the name of India's oppressors, and this is why he's propped up by the bourgeoisie as a great heroic example. It also helps spread the myth of non-violent resistance, which has basically crippled all leftist movements in the west.

[Random Precision]

You're wrong. Although he may have acted in a racist or casteist manner on occasion in his youth, he opposed the caste system and was for reforming it... For his day, he was incredibly brave and resolute in his opposition to the caste system as well as other evils (including oppression of Dalits and women) in the backward Indian society of those times.

This is kind of true, but it's also true that he for the most part accepted the logic of the caste system and said along with its proponents that it was necessary as a division of labor. Furthermore it is true that he was anti-Untouchable, but he did not support their right to be allowed inside temples and furthermore criticized them for "unclean practices" like eating meat, drinking alcohol as well as the unsanitary jobs many of them were reduced to by the caste-based society


It also helps spread the myth of non-violent resistance, which has basically crippled all leftist movements in the west

From what I know of history it seemed to work pretty well for Indian independence.

Also, Death by Starbucks, consider this a verbal warning for racism/tastelessness/general idiocy.

[Death By Starbucks.]

it was a joke what is wrong with humor.
god the socialist future must be very boring

[spiltteeth]

You're wrong. Although he may have acted in a racist or casteist manner on occasion in his youth, he opposed the caste system and was for reforming it. As far as the racism goes, you cannot expect people born in the 19th century to conform to today's standards. After all, even Marx and Engels were racist in some places. Its just not true to say that he was a racist and a hardline supporter of the caste system. If he was a hardline racist, he would probably have supported Hitler or some other brutal western racist imperialist instead of opposing them. For his day, he was incredibly brave and resolute in his opposition to the caste system as well as other evils (including oppression of Dalits and women) in the backward Indian society of those times.

I don't think this is correct. I mean, Gandhi threatened to kill himself if the untouchables -Dalits-were democratically given rights to elect their own officials.

Are you familiar with Gandhi's great hunger strike against the so called Poona Pact in 1933? The matter which Gandhi was protesting, nearly unto death at that, was the inclusion in the draft Indian Constitution, proposed by the British, that reserved the right of Dalits to elect their own leaders. Dr. Ambedkar, with his degree in Law from Cambridge, had been choosen by the British to write the new constitution for India. Having spent his life overcoming caste based discrimination, Dr. Ambedkar had come to the conclusion that the only way Dalits could improve their lives is if they had the exclusive right to vote for their leaders, that a portion or reserved section of all elected positions were only for Dalits and only Dalits could vote for these reserved positions.

Gandhi was determined to prevent this and went on hunger strike to change this article in the draft constitution. After many communal riots, where tens of thousands of Dalits were slaughtered, and with a leap in such violence predicted if Gandhi died, Dr. Ambedkar agreed, with Gandhi on his death bed, to give up the Dalits right to exclusively elect their own leaders and Gandhi ended his hunger strike.Later, on his own death bed, Dr. Ambedkar would say this was the biggest mistake in his life, that if he had to do it all over again, he would have refused to give up Dalit only representation, even if it meant Gandhi's death.

Many of the laws written into the Indian Constitution that were patterned after the laws introduced into the former Confederate or slave states in the USA during reconstruction after the Civil War to protect the freed black Americans, have never been enforced by the high caste dominated Indian court system and legislatures. A tiny fraction of the "quotas" or reservations for Dalits in education and government jobs have been filled. Dalits are still discriminated against in all aspect of life in India's 650,000 villages despite laws specifically outlawing such acts. Dalits are the victims of economic embargos, denial of basic human rights such as access to drinking water, use of public facilities and education and even entry to Hindu temples.

Dalits feel that if they had the right to elect their own leaders they would have been able to start challenging the domination of the high castes in Indian society and would have begun the long walk to freedom so to speak. They rightly blame Gandhi and his hunger strike for preventing this.

[RadioRaheem84]

Disgusting. Why does every hero the West tout always "peaceful" yet also perverted in some way?

There are always ones in the shadows that were more reactionary yet saints by comparison!

The capitalist west loves men of peace and reformers.

[spiltteeth]

I realize one cannot expect a totally enlightened attitude at he time, but his prejudice seems to have exceeded what one would expect as far as racism, consider the following. In an editorial on the Natal Municipal Corporation Bill, in the Indian Opinion of March 18, 1905, Gandhi wrote: "Clause 200 makes provision for registration of persons belonging to uncivilized races (meaning the local Africans), resident and employed within the Borough.


One can understand the necessity of registration of Kaffirs who will not work, but why should registration be required for indentured Indians...?" Again on September 9, 1905, Gandhi wrote about the local Africans as: "in the majority of cases it compels the native to work for at least a few days a year" (meaning that the locals are lazy).

In the Indian Opinion of September 24, 1903, Gandhi said: "We believe as much in the purity of races as we think they (the Whites) do... by advocating the purity of all races."

Again on December 24, 1903, in the Indian Opinion Gandhi stated that: "so far as British Indians are concerned, such a thing is particularly unknown. If there is one thing which the Indian cherishes more than any other, it is purity of type."

When he was fighting on behalf of Indians, he was not fighting for all the Indians, but only for his rich merchant class upper caste Hindus!

In the Anglo-Boer War of 1899, Gandhi, in spite of his own belief that truth was on the side of the Boers, formed an ambulance unit in support of the British forces. He was very earnest about taking up arms and laying down his life for his beloved Queen. He led his men on to the battlefield and received a War Medal.

Gandhi joined in the orgy of Zulu slaughter when the Bambata Rebellion broke out. One needs to read the entire history of Bambata Rebellion to place Gandhi's war crimes in its proper perspective.

The Natal Indian Congress was founded in 1894 by Mohandas Gandhi to further the causes of caste Hindus and campaign against equal treatment for Indians and black South African natives.
The first major accomplishment of the Natal Indian Congress was to further entrench racial segregation into South African society during a time of massive racial strife. At the time, the Durban, South Africa post office had two doors. One was for whites and the other for Indians and black natives. Gandhi was so disgusted at having to share a door with blacks that he initiated a campaign for the creation of a third door. This achievement is shocking but very well-documented in Gandhi’s writings.

In a March, 1903 Indian Opinion article, he wrote: “The petition dwells upon `the co-mingling of the colored and white races.’ May we inform the members of the Conference that so far as British Indians are concerned, such a thing is particularly unknown. If there is one thing which the Indian cherishes more than any other, it is the purity of type.”

It is also a myth to presume that Gandhi was opposed to racial segregation. Witness this piece of his writing, published in his newspaper, Indian Opinion, of 15 February 1905. It was a letter to the White Johannesburg Medical Officer of Health, a Dr. Porter, concerning the fact that Blacks had been allowed to settle in an Indian residential area:
‘Why, of all places in Johannesburg, the Indian location should be chosen for dumping down all Kaffirs of the town, passes my comprehension. Of course, under my suggestion, the Town Council must withdraw the Kaffirs from the Location. About this mixing of the Kaffirs with the Indians I must confess I feel most strongly. I think it is very unfair to the Indian population, and it is an undue tax on even the proverbial patience of my countrymen"

[RadioRaheem84]

Jeez, who was this man considered a national hero?

How is he even considered one now?

[spiltteeth]

This is kind of true, but it's also true that he for the most part accepted the logic of the caste system and said along with its proponents that it was necessary as a division of labor. Furthermore it is true that he was anti-Untouchable, but he did not support their right to be allowed inside temples and furthermore criticized them for "unclean practices" like eating meat, drinking alcohol as well as the unsanitary jobs many of them were reduced to by the caste-based society



From what I know of history it seemed to work pretty well for Indian independence.

Also, Death by Starbucks, consider this a verbal warning for racism/tastelessness/general idiocy.

Non-violence didn't work well at all! For India at least.

He fought hard for ecumenical Indian unity within the secularist Congress party, but his concessions to Islam, in the name of multi-faith inclusion, only facilitated greater Muslim communal solidarity, each ecumenical concession generating more particularist (and eventually separatist) demands. he presided over the partition of India, sanctioning (though reluctantly) the creation of a theocratic Muslim Pakistan, at the cost of at least a million lives and the forcible transfer of an estimated fourteen million people; he urged non-violence (ahimsa) to his fellow Hindus, even in the face of appalling atrocities, and received only more atrocities in return, often bloodcurdling in their ferocity.

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. We could call that a sociological law, if it were not so obvious

"India," as Godse complained at his trial, "was vivisected and one-third of the Indian territory became foreign land to us.... This is what Gandhi had achieved after thirty years of undisputed dictatorship."

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.

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." It may look "nobler." In fact, it is just the same -- apart from the difference in the technique of pressure. It is, rather, less noble because, precisely on account of that subtler technique, it leads people to believe that it is not violence, and therefore contains an element of deceit, an inherent falsehood, from which ordinary violence is free.

From george orwell

It was also apparent that the British were making use of him, or thought they were making use of him. Strictly speaking, as a Nationalist, he was an enemy, but since in every crisis he would exert himself to prevent violence--which, from the British point of view, meant preventing any effective action whatever--he could be regarded as "our man". In private this was sometimes cynically admitted. The attitude of the Indian millionaires was similar. Gandhi called upon them to repent, and naturally they preferred him to the Socialists and Communists who, given the chance, would actually have taken their money away. How reliable such calculations are in the long run is doubtful; as Gandhi himself says, "in the end deceivers deceive only themselves"; but at any rate the gentleness with which he was nearly always handled was due partly to the feeling that he was useful. The British Conservatives only became really angry with him when, as in 1942, he was in effect turning his non-violence against a different conqueror.

[Random Precision]

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." It may look "nobler." In fact, it is just the same -- apart from the difference in the technique of pressure.

Yeah. It was about the same. It was also possibly more effective than violence in a lot of cases. So what?

Also you cannot blame Gandhi for the partition. Neither really can you blame Jinnah and the Muslim League or any religious community on the ground (as if they were completely monolithic) for the extraordinary amount of violence that accompanied it. If anyone is to blame, it is Lord Mountbatten, who was given a year to work out the details but rather favored being "decisive", i.e., drawing a couple of lines on a map, announcing it and let the chips fall where they would. It could have been accomplished with a lot less violence.

Furthermore Gandhi actually played a positive role during Partition. When communal violence over the partition of Bengal started happening he went there, and proclaimed a hunger strike until the belligerents stopped fighting. He is often given credit for why the partition of Bengal occurred with so much less bloodletting than the partition of the Punjab.

As far as Partition goes he never "sanctioned" the creation of Pakistan. In the end he did fail to prevent the victory of communalism. But, there were forces beyond his control at play and he can hardly be blamed for that.

Also accusing Gandhi of being "soft" on Islamic communalism or whatever is fairly bizarre- in fact, the opposite might be said to be the case. His statements criticizing Muslims for the killing of cows provided succor for Hindu chauvinists and he once said that, "I find no parallel in history for a body of converts and their descendants claiming to be a nation apart from their parent stock. If India was one nation before the advent of Islam, it must remain one in spite of the change of faith of a very large body of her children", things like this enhanced the Muslim League's claim to be the only representative of Indian Muslims.

All this says is that religiously, politically, and personally he was a deeply ambiguous figure who nevertheless strove for Indian independence and against communalism all his life.

[Random Precision]

it was a joke what is wrong with humor.
god the socialist future must be very boring

It was a unfunny, racist joke. Don't do it again.

[#FF0000]

What a dumb thread

[gorillafuck]

He had girls sleep next to him to test his vows of celibacy. That doesn't make someone a pedophile.

Legitimate criticisms of him should be accepted (for example, I'm pretty sure he condemned violent opposition to the holocaust) but this thread is slander.

[Uncle Ho]

Are you blaming one man for the fortunes of an entire nation?:rolleyes:

Yes, as he was the one who shaped the nation, and to this day his family (Who are even worse than him) have considerable power in the nation.


Many progressives were influenced by Gandhi, including Martin Luther King Jr. So, Gandhi wasn't a complete disaster there. Again, its extremely stupid and probably racist to blame the failures of the western leftists on a single brown man from a former colony of the western imperialists.It's not the fault of Gandhi, but rather another trick of the bourgeoisie. They propped Gandhi up as a hero of non-violence who singlehandedly saved India, ignoring the large armed resistance groups who had been conducting operations for many years before Gandhi, and doing so quite successfully.

The idea, in my mind, is to convince the proles of the world not to fight, thereby ensuring any further movements will fail. It has worked remarkably well thus far, with only revolutionaries clever enough to see through the ruse and take up arms making any headway.

We should be idolizing Ho Chi Minh, not Gandhi, and the bourgeoisie know this, so they cast Gandhi as the greatest hero of our times, and all the revolutionaries with the courage to fight as insane, evil thugs.

[spiltteeth]

Of course he did. He was speaking from a Hindu reformist perspective. The Hindu scriptures are up to the brim in references (direct or indirect) to the legitimacy of the caste system. Since he was a devout Hindu, it was natural that he did justify the caste system, but he did fight against excesses of the system. This may not appear as the ideal thing to do but he was no Communist (so he didn't go all the way in totally opposing the system) and the vast majority of Indian society were mired in crazy superstitions and oppressing each other in the name of caste.

They have every right to blame Gandhi. He was wrong on all of the things you say.

What is your point with all this? I'm sure most, if not all, of the bourgeois leaders anywhere in the world at that time had similar opinions.

This is someone who many on this site worship:
http://philosopedia.org/index.php/Bertrand_Russell


I'm just saying I think it's a hard sell to say he was genuinely anti-caste system, as you say.

[Revy]

It is documented as well that he slept next to young girls on occasion to test his vow of brahmacharya, or complete chastity. What is not documented is that he had sex with any of them - nor do I think he was ever accused of this.

I remember a documentary about "Strong City" cult, the leader was a typical religious charlatan, and he did the same thing.

[scarletghoul]

rofl

[Il Medico]

Now while I am sure revleft could argue about how un-leftist Gandhi was all day, there is, in my opinion, a more interesting debate to be had. The op's post made me think back to a debate about pedophilia I viewed here back when I first joined. The result of that debate was a general consensus that it was a mental disorder. There was, if I remember correctly, a minority opinion that pedophilia was a legitimate form of sexual attraction. So is pedophilia a mental disorder or just another form of sexual attraction? (I will withhold my opinion for now to have a neutral start point)

[pranabjyoti]

This is kind of true, but it's also true that he for the most part accepted the logic of the caste system and said along with its proponents that it was necessary as a division of labor. Furthermore it is true that he was anti-Untouchable, but he did not support their right to be allowed inside temples and furthermore criticized them for "unclean practices" like eating meat, drinking alcohol as well as the unsanitary jobs many of them were reduced to by the caste-based society.
From what I know of history it seemed to work pretty well for Indian independence.
Also, Death by Starbucks, consider this a verbal warning for racism/tastelessness/general idiocy.
Man, IT DOESN'T WORK PRETTY WELL FOR INDIAN INDEPENDENCE. Indian independence, like independence of other colonies is the result of a series of world events like the Russian Revolution, WWII (mainly), huge bloodshed in Europe and weakening of imperial forces. After the failure of 1942 movement and seeing the brutal oppression of British rule, most of the Indians have lost their faith in "non-violence". Actually, fighters like Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose and Bhagat Singh are well respected in many parts of India. But, even the people of Gujarat, Gandhi's own state, hasn't remembered him much today. In fact, he is actually alive in the speeches of men like Barack Obama and other mainstream historian leaders, who actually don't want to change the existing system.

[pranabjyoti]

Jeez, who was this man considered a national hero?
How is he even considered one now?
Actually, he is hero tailor made for imperialism. That's why men like US President Barack Obama repetedly talks about him. Actually, he is the hero of anti-communist and anti-revolutionaries of the world.

[Stranger Than Paradise]

Now while I am sure revleft could argue about how un-leftist Gandhi was all day, there is, in my opinion, a more interesting debate to be had. The op's post made me think back to a debate about pedophilia I viewed here back when I first joined. The result of that debate was a general consensus that it was a mental disorder. There was, if I remember correctly, a minority opinion that pedophilia was a legitimate form of sexual attraction. So is pedophilia a mental disorder or just another form of sexual attraction? (I will withhold my opinion for now to have a neutral start point)

A mental disorder in my mind. Sexual attraction is only legitimate when it is mutual between more than one party. Considering paedophilia means child sex abuse, I don't think we can consider this a legitimate form of Sexual attraction, just as a man who enjoys raping women can't be considered legitimate sexual attraction.

[red cat]

Gandhi's non-violence enabled the murder of countless revolutionaries and civilians. All he did was to replace the imperialist ruling class by the comprador bourgeoisie, essentially keeping the system intact.

[Anaximander]

I consider it a mental disorder, although I am inclined to believe it is naturally occurring, so that it could be properly classified as a psycho-sexual anomaly. As long as people continue to have children, I believe there will be pedophiles. If indeed it is a psycho-sexual anomaly, then it may also be related to something that happened during psycho-sexual development. I believe statistics show that offenders have at some point during development been molested themselves, thus skewing their conception of 'proper' sexual conduct.
And yes, I like the way the term 'psycho-sexual' sounds. It is fun to say, and fun to type.

[noway]

that explains why he was calm..and worn out ... I never liked him anyway...

[noway]

oh yeah, most cult leaders do take advantage of the little ones, dont they..
ghandi :) ha... passive resistance is a joke :D