Ghandi, Aung San Su Kiy and other arseholes

www.gandhi-manibhavan.org/activities/essay_breakingshackles.htm

beach, linked attached for you.

scroob so well said. I could not put
It so eloquently. Thank you.

Let me quote Gandhi himself here 'An error does not become truth by reason of multiplied propagation, nor does truth become error because nobody see it.'

IMO it is pretty offensive to call either an arsehole. A reductive statement which utterly fails to recognize the good brought by both to millions of people.

Of course neither are saints and but I think it is also dangerous to judge, Gandhi in particular, solely by current western feminist thinking. I don't agree with every thought Gandhi had. But I do believe be was a great man and that society still has much to learn from his teachings.

Incidentally, I've no doubt that in the future lead western feminists of today will be similarly vilified for their stance on many things - whether it's transsexuals or eating meat or failing to recognize the non-western feminist experience, who knows. We all do the best in the times and culture we live within and that is all we can be judgd for.

drjohn I agree. It is not good I blindly put people on pedestals and follow. That is how jihadist are formed. (Please not he use of my term jihadist to mean people blinded by one point of view to the extreme, nothing more). However, to discredit, malign, and discard people because of small flaws in their thinking that does not suit 100 years later to the current time is stupidity.

Gosh.

Is it really so very taboo?

To talk about a man's misogyny.

It must be made up, can't be true, people are lying or interpreting things badly.

Mmmm.

Sili - I don't know how long you have been on MN, might I refer you to the Talk Guidelines. Although perhpas you have already read them because you have taken pains to specify that your comments are about 'Beach's opinion' and 'Beach's views'. (And why are you referring to me in the 3rd person when I'm on the thread?)

I think it's right to desanctify people - welcome their achievements without hero worshipping them. Most of us would not like what the Dalai Lama has to say about homosexuality but people don't really investigate it because they like the idea of him. As I said in the other thread anti women and anti gay sentiments tend to get overlooked when we select our heros.

beach I really do not care for your opinion as it seems very narrow minded, sheltered and unintellectual.
These were Gandhis views. So currently, Buddhist nuns are burning themselves to highlight oppression against Tibet by China and the Dalai Lama is quiet on this. What does that mean?! Oh, he must be a 'b' too!!! (i cannot bring myself to use uncomplementry words against people I admire just so that it 'fun' on mn.) Because again, beach with her small minded sheltered view of the world does not understand culture and context. Oh dear.

oh dear. "According to Mr Fischer..." who for this thread serves as 'a close friend said......'.

Silli - I've quoted twice now on the support for honour killing. I think it would be cluttering up the thread to quote it again.

Beach - well that description of his biographies is still the sort of 'close friend says'. And I couldn't help noticing that the authors are simply quoting each other, as if it's 'news just in'. < I'm not a MG cor defender, just exercising my bullshit radar>

From the Orwell link;

Nor did he, like most Western pacifists, specialize in avoiding awkward questions. In relation to the late war, one question that every pacifist had a clear obligation to answer was: ?What about the Jews? Are you prepared to see them exterminated? If not, how do you propose to save them without resorting to war?? I must say that I have never heard, from any Western pacifist, an honest answer to this question, though I have heard plenty of evasions, usually of the ?you're another? type. But it so happens that Gandhi was asked a somewhat similar question in 1938 and that his answer is on record in Mr. Louis Fischer's Gandhi and Stalin. According to Mr. Fischer, Gandhi's view was that the German Jews ought to commit collective suicide, which ?would have aroused the world and the people of Germany to Hitler's violence.? After the war he justified himself: the Jews had been killed anyway, and might as well have died significantly. One has the impression that this attitude staggered even so warm an admirer as Mr. Fischer, but Gandhi was merely being honest. If you are not prepared to take life, you must often be prepared for lives to be lost in some other way. When, in 1942, he urged non-violent resistance against a Japanese invasion, he was ready to admit that it might cost several million deaths.

Not too sure what to think about that.

beach here does honour killing fit into this?!

I think the greater good he did for human rights wipes out any abstinent sleeping he did with young girls.

I don't.

I don't think his sleeping with young girls wipes out the good he did for the Indian struggle for independence either.

I'm struggling with his support of honour killing though. I'm finding it difficult to reconcile with a philosophy of non-violence. Surely this is massive hypocrisy - especially if has contributed to cultural paradigms and therefore actual violence against girls and women.

Very troubling.

stop press: human beings discovered to be, erm, human!

yes fair point milli, guilty as charged!

thepan exactly!! Thank you.

Please read his biography and not other peoples interpretation o his biography.

solid I agree. However, to wash away all the good that he did for India because he shared some intimate thoughts that were fluent, and changed is not acceptable to judge a person by. He never claimed to be a demi God. He never wanted to be the centre of the freedom struggle because he wanted to be famous. All the dirt written about him is taken out of overall context by people trying to become rich quickly. The name Gandhi still means a lot in India. This is comparable to saying 100 years after Christ that he was flawed totally because he did. It accept Mary Magdelen as his wife. He kept it a secret. Gandhi wrote a lot of articles which people are pulling out to sell books. He change his opinion on a
Lot of things too after learning about them. He was only human. To expect otherwise and to expect him to be perfect in every aspect is fallacy on our part. I think the greater good he did for human rights wipes out any abstinent sleeping he did with youn girls.

ThePan - I think the source of a lot of this is Gandhi's autobiography/writings/diary.

Mahatma Gandhi is a biographer's delight. Not only does his collected works run to nearly a hundred volumes, unlike many public figures, he is also explicit about personal physical details - even to the extent of dwelling on his bowel movements. That is perhaps why, even after so much has been written on him, new biographies continue to ferret out something that may have either gone unnoticed or at least slipped under the radar. This is particularly true of Gandhi's sexuality, which has been the subject of considerable controversy, a surefire way to ramp up book sales and, unfortunately, a provocation to the Indian state to ban any mention of it.

The irony is that unlike his gatekeepers, Gandhi himself, beginning with his autobiography published in 1927, never shied away from discussing sex and his efforts to overcome sexual urges.

www.timescrest.com/coverstory/truth-about-his-experiments-5086

:o :o :o @ the idea of sgb being a 'dittany discipline'

Would you like a bigger spoon there WMW?

Just read the Adams article,and there's not a lot of sourcing going on, is there? A fair amount of gossip though, a little like when celeb couples separate and we read 'a close friend says..' sort of thing.

Now with Eleanor Roosevelt it's all observed and documented...

This is interesting too.

[[http://www.orwell.ru/library/reviews/gandhi/english/e_gandhi George Orwell
Reflections on Gandhi]]