Ghandi, Aung San Su Kiy and other arseholes

silibili:

In addition to the sources that Beachcomber quotes, there are a number of different sources that explore Gandhi's dodgy attitudes to sex and women:
Gandhi bio by Jad Adams

Rita Banerjee

So this is not one man plugging his book (who is called Khushwant Singh, not whatever you wrote)

Silli, I think it was more the speaking in support of fathers killing their sexually assaulted daughters, in order to preserve family and community honour, that is the issue.

Although I think his habit of sleeping next to young women and using them as some sort of 'resource' shouldn't be glossed over.

beach where is the quote from? Please also explain how remaining abstinent, giving women equal right, apologising for not treating his wife as a goddess in his earlier life (read his biography) erc oppress women's rights. This khuswant sing is tryin to sell his books. By adding sex to where it did not exist. If you really want to learn about Gandhi, please read his biography and all the weekly articles bohr churned out in Indian national newspapers.
The oppression of women in India is not because of Gandhi. Look at the oppression of women in Britain! Less than 1 % on the board membership for a start. Did Gandhi also have a huge influence on womens rights here?!

I'm quoting from here www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/jan/27/mohandas-gandhi-women-india - I gave the link upthread the first time I quoted it.

It seems a lot of the information about this comes from Gandhi's own writings.

people that's a lazy way to learn about someone who you claim to admire?!

Therefore the bastard Mandela did nothing for south Africa and human rights either if he paid no attention to Winnie! He must be a sexual fiend too to marry so late.
What rubbish is this thread spinning.

I do not have a problem with people reading articles and stating things which have no base as they fail to understand the culture and the times when these people lived.
Gandhi was a Hindu. In Hinduism like Buddhism the aim of life is to attain 'moksha' (nirvana). There are 4 phases in life. Student, householder, hermit, and finally the wandering acetic. Gandhi was merely experimenting with the hermit stage according to his interpretation of the Gita.
He was a reformer. He accepted women in the leadership for independence from the British.
But people like to talk about sex. It get their little tingles going.the weirder it sounds, the better it is. So all the good that he did is wiped out by his experiment on himself to remain abstinent.
I bet you guys would not want to talk about 'M' of the great peaceful religion in the same way even though there may be more things there that do not fit in with 'your' way of life right now.

Mandela is a good example of someone who is put on a pedestal who actually did some horrific things.

i had no idea about that side of his life beach it saddens me though, i have allways admired ghandi.

where are you quoting from? is it accurate?

I think the problem is we seek to idolise people. A bit like the way the media presents soldiers as heroes.

Silli, I already quoted this but perhaps you missed it;

Gandhi believed Indian women who were raped lost their value as human beings. He argued that fathers could be justified in killing daughters who had been sexually assaulted for the sake of family and community honour. He moderated his views towards the end of his life. But the damage was done, and the legacy lingers in every present-day Indian press report of a rape victim who commits suicide out of "shame". Gandhi also waged a war against contraceptives, labelling Indian women who used them as whores.

Like all men who wage a doomed war with their own sexual desires, Gandhi's behaviour around females would eventually become very, very odd. He took to sleeping with naked young women, including his own great-niece, in order to "test" his commitment to celibacy. The habit caused shock and outrage among his supporters. God knows how his wife felt.

Gandhi cemented, for another generation, the attitude that women were simply creatures that could bring either pride or shame to the men who owned them. Again, the legacy lingers. India today, according to the World Economic Forum, finds itself towards the very bottom of the gender equality index. Indian social campaigners battle heroically against such patriarchy. They battle dowry deaths. They battle the honour killings of teenage lovers. They battle Aids. They battle female foeticide and the abandonment of new-born girls.

In the words of the Indian writer Khushwant Singh, "nine-tenths of the violence and unhappiness in this country derives from sexual repression". Gandhi isn't singularly to blame for India's deeply problematic attitudes to sex and female sexuality. But he fought, and succeeded, to ensure the country would never experience sexual freedom while his legend persevered. Gandhi's genius was to realise the great power of non-violent political revolution. But the violence of his thoughts towards women has contributed to countless honour killings and immeasurable suffering.

Is that some sort of rule?

That we can only refer to a person as a misogynist if they made a life's work of their misogyny?

Anyway Gandhi's misogyny was a part of his life's work - he considered testing his celibacy and non-spilling of the precious seed to be acts that gave him power to non-violently fight his cause.

I'm of the opinion that supporting the notions of women as vessels for male honour, women as chattel and rape as a measure of a woman's humanity, to be violence against women.

And that is highly problematic.

beach how did Gandhis experiments on himself do enormous harm to Indian women?

I don't think anyone would argue we shouldn't know about these people faults and mistermeaners.

Certainly these aspects should be part of any overall discussion. Taught in school etc.

I think the point is about defining a person in a short sentance. The definitive statement.

Gandhi was a......

Mother T was a.....

Einstein was a.....

It reduces their lives into a single word.

What are they first and foremost know for. Should be known for.

If Gandhi's mysoginy was his life work, it's global impact exceeding his influence in change through non violent means, then I guess it's fair to refer to 'Gandhi the mysoginist(ic bastard)'

I think it's also problematic if one defines someone like Gahndi as mysogenistic first and foremost, as you then have to go on to describe the great things done by a mysoginistic bastard.

i.e. People start thinking it's ok to be a mysoginistic bastard , just look at Gandhi and what he did.

( I know mysoginistic bastards probably don't give a hoot about Gandhi , am just trying to illustrate the point )

It seems Gandhi himself was perfectly comfortable with writing about sleeping with his grand-niece and other young women. I don't think we need to doubt that such things happened.

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

I'm more interested in the hushing up and unwillingness for people to talk about it.

According to the quote I posted above, enormous cultural harm has been done to Indian women. And when cultural harm translates into the supporting of women as vessels for male 'honour' and treated raped women as less than human, we are in the territory of Grade A misogyny.

And this is real harm, to real women - in other words, the sort of thing feminists are against.

From this link

Meanwhile, Gandhi was challenging that abstinence in his own way. He set up ashrams in which he began his first "experiments" with sex; boys and girls were to bathe and sleep together, chastely, but were punished for any sexual talk.

Eeek. Experiments on children's sexuality. With punishments.

Sili, I think it's within my rights to not be too fond of Gandhi because he had a habit of sleeping with virgins next to him and being an all round meanie on the issue of women's rights. If you read the article in the guardian (written by a man so should have more gravitas for you) you'll see that his actions did have quite an effect. Of course I admire him for his work against the Brits. No one is saying they don't so do calm down.

Anyhoo, what about Pythagoras? He seemed like an ok guy, no? He let women into his group at a time when no one else did. In fact, as the theorems that were attributed to him were actually developed by his team then it is quite possible that a woman had a hand in the famous a2 + b2 = c^2 theorem

gandhi was doing this work 70 years ago, i'm not sure it's right to judge someone on the values of today.

thepan haha fabulous.

24 how do you know he was a constrained pedophile?! Cause it was written by some journalist trying to seek her 5 mins of fame for the guardian by digging up something that was published to discredit him?! Oh dear, it must be true as clearly the British adored him! Gandhi never wore clothes in his upper body. Even when he visited uk he wore a loin cloth. This was again a political stance against the British. It was to stop he tax on cotton that the British added to Indian cotton. If he was a closet pedophile, why would he sleep with little irks in public so that everyone would know?! Oh yes, he wanted to be famous!

Don't marry a single minded hero type, was the consensus on this thread, i believe

A whole new slant on the Relationships topic....posted by Mrs Gandhi.."Mahatma never puts the toilet seat down, but what he has done is...."

"Leave the bastard".

Failure to put toilet seat down =/= Using young girls as objects for own gratification, no matter how discomfited they would have been.

His good works are not being disputed or minimised here

Gandhi was against the Indian caste system. Gandhi was against keeping women at home and not educating them. Gandhi was against child marriage (he was a victim himself). Etc etc
Now I believe that if he was Christian, he would have received a sainthood.
I am not against criticising when the criticism is fair and valid, but to do so without checking and verifying facts is rather silly. Mandela, same thing. Christ and Budha, same. We are all human. Our views and opinions are formed over time with the help of experiences we encounter. That is what life is about. To say that Einstein was an awesome genius but alas! He did not put the toilet seat down and therefore he was an arsehole is an arsehole thing to say.

On her Universal Declaration of Human Rights:
""Where, after all, do universal human rights begin? In small places, close to home - so close and so small that they cannot be seen on any maps of the world. Yet they are the world of the individual person; the neighborhood he lives in; the school or college he attends; the factory, farm, or office where he works. Such are the places where every man, woman, and child seeks equal justice, equal opportunity, equal dignity without discrimination. Unless these rights have meaning there, they have little meaning anywhere. Without concerted citizen action to uphold them close to home, we shall look in vain for progress in the larger world."

I have a heroine. Shoot her down.

Grimma- just been distracted by reading about Elanor Roosevelt. Am tempted to push her up only to be shot down, MN style.