Ghandi, Aung San Su Kiy and other arseholes

[solidgoldbrass]

Isn't it just the case that it's nearly impossible to achieve huge memorable changes in the world without being a bit of an arsehole? You've got to have a massive ego to think you can take on such a challenge, and so it's really not that surprising that pretty much everyone who achieved massive changes for the good turns out to have been a bit of a sod round the house and have various other unattractive traits.

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.

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.

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

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?

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

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.

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

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.

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?!

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.

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)

This is interesting too.

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

Actually it's very important to talk about the serious faults of character that 'good' people often have. Because otherwise, you get stupid people being blinded by the 'goodness' and either being conned out of money or persuaded along some very dodgy routes indeed.

I generally make it a point of policy not to trust anyone who claims that their great work for the greater good, whatever it is, has anything to do with their imaginary friends or, more importantly, allows them to pronounce on other people's sexual behaviour while behaving in a creepy, predatory, worrying way themselves.

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...

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

Would you like a bigger spoon there WMW?

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

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.

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

thepan exactly!! Thank you.

yes fair point milli, guilty as charged!

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

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.

beach here does honour killing fit into this?!

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.