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.

Well my saturday has been really really enriched.

I'd rather be Gandhi saving a nation and sleeping next to naked women than someone obsessively looking up and quoting said odd practice while doing absolutely fuck all to advance anything.

Folks, you also have to look at what people did through the lens of the time and place where they lived.

Canadian Suffragette Nelly McClung is best remembered for her feminist activism and campaigns against the evils of drink, but she also advocated sterilisation of people with mental illnesses and learning difficulties and was clear in her views that first nations people were inferior to those of European ancestry.

American Suffragette Victoria Woodhall (the first woman to run for President of the USA,) advocated for the legalisation of prostitution and later published a eugenics journal when she moved to the UK.

British advocate of birth control, Marie Stopes, made some pretty hair raising comments in her books about the perils of allowing low born, Irish, drunken and imbecile people have children.

So, few heroes or heroines of the past have completely clean rap sheets!

In my view, it's interesting to explore the lives of people who made a difference, quite humbling to know that they weren't all perfect, think about the things that influenced them - what they were and were not able to do within the constraints of their time and place. But, arguing that they were all shits because they didn't live up to our current expectations of political views or personal behaviour? Well, I can't see alot of point in that personally.

The spelling is GANDHI.

No, women are not further down the list of Gandhis actions and opinions. If you mean that in general, women are further down the list re. human rights in the world, I kind of see what you mean.

So,

1. Human right for every one in a country. (Okay, so they achieve Freedom from the British who looted India and treated the men, women and Children like second class citizens in their own country)
2. Freedom from racism (see above)
3. Freedom for Women and womens rights. (Now, lets concentrate on a smaller section of society once we have overall freedom/human rights)

The above hierarchy does make sense to me.

But its not how it really happens is it? Gandhi was against the practices of Sati (women killing themselves to avoid being raped by men who killed their husbands) at the same time as he was against the British oppressing one sixth of the world population based on their colour.

Why do great leaders have to live up to your standards of feminism to be great in their day?! He was way ahead of his time. If you look at India now and the views Gandhi expressed in his musings, you will see that even now, his writings are way ahead of his time.

To pick a tiny opinion he shared or thought he shared and then retracted and jump up and down about it and forget about the greater good he did for Billions is rather silly to say the least.

"In my view, it's interesting to explore the lives of people who made a difference, quite humbling to know that they weren't all perfect, think about the things that influenced them - what they were and were not able to do within the constraints of their time and place. But, arguing that they were all shits because they didn't live up to our current expectations of political views or personal behaviour? Well, I can't see alot of point in that personally."

Well said.

Hully, Mine too. Good debate.

Laughing really hard to "I'd rather be Gandhi saving a nation and sleeping next to naked women than someone obsessively looking up and quoting said odd practice while doing absolutely fuck all to advance anything."

Me too!

We've moved on then.

Gandhi. Child killer, bastard, mysoginist.

i'm with beachcomber on this.

allthough i have idolised gandhi and it's a little painfull to find out he wasnt all sweetness and light, it's inportant to know the thruth and that he wasnt an angel.

i said upthread that we shouldnt judge people who acted 70 years ago on the values of today, but advocating the murder of rape victims is something i wouldnt judge from some historical figure from the stone-age maybe. but through a lens only 70 years in it's conduit, muder and rape havnt changed that much. no excuse for that i'm afraid.

but it also works both ways, just like it's misleading to make saints out of the heros it isnt helpful to demonise the baddies. hitler and stalin were both humans , by making them monsters we become blind to the next time such a figure decides to rise from some chaos because he/she doesnt look like a monster.

humanising hitler doesnt sound good, i know. but i'm not talking about his humanity, or lack of it, just the fact that he was made of the same flesh and blood we all are.

Quoting from Wiki, which is ALWAYS correct

"Salt as a household necessity was of special interest to women. Gandhi strongly favoured the emancipation of women, and he went so far as to say that "the women have come to look upon me as one of themselves." He opposed purdah, child marriage, untouchability, and the extreme oppression of Hindu widows, up to and including sati. He especially recruited women to participate in the salt tax campaigns and the boycott of foreign products.[70] Sarma concludes that Gandhi's success in enlisting women in his campaigns, including the salt tax campaign, anti-untouchability campaign and the peasant movement, gave many women a new self-confidence and dignity in the mainstream of Indian public life.[71]"

That does more for feminism then some fame seekers view of Gandhis musings on his sexuality.

As for Hitler, please say more people. I am not understanding your point.

Sillibilimili - the British invented the Caste system and imposed it on the Indians. I never knew that. Well every day's a school day.

there are hero's and there are baddies
it isnt helpful to raise the heros to the level of sainthood and it also isnt to deomonise the baddies to the level where they are not recognisable as human beings, if mugarbe doesnt look like the monster hitler has been made into, it takes longer to spot him as a tyrant.

sorry , not explaining myself very well.

i'm not an apologist fopr hitler/stalin or mugarbee, incase you were thinking that.

i think the caste system pre-dates the mughul era.

doesbuggerall when did I say that?

i dont think anyone is saying it will, just that maybe he shouldnt be idolised as a bekon for feminism.

people, no I am not thinking you are apologising for these people. I am trying to understand what you mean.

Agree with you if you mean that everyone has good and bad in them and that it is not always so black and white. If we stop looking at extreams and analyse everything to see the the greater impact then we may catch the bad quicker...i.e. Mao in China.

Agree if that is what you mean.

I also think that to look at people like Gandhi who achieved so much and then to condense it to 'Misogynist, child-abuser, baby killer' is unintelligent and arsehole-ish.

Sillibilimili - I was just having a dig at your first point where you slag the British for treating the Indians like second class citizens. I'm sure someone of low caste would have been delighted to be thought of as second class by the British when their own countrymen treated them as somewhat sub- or non-human. The Indians were doing a jolly fine job of abusing their own people long before the British arrived.

yes exactly, but doing that will mean that we will have to humanise the tyrants and that may be painfull when humanising a mass murderer

i wouldnt call gandhi a misogynist bastard, just say he had a dark side.

doesbuggerall
thats the same argument the british empire used for all it's expansionist campaigns.

"bloody savages cant stop fighting amongst themselves, better send the troops in, this boder area can be better defended a few miles inland anyway, and besides, cristianity comes in the wake of out soldiers"

does, that is just like what is happening in Britain today. Dick Cameron and the conservatives are the 'Indian', suppressing the not so wealthy in their own country (see the comparison to caste/class system?) and the Chinese and Indians are taking over the businesses while this happens.

So, once these foreign nations take over Britain, let take away the vote for current British people. Lets have apartheid where 'British' are not welcome in a shop/area.

Thats okay then.

People well said to does. Wish I had said it. :)

Jaysus people nuance

he did good - hurray let's follow his example
but also -
He did harm - let's not follow him there

You have to be able to criticize influential people, because of the very fact they are influential. Otherwise you'd have people blindly following daft teachings just because the Wise One uttered them.

It's not taking away from the good he did, or anyone did, to recognise sometimes they are very wrong.

Sili - I wasn't aware that India was a democracy before the British (or French, Portugese etc) arrived. Nobody took their vote away since they didn't have it. Nor did we (or others) invent a caste system to keep them in place. Your comparison with the UK today doesn't make much sense. That's not to say we don't need changes - root and branch reform is needed - banking system, land reform, worker rights and so on.

does no, India at the time of the Portuguese and British was not a democracy. It was not a suppressive caste obsessed country like you are making it out to be either. It is all much more complex than I can type out on my iPhone. I argue that the Indians 'deserved' oppression because they were fighting within principalities is like saying that the British deserved to be taken over by the french as there was internal fighting between the north and south (scotts, English etc and between Catholics and Protestants!!)

Yup, "nuance" is the word. And as Kritiq said, you have to allow for the time and place where people lived. Someone might have had wonderful ideas about one aspect of life that we cheer them for today, but been totally backward in other areas. You can't usually say "This was someone totally ahead of their time", because chances are, they were doing and saying what was normal for their era and location in some way.

Another birth control pioneer who saw it as part of the eugenics movement was Marie Stopes' American equivalent, Margaret Sanger. The eugenics movement seems to have appealed to a lot of people who (in hindsight) should have known better.

I heard that Stopes objected to the sexist last line of Kipling's poem "If...". She wrote to him and asked him to change it.

^If you can fill each unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the world and everything that's in it,
And which is more, you'll be a Man, my son!^

I thought that might be a credit to her and a discredit to Kipling, but then I learned that the proposed new line was
And you can lead the race across the ground you've won.

So maybe not so much.

How come those ^ thingummies sometimes work and sometimes don't?