NationStates Jolt Archive

what do people think of the great man Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, his accomplisments, his methods of satyagraha and non-violence?

just wondering cos i've been reading a little about him (& his methods) recently and really enjoyed watching the fantastic movie Gandhi last night (seen it before but not for ages). its inspirational, terrible, eye-opening and humbling - not to mention deeply moving - throughout the whole film.


http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/6/61/Mohandas_Gandhi.jpg

"You should be the change that you want to see in the world."

"An eye for an eye will only make the whole world blind."

"It is unwise to be too sure of one's own wisdom. It is healthy to be reminded that the strongest might weaken and the wisest might err."

"The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong."

"I am prepared to die, but there is no cause for which I am prepared to kill."

"I object to violence because when it appears to do good, the good is only temporary; the evil it does is permanent."

"Truth alone will endure; all the rest will be swept away before the tide of time."

He's a sexy man.

Non-violent action is the way to go until you have no choice anymore.

Isn't Ben Kingsley Pakistani?

I went on the Gandhi diet and lost 87 pounds!

what do people think of the great man Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, his accomplisments, his methods of satyagraha and non-violence?

just wondering cos i've been reading a little about him (& his methods) recently and really enjoyed watching the fantastic movie Gandhi last night (seen it before but not for ages). its inspirational, terrible, eye-opening and humbling - not to mention deeply moving - throughout the whole film.
[snip]



I admire the man greatly for walking down his chosen path. I've read many books on him and written many a paper, and I am always touched and inspired by his conviction. I was an angry girl when I started to read about him, and for many years, his message was lost on me. And then I got it. It was one the infamous lightbulb moments. I am fortunate for I am a better person for it.

I admire the man greatly for walking down his chosen path. I've read many books on him and written many a paper, and I am always touched and inspired by his conviction. I was an angry girl when I started to read about him, and for many years, his message was lost on me. And then I got it. It was one the infamous lightbulb moments. I am fortunate for I am a better person for it.
glad to hear it :)
thats where i feel i am, too. i've seen the pointlessness of anger already & i really think i understand his message. i have been trying to live more and more calmly for the last couple of years, but i really want to learn more about Gandhi's path and teachings.

any books to recommend? so far i've been doing research only on the net...

I went on the Gandhi diet and lost 87 pounds!

I went on the Gandhi diet and freed a third world country!

He was a very great person, who achieved fantastic changes for a whole subcontinent. He is definitely a hero in his very own way, and his teachings are worth following.

The only minor problem I see in his example is that he was rather extreme in his demands. None of them would mean harm in any way, but he asked his followers to lead a very harsh and simple live, and endure much.

There is such wit on this thread! Anyone seen "Weird Al's" UHF? The skit on Gandhi II was hilarious.

glad to hear it :)
thats where i feel i am, too. i've seen the pointlessness of anger already & i really think i understand his message. i have been trying to live more and more calmly for the last couple of years, but i really want to learn more about Gandhi's path and teachings.

any books to recommend? so far i've been doing research only on the net...

They're in French, but I'm sure some of them were translations... I can look them up for you and tg over the weekend.

They're in French, but I'm sure some of them were translations... I can look them up for you and tg over the weekend.
that would be sweet! cheers :)

Gandhi is seriously misunderstood by most people. His ideology of non-violence was not quite as nice and cuddly as it is commonly believed.

...However, Gandhi’s pacifism can be separated to some extent from his other teachings. Its motive was religious, but he claimed also for it that it was a definitive technique, a method, capable of producing desired political results. Gandhi’s attitude was not that of most Western pacifists. SATYAGRAHA, first evolved in South Africa, was a sort of non-violent warfare, a way of defeating the enemy without hurting him and without feeling or arousing hatred. It entailed such things as civil disobedience, strikes, lying down in front of railway trains, enduring police charges without running away and without hitting back, and the like. Gandhi objected to “passive resistance” as a translation of SATYAGRAHA: in Gujarati, it seems, the word means “firmness in the truth”. In his early days Gandhi served as a stretcher-bearer on the British side in the Boer War, and he was prepared to do the same again in the war of 1914-18. Even after he had completely abjured violence he was honest enough to see that in war it is usually necessary to take sides. He did not—indeed, since his whole political life centred round a struggle for national independence, he could not—take the sterile and dishonest line of pretending that in every war both sides are exactly the same and it makes no difference who wins. Nor did he, like most Western pacifists, specialize in avoiding awkward questions. In relation to the late [Second World] 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.

George Orwell, "Reflections on Gandhi", 1949

Ah Gandhi, down and dirty, no holds-barred, tough as nails pacifism. I've found his ideas useful, but strangely difficult to translate into small-scale events.

After reading so much Orwell, I've grown into his disdain for "western pacifists" as not thinking out their responses well enough and such.

Meh, he was all right.

Gandhi is seriously misunderstood by most people. His ideology of non-violence was not quite as nice and cuddly as it is commonly believed.

...However, Gandhi’s pacifism can be separated to some extent from his other teachings. Its motive was religious, but he claimed also for it that it was a definitive technique, a method, capable of producing desired political results. Gandhi’s attitude was not that of most Western pacifists. SATYAGRAHA, first evolved in South Africa, was a sort of non-violent warfare, a way of defeating the enemy without hurting him and without feeling or arousing hatred. It entailed such things as civil disobedience, strikes, lying down in front of railway trains, enduring police charges without running away and without hitting back, and the like. Gandhi objected to “passive resistance” as a translation of SATYAGRAHA: in Gujarati, it seems, the word means “firmness in the truth”. In his early days Gandhi served as a stretcher-bearer on the British side in the Boer War, and he was prepared to do the same again in the war of 1914-18. Even after he had completely abjured violence he was honest enough to see that in war it is usually necessary to take sides. He did not—indeed, since his whole political life centred round a struggle for national independence, he could not—take the sterile and dishonest line of pretending that in every war both sides are exactly the same and it makes no difference who wins. Nor did he, like most Western pacifists, specialize in avoiding awkward questions. In relation to the late [Second World] 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.

George Orwell, "Reflections on Gandhi", 1949
not quite 'as cute and cuddly as commonly believed'?
firstly, i accept Gandhi's views in that extract. secondly, i'm far from an expert on the man, but just watch the movie Gandhi and it shows just how un-'cute and cuddly' Satyagraha can be. example: when crowds of 15,000 defenseless civilians, women & children, were shot at by the British causing (approx) 2000 deaths and an equal number of wounded - the Massacre of Amritsar, at which the Indian people did not fight back. such active passificm is not cute or cuddly, but its preferable to fighting, imho.

I think if the Palestinians had ever been smart enough to emulate his methods they would have won a nation for themselves long ago.
Ghandi was just another leader in the cult of personality.
On a side note I was fascinated to learn that in 1948 Ghandi attacked Pakistani with 2, count'em 2, nukes! I read this in a report done by a high school student I was babysitting (substitute teaching). I mean it sounds dubious right but it was in print and everything written becomes true, right?

Ghandi was one of the greatest leaders of the 20th century for his efforts against South African apartheid and more importantly, his non-violent fight for independence and democracy for India.

That said, he had some rather twisted views. He disowned his son for having sex with a woman, and he thought that Jews deserved the Holocaust.

On a side note I was fascinated to learn that in 1948 Ghandi attacked Pakistani with 2, count'em 2, nukes! I read this in a report done by a high school student I was babysitting (substitute teaching). I mean it sounds dubious right but it was in print and everything written becomes true, right?
Why are you even posting this? You know for a fact that in 1948 the only country that had the bomb was the USA.

not quite 'as cute and cuddly as commonly believed'?
firstly, i accept Gandhi's views in that extract.
That is, you agree that the European Jews should have committed collective suicide, and that no war should have been fought against Hitler? That it is better to sacrifice several million people than to get your hands dirty? Because those were Gandhi's views.

I guess I should have quoted Orwell's article further:

At the same time there is reason to think that Gandhi, who after all was born in 1869, did not understand the nature of totalitarianism and saw everything in terms of his own struggle against the British government. The important point here is not so much that the British treated him forbearingly as that he was always able to command publicity. As can be seen from the phrase quoted above, he believed in “arousing the world”, which is only possible if the world gets a chance to hear what you are doing. It is difficult to see how Gandhi’s methods could be applied in a country where opponents of the régime disappear in the middle of the night and are never heard of again. Without a free press and the right of assembly, it is impossible not merely to appeal to outside opinion, but to bring a mass movement into being, or even to make your intentions known to your adversary. Is there a Gandhi in Russia at this moment? And if there is, what is he accomplishing? The Russian masses could only practise civil disobedience if the same idea happened to occur to all of them simultaneously, and even then, to judge by the history of the Ukraine famine, it would make no difference. But let it be granted that non-violent resistance can be effective against one’s own government, or against an occupying power: even so, how does one put it into practise internationally? Gandhi’s various conflicting statements on the late war seem to show that he felt the difficulty of this. Applied to foreign politics, pacifism either stops being pacifist or becomes appeasement. Moreover the assumption, which served Gandhi so well in dealing with individuals, that all human beings are more or less approachable and will respond to a generous gesture, needs to be seriously questioned. It is not necessarily true, for example, when you are dealing with lunatics. Then the question becomes: Who is sane? Was Hitler sane? And is it not possible for one whole culture to be insane by the standards of another?


secondly, i'm far from an expert on the man, but just watch the movie Gandhi and it shows just how un-'cute and cuddly' Satyagraha can be. example: when crowds of 15,000 defenseless civilians, women & children, were shot at by the British causing (approx) 2000 deaths and an equal number of wounded - the Massacre of Amritsar, at which the Indian people did not fight back. such active passificm is not cute or cuddly, but its preferable to fighting, imho.
I was talking about the ugliness of Gandhi's own beliefs, which were basically anti-humanists. The whole idea of sacrificing thousands and millions of people for reasons of higher morality stands on the view that moral absolutes have more value than human lives- an idea which I find repulsive and immoral in the extreme.

not quite 'as cute and cuddly as commonly believed'?
firstly, i accept Gandhi's views in that extract. secondly, i'm far from an expert on the man, but just watch the movie Gandhi and it shows just how un-'cute and cuddly' Satyagraha can be. example: when crowds of 15,000 defenseless civilians, women & children, were shot at by the British causing (approx) 2000 deaths and an equal number of wounded - the Massacre of Amritsar, at which the Indian people did not fight back. such active passificm is not cute or cuddly, but its preferable to fighting, imho.

Only if your opponent views life death and morality in the same way as you. Peaceful methods worked against the British during India's liberation because the British empire held a set of morals that prevented them from wholesale slaughter. These methods would not/did not work against an advesary like Hitler or Stalin.

Keep this in mind.

Civil disobediance works against a basically benevolent oppressor/govt. It is completely useless against an indifferant/tryannical oppressor/govt.

Why are you even posting this? You know for a fact that in 1948 the only country that had the bomb was the USA.
Because it's hilarious that someone would think that.

Why are you even posting this? You know for a fact that in 1948 the only country that had the bomb was the USA.

cause it was funny when I read it, funny. ;)

Only if your opponent views life death and morality in the same way as you. Peaceful methods worked against the British during India's liberation because the British empire held a set of morals that prevented them from wholesale slaughter. These methods would not/did not work against an advesary like Hitler or Stalin.

Keep this in mind.

Civil disobediance works against a basically benevolent oppressor/govt. It is completely useless against an indifferant/tryannical oppressor/govt.
it depends also on the size of the disobedience. if say just (and i say 'just' tentatively) the Jews in Nazi Germany followed Ghandi's non-violent methods, the result would evidently be less devastating than if the whole German nation rebelled as one.
sadly in Germany a) most of the population was either unaware of the holocaust, did not care, agreed with it, or saw it as necessary for the majority to prosper; and b) Hitler would not have let a man like Gandhi live (unlike the British who stuck to their own laws - as you say, a similar basis of morality). this is pretty much proved by the Night of the Long Knives incident.
I suppose you can't fight a moral battle with someone who has no morals.

but then Gandhi did say that the course of non-violent civil disobedience can lead to many millions of deaths. if this is the cost, then perhaps so be it.

bump

I hate that film about Ghandi... I forget what it's called. ;)

Long live Mahatma Gandhi, the soul of India!

I've been to his cremation site in New Delhi, it's so darn peacful there...

I suppose you can't fight a moral battle with someone who has no morals.

True words. Unfortunately this is why war is sometimes needed, though it can and should be avoided as much possible. sometimes though, it is the lessor of evils.


but then Gandhi did say that the course of non-violent civil disobedience can lead to many millions of deaths. if this is the cost, then perhaps so be it.

Easy words to say, hard for the dead millions to stomach. He also said that the British disarming the Indians will be viewed by history as their greatest crime.

Judge him as you will, he took the best/most effective options available to him to achieve his goal. No one wants war, he was a pacifist more by neccesity than by choice.

True words. Unfortunately this is why war is sometimes needed, though it can and should be avoided as much possible. sometimes though, it is the lessor of evils.



Easy words to say, hard for the dead millions to stomach. He also said that the British disarming the Indians will be viewed by history as their greatest crime.

Judge him as you will, he took the best/most effective options available to him to achieve his goal. No one wants war, he was a pacifist more by neccesity than by choice.
i believe it was his religion that guided his pacifism. in those circumstances, whereby the citizens lack the ability to use force, Gandhi was the 'right man for the job'. had the circumstances been different (open revolution) perhaps he wouldn't have been drawn in at all.

as for the potential millions of dead, it depends on what you hold most dear: the sanctity of all human life or winning the fight justly (by which many people may die). i'm still undecided on this :confused:
of course there is a middle ground (in which most people lie), a threshold at which the casualites inflicted by non-violence weigh more greatly than the loss of moral discipline from warfare. however, at what point is this - how many lives? if a thousand civilians were to die following Satyagraha, would this be justified? if its a million?
the decision would be so easy to make knowing how many lives would be lost in the violent alternative to non-cooperation...

Isn't Ben Kingsley Pakistani?

Since no-one answered for you; no, he's not.

And while I am at it, Ghandi is like the Dalai Lama. He's cool if you don't know anything about him and he's not your leader. Once you knock the skin off the top of the pudding however, it's not so pretty.

The world of today could learn much from Gandhi.

The world of today could learn much from Gandhi.

No, they really couldn't.

No, they really couldn't.

They could learn how to get people killed and to take credit for something that was going to happen anyways?

They could learn how to get people killed and to take credit for something that was going to happen anyways?

I don't think that ghandi thought that up per se, so no.

Nothing to learn.

No, they really couldn't.
yes they could

I don't think that ghandi thought that up per se, so no.

Nothing to learn.

Yes, but he's better known, and he did it in an especially goofy way.

No, they really couldn't.

They could learn that violence is not the only path to getting what you want even if you are denied political freedoms. When violence was used against him the authorities looks brutish while he looked civilised. Perhaps he was too non-violent in some ways but that isn't to say much cannot be learned from him. He also had much to say on greed, he said the world has enough for the needs of all men but not the greed of all men. I think there comes a time when even basic needs can be exhausted by excessive population even in the absence of greed but he had a good point never the less.

i believe it was his religion that guided his pacifism. in those circumstances, whereby the citizens lack the ability to use force, Gandhi was the 'right man for the job'. had the circumstances been different (open revolution) perhaps he wouldn't have been drawn in at all.

as for the potential millions of dead, it depends on what you hold most dear: the sanctity of all human life or winning the fight justly (by which many people may die). i'm still undecided on this :confused:
of course there is a middle ground (in which most people lie), a threshold at which the casualites inflicted by non-violence weigh more greatly than the loss of moral discipline from warfare. however, at what point is this - how many lives? if a thousand civilians were to die following Satyagraha, would this be justified? if its a million?
the decision would be so easy to make knowing how many lives would be lost in the violent alternative to non-cooperation...

You pose a difficult situation..

Life isnt a simulation. There is no "do over" in history. We cant go down one path and then decide it costs too many lives, lets start over.

So lets be frank about the effectiveness of pacifism. In some circumstances it is great (India vs the UK). In some circumstances it is fuck all... Appeasement didnt work so well in WWII.