Gandhi: Racist Or Revolutionary?

Gandhi: Racist Or Revolutionary?
Author: Pieter Friedrich
Publisher:
Total Pages: 44
Release: 2017-11-22
Genre:
ISBN: 9781973359647

Gandhi has been called the "Father of India" and his name is often invoked as a synonym for peaceful revolution, compassion, and racial harmony. Many leaders, scholars, and academics have continued to uphold this narrative of Gandhi for decades. But is there another side to Gandhi's legacy which has been suppressed? This booklet examines the topic of whether Gandhi was a racist or a revolutionary by delving into his words and actions on three major topics -- personal morality, the caste system, and the African people.

The South African Gandhi

The South African Gandhi
Author: Ashwin Desai
Publisher: Stanford University Press
Total Pages: 442
Release: 2015-10-07
Genre: History
ISBN: 0804797226

A biography detailing Gandhi’s twenty-year stay in South Africa and his attitudes and behavior in the nation’s political context. In the pantheon of freedom fighters, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi has pride of place. His fame and influence extend far beyond India and are nowhere more significant than in South Africa. “India gave us a Mohandas, we gave them a Mahatma,” goes a popular South African refrain. Contemporary South African leaders, including Mandela, have consistently lauded him as being part of the epic battle to defeat the racist white regime. The South African Gandhi focuses on Gandhi’s first leadership experiences and the complicated man they reveal—a man who actually supported the British Empire. Ashwin Desai and Goolam Vahed unveil a man who, throughout his stay on African soil, stayed true to Empire while showing a disdain for Africans. For Gandhi, whites and Indians were bonded by an Aryan bloodline that had no place for the African. Gandhi’s racism was matched by his class prejudice towards the Indian indentured. He persistently claimed that they were ignorant and needed his leadership, and he wrote their resistances and compromises in surviving a brutal labor regime out of history. The South African Gandhi writes the indentured and working class back into history. The authors show that Gandhi never missed an opportunity to show his loyalty to Empire, with a particular penchant for war as a means to do so. He served as an Empire stretcher-bearer in the Boer War while the British occupied South Africa, he demanded guns in the aftermath of the Bhambatha Rebellion, and he toured the villages of India during the First World War as recruiter for the Imperial army. This meticulously researched book punctures the dominant narrative of Gandhi and uncovers an ambiguous figure whose time on African soil was marked by a desire to seek the integration of Indians, minus many basic rights, into the white body politic while simultaneously excluding Africans from his moral compass and political ideals. Praise for The South African Gandhi “In this impressively researched study, two South African scholars of Indian background bravely challenge political myth-making on both sides of the Indian Ocean that has sought to canonize Gandhi as a founding father of the struggle for equality there. They show that the Mahatma-to-be carefully refrained from calling on his followers to throw in their lot with the black majority. The mass struggle he finally led remained an Indian struggle.” —Joseph Lelyveld, author of Great Soul: Mahatma Gandhi and His Struggle with India “This is a wonderful demonstration of meticulously researched, evocative, clear-eyed and fearless history writing. It uncovers a story, some might even call it a scandal, that has remained hidden in plain sight for far too long. The South African Gandhi is a big book. It is a serious challenge to the way we have been taught to think about Gandhi.” —Arundhati Roy, author of The God of Small Things

Gandhi Before India

Gandhi Before India
Author: Ramachandra Guha
Publisher: Vintage
Total Pages: 544
Release: 2014-04-15
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 038553230X

Here is the first volume of a magisterial biography of Mohandas Gandhi that gives us the most illuminating portrait we have had of the life, the work and the historical context of one of the most abidingly influential—and controversial—men in modern history. Ramachandra Guha—hailed by Time as “Indian democracy’s preeminent chronicler”—takes us from Gandhi’s birth in 1869 through his upbringing in Gujarat, his two years as a student in London and his two decades as a lawyer and community organizer in South Africa. Guha has uncovered myriad previously untapped documents, including private papers of Gandhi’s contemporaries and co-workers; contemporary newspapers and court documents; the writings of Gandhi’s children; and secret files kept by British Empire functionaries. Using this wealth of material in an exuberant, brilliantly nuanced and detailed narrative, Guha describes the social, political and personal worlds inside of which Gandhi began the journey that would earn him the honorific Mahatma: “Great Soul.” And, more clearly than ever before, he elucidates how Gandhi’s work in South Africa—far from being a mere prelude to his accomplishments in India—was profoundly influential in his evolution as a family man, political thinker, social reformer and, ultimately, beloved leader. In 1893, when Gandhi set sail for South Africa, he was a twenty-three-year-old lawyer who had failed to establish himself in India. In this remarkable biography, the author makes clear the fundamental ways in which Gandhi’s ideas were shaped before his return to India in 1915. It was during his years in England and South Africa, Guha shows us, that Gandhi came to understand the nature of imperialism and racism; and in South Africa that he forged the philosophy and techniques that would undermine and eventually overthrow the British Raj. Gandhi Before India gives us equally vivid portraits of the man and the world he lived in: a world of sharp contrasts among the coastal culture of his birthplace, High Victorian London, and colonial South Africa. It explores in abundant detail Gandhi’s experiments with dissident cults such as the Tolstoyans; his friendships with radical Jews, heterodox Christians and devout Muslims; his enmities and rivalries; and his often overlooked failures as a husband and father. It tells the dramatic, profoundly moving story of how Gandhi inspired the devotion of thousands of followers in South Africa as he mobilized a cross-class and inter-religious coalition, pledged to non-violence in their battle against a brutally racist regime. Researched with unequaled depth and breadth, and written with extraordinary grace and clarity, Gandhi Before India is, on every level, fully commensurate with its subject. It will radically alter our understanding and appreciation of twentieth-century India’s greatest man.

Great Soul

Great Soul
Author: Joseph Lelyveld
Publisher: Vintage
Total Pages: 450
Release: 2012-04-03
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0307389952

A highly original, stirring book on Mahatma Gandhi that deepens our sense of his achievements and disappointments—his success in seizing India’s imagination and shaping its independence struggle as a mass movement, his recognition late in life that few of his followers paid more than lip service to his ambitious goals of social justice for the country’s minorities, outcasts, and rural poor. “A revelation. . . . Lelyveld has restored human depth to the Mahatma.”—Hari Kunzru, The New York Times Pulitzer Prize–winner Joseph Lelyveld shows in vivid, unmatched detail how Gandhi’s sense of mission, social values, and philosophy of nonviolent resistance were shaped on another subcontinent—during two decades in South Africa—and then tested by an India that quickly learned to revere him as a Mahatma, or “Great Soul,” while following him only a small part of the way to the social transformation he envisioned. The man himself emerges as one of history’s most remarkable self-creations, a prosperous lawyer who became an ascetic in a loincloth wholly dedicated to political and social action. Lelyveld leads us step-by-step through the heroic—and tragic—last months of this selfless leader’s long campaign when his nonviolent efforts culminated in the partition of India, the creation of Pakistan, and a bloodbath of ethnic cleansing that ended only with his own assassination. India and its politicians were ready to place Gandhi on a pedestal as “Father of the Nation” but were less inclined to embrace his teachings. Muslim support, crucial in his rise to leadership, soon waned, and the oppressed untouchables—for whom Gandhi spoke to Hindus as a whole—produced their own leaders. Here is a vital, brilliant reconsideration of Gandhi’s extraordinary struggles on two continents, of his fierce but, finally, unfulfilled hopes, and of his ever-evolving legacy, which more than six decades after his death still ensures his place as India’s social conscience—and not just India’s.

Sikh Caucus: Siege in Delhi, Surrender in Washington (Punjabi Edition)

Sikh Caucus: Siege in Delhi, Surrender in Washington (Punjabi Edition)
Author: Pieter Friedrich
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2022-12
Genre:
ISBN: 9781637545317

It is an old trick in the intelligence setup of major states to create their own stringent but controlled opposition. This has a twofold objective. First, it attracts and centralizes opposition resources and honest grassroots members, inciting them to put on a great show of force. Second, it ensures that this "resistance" remains only a pretense and prevents them from achieving anything of real value because the duplicitous leadership don't want any true change to come of it.It has always been a challenge to maintain the purity of any movement or organization. Infiltrating to sabotage from within and give a bad name, thus justifying the unleashing of oppression, has often been the basic framework in which the intelligence agencies have worked in India in the context of suppressing minorities. But this is very difficult to document.The author of this short but incisive book has done a wonderful job of exposing a fraudulent scheme which seems to have no other purpose than to stifle our Sikh community's political voice in the United States of America. In this particular case of the Sikh Caucus, the deception has been named and nailed. This kind of documentation is perhaps the most effective way of leading the community to the straight path.Treading that path is necessary to avoid being bogged down in the quicksand of extreme slogans made without any preparation or consideration of the consequences - something which accomplishes nothing more than to attract a disproportionate reaction that decimates the true struggle. Perhaps in the future, the community will take greater care to avoid emotionally pledging unquestioning loyalty to the people who display the most influence and power, only to finally find themselves betrayed. Rather, those who alone deserve our cautious and conditional support are the brave souls who speak the truth consistently and live a straight, simple, and honest life.- Rajvinder Singh Bains, Advocate, Punjab & Haryana High Court

Civil Disobedience

Civil Disobedience
Author: Elizabeth Schmermund
Publisher: Greenhaven Publishing LLC
Total Pages: 146
Release: 2017-07-15
Genre: Juvenile Nonfiction
ISBN: 1534500650

Civil disobedience, the refusal to obey certain laws, is a method of protest famously articulated by philosopher and writer Henry David Thoreau in his 1849 essay “Civil Disobedience.” Thoreau believed that protest became a moral obligation when laws collided with conscience. Since then, civil disobedience has been employed as a form of rebellion around the world. But is there a place for civil disobedience in democratic societies? When is civil disobedience justifiable? Is violence ever called for? Furthermore, how effective is civil disobedience?

The Doctor and the Saint

The Doctor and the Saint
Author: Arundhati Roy
Publisher: Haymarket Books+ORM
Total Pages: 130
Release: 2017-05-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 1608467988

The little-known story of Gandhi’s reluctance to challenge the caste system, and the man who fought fiercely for India’s downtrodden. Democracy hasn’t eradicated caste, argues bestselling author and Booker Prize–winner Arundhati Roy—it has entrenched and modernized it. To understand caste today in India, Roy insists we must examine the influence of Gandhi in shaping what India ultimately became: independent of British rule, globally powerful, and marked to this day by the caste system. Roy states that for more than a half century, Gandhi’s pronouncements on the inherent qualities of black Africans, Dalit “untouchables,” and the laboring classes remained consistently insulting, and he also refused to allow lower castes to create their own political organizations and elect their own representatives. But there was someone else who had a larger vision of justice—a founding father of the republic and the chief architect of its constitution. In The Doctor and the Saint, Roy introduces us to this contemporary of Gandhi, B.R. Ambedkar, who challenged the thinking of the time and fought to promote not merely formal democracy, but liberation from the oppression, shame, and poverty imposed on millions of Indians by an archaic caste system. This is a fascinating and surprising look at two men—one of whom has become a worldwide symbol and the other of whom remains unfamiliar to most outside his native country. Praise for Arundhati Roy “Arundhati Roy is incandescent in her brilliance and her fearlessness.” —Junot Díaz “The fierceness with which Arundhati Roy loves humanity moves my heart.” —Alice Walker

Saffron Fascists

Saffron Fascists
Author: Pieter Friedrich
Publisher:
Total Pages: 156
Release: 2020-08-17
Genre:
ISBN:

"This timely and extremely relevant collection will be very useful reading for scholars, students, and practitioners interested to understand India's path from democracy to dictatorship and from secularism to theocracy."- Dr. Ashok Swain, Uppsala University "The RSS, indicted in targeted violence in India since Independence, receives much moral and material support from NRI leaders of the diaspora in the USA. Friedrich does great service exposing their tentacles in US politics."- John Dayal, retired Indian journalist "This compilation highlights the problematic character of Hindutva ideology, provides a profound insight on RSS and its international subsidiaries, and is highly relevant for national and international audiences interested in understanding the slow collapse of a plural democracy in India."- Dr. Ritumbra Manuvie, University of Groningen "What makes Friedrich's compendium especially compelling is that its reportage is at once a contemporary account and a historical lens for future generations that will want to mine the depths of Hindutva fascism's beginning, middle and end; for there should be no doubt that, like all self-destructive xenophobic ideologies, Hindu Nationalism, too, shall come to grief, sooner than later."- Ajit Sahi, Indian journalist and activist "We hope Indians (particularly Hindus) the world over pay attention to this timely and well-researched book which chronicles the rise of Hindu Nationalism and consequent decline of democracy, religious freedom and human rights in India."- Hindus for Human Rights

The Sword and the Shield

The Sword and the Shield
Author: Peniel E. Joseph
Publisher: Basic Books
Total Pages: 384
Release: 2020-03-31
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1541617851

This dual biography of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King upends longstanding preconceptions to transform our understanding of the twentieth century's most iconic African American leaders. To most Americans, Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. represent contrasting ideals: self-defense vs. nonviolence, black power vs. civil rights, the sword vs. the shield. The struggle for black freedom is wrought with the same contrasts. While nonviolent direct action is remembered as an unassailable part of American democracy, the movement's militancy is either vilified or erased outright. In The Sword and the Shield, Peniel E. Joseph upends these misconceptions and reveals a nuanced portrait of two men who, despite markedly different backgrounds, inspired and pushed each other throughout their adult lives. This is a strikingly revisionist biography, not only of Malcolm and Martin, but also of the movement and era they came to define.

Young Mandela

Young Mandela
Author: David James Smith
Publisher: Little, Brown
Total Pages: 446
Release: 2010-12-06
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0316122246

Nelson Mandela is well-known throughout the world as a heroic leader who symbolizes freedom and moral authority. He is fixed in the public mind as the world's elder statesman -- the gray-haired man with a kindly smile who spent 27 years in prison before becoming the first black president in South Africa. But Nelson Mandela was not always elderly or benign. And, in Young Mandela, award-winning journalist and author David James Smith takes us deep into the heart of racist South Africa to paint a portrait of the Mandela that many have forgotten: the committed revolutionary who left his family behind to live on the run, adopting false names and disguises and organizing the first strikes to overthrow the apartheid state. Young Mandela lifts the curtain on an icon's first steps to greatness.