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17 Sep 2015 15:18 #271894
by ketchim
Mahatma Gandhi has been variously described as an anti-colonial protester, a religious thinker, a pragmatist,
a radical who used non-violence effectively to fight for causes,
a canny politician and a whimsical Hindu patriarch.
But was
India's greatest leader
also a racist?
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17 Sep 2015 15:20 #271895
by ketchim
The authors of a controversial new book on Gandhi's life and work in South Africa certainly believe so.
South African academics Ashwin Desai and Goolam Vahed spent seven years exploring the complex story of a man
who lived in their country for more than two decades - 1893 to 1914 -
and campaigned for the rights of Indian people there.
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17 Sep 2015 15:28 #271896
by ketchim
In The South African Gandhi: Stretcher-Bearer of Empire
Desai and Vahed write that during his stay in Africa, Gandhi kept the Indian struggle :
"separate from that of Africans and coloreds even though the latter were also denied political rights
on the basis of colour and could also lay claim to being British subjects".
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17 Sep 2015 15:30 #271897
by ketchim
In 1893, Gandhi wrote to the Natal parliament saying that a :
"general belief seems to prevail in the Colony that the Indians are a little better, if at all,
than savages or the Natives of Africa".
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17 Sep 2015 15:31 #271898
by ketchim
In 1904, he wrote to a health officer in Johannesburg that the council "must withdraw Kaffirs" from an unsanitary slum called the
"Coolie Location" where a large number of Africans lived alongside Indians.
"About the mixing of the Kaffirs with the Indians, I must confess I feel most strongly."
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17 Sep 2015 15:32 #271899
by ketchim
The same year he wrote that unlike the African, the Indian had no "war-dances, nor does he drink Kaffir beer".
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17 Sep 2015 15:34 #271900
by ketchim
When Durban was hit by a plague in 1905 :
Gandhi wrote that the problem would persist as long as Indians and Africans were being
"herded together indiscriminately at the hospital "
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17 Sep 2015 15:36 #271901
by ketchim
South Africans have always accused the man who led India to independence of working with the British colonial government
to promote racial segregation. In April, a man was arrested in connection with
vandalising a statue of Gandhi
.
A hashtag
#Ghandimustfall
(click)
White paint was used to deface a statue of Mahatma Gandhi and its plaque
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Was Mahatma Gandhi a Racist ?
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