Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Gandhi Used His Position To Sexually Exploit Young Women

Dear All,

Please, let's not jump into conclusions. Michael Jackson had the same bizarre habit of sleeping with kids on the same bed in his Never Land home. There is no evidence that he ever had sexual relations with those kids. Our generation has become something else. As school kids and even as university students we guys sometimes went to spend weekends with friends and we would sleep on the same bed. In today's world, there would be all sorts of interpretations. To us, it meant absolutely nothing. It is very normal among Ethiopians for guys who are best friends to hold hands while working on the streets of Addis, Gondar and Axum -- and even Holy Lalibela. Nobody would think anything of it.

I have been a long time student of Mahatma Gandhi. He was a quirky old man no doubt. He never forgave himself the fact that he was in bed with his wife at the very hour his father died. In line with the ancient teachings of the Rishis and the Vedas of ancient India, he felt he had to prove himself that he had conquered the maya of lust by sleeping naked with young girls. There is no evidence that he ever had sex with any of them. Unless some new historiographical evidence has come up lately, that is. 

On Fri, Sep 4, 2015 at 5:34 AM, 'Ikhide' via USA Africa Dialogue Series <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> wrote:

"It is a fact. Gandhi had young women in his ashram, some of them still teenagers, one of them his own grand-niece [Manu Gandhi], sleep naked with him in his bed at night. This was an aspect of Gandhi that I had not read about before, and it surprised me at first. I was researching for my book 'Sex and Power' which looks at the history of sex and sexuality in India, and it was important for me to investigate this further.

My initial tendency was to regard this as "gossip," but then some of the biographies confirmed it as fact, but also hurriedly dismissed it as something that we all apparently should accept as the eccentricities of "great" men! That's not a logical argument for me and so I began to dig into archives for more information till a complete picture emerged. And that picture upset me. I saw Gandhi as a classic example of a sexual predator — a man who uses his position of power to manipulate and sexually exploit the people he directly controls."

http://www.youthkiawaaz.com/2013/10/gandhi-used-power-position-exploit-young-women-way-react-matters-even-today/

- Ikhide

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