Friday, September 4, 2015

Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - What did Mahatma Gandhi think of black people?

Personally, I do not find anything new or strange in what is being said. Why? When we visited South Africa, we visited either Gandhi museum or a place where he had a section in the museum. I believe this was in Johannesburg.  And I know in my biographical reading of him, he himself ( i.e., Ghandi) acknowledged this stage in his life when he did not like Blacks. Often it is better to think of people's thoughts and ideas in evolutionary terms although not assuming that the evolving nature of the ideas will always lead to something progressive end. History is open-ended.

Gandhi admitted that after his education in Britain and his return to South Africa he was an anglophile. He saw himself growing up in the system and therefore liked the British. He admired the British and saw them as the ultimate expression of humanity. He had internalized their worldview and he identified with their effort to bring Black people under control and he admitted even offering himself to served them.  This is not unusual under systems of colonial domination. Hannah Arendt argues in her idea of "the banality of evil" that the Nazis could not have done what they did to the Jews without the connivance of some Jewish accomplice. No empire maintains power without recruiting some agents within the colonized. Often people connive as a way of surviving in the system. But it was after Gandhi offered to serve and he saw the dehumanizing treatment to Blacks that at some point he started having second thoughts and engaged in what some will call tactical withdrawal. And then by the time he returned to India, his views further evolved. Even in India the way the anti-colonial struggle evolved shaped the evolution of his ideas just as anything that might be called apostle Paul's theology was indirectly shaped by the specific churches in specific communities that he wrote. He was responding to concrete situations which influenced his thoughts and reflection.  Those who read the biographies of human beings and are expecting human messiahs will always be disappointed.

For those readers that are Christian, there are examples of persons who presumably God used in the Bible but they were not perfect. Indeed, scholars like Walter Brueggeman argue that often the people God used were imperfect humans and so to set perfection as a criterion for being used to do something positive is not supported in his view by concrete evidence in the Bible. This maybe the case in general history as well:

a) Moses disobeyed God and was punished for that in the sense that with all his closeness to God, he got angry. He could not control his temper -- meaning he is just like many human beings.

b) David could not control his sexual desire after he saw a woman naked having shower. He arranged for her supply and proceeded to conspire to get her husband killed at the battle front lines. Yet, there are many inspiring sayings of David that are taken serious by persons of taith.

c) Solomon appeared to be someone who cared about doing God's will when he asked for wisdom, but he ended up marrying many women that he was not supposed to. What was the motive for that? Whether political, sexual or diplomatic, it still shows he was not perfect. He fall short.

d) Adam and Eve, the first family, could not raise their kids well and the first murder was committed in their house.  This is an embarrassing situation, but it happened.  Were they perfect?

e) The apostle Peter behaved in a manner that will be considered racist today when he encountered Cornelius in the book of Acts. In spite of the fact that he was prepared for such a meeting, yet the moment he arrived in Cornelius' house he made Cornelius realized that he (peter) was not supposed to visit Cornelius' house because he was a Jew while Cornelius was a gentile. The gentile was inferior and kind of spiritually unclean. Yet by the time Peter left the house of Cornelius, he evolved to be another person and God taught him that He was no respecter of people, -- Peter confessed this lesson himself. This is life's journey. The more situations we put ourselves in, the more likely we will see our shortcomings and see the need for growth. Gandhi is one of such.  In short, what Peter thought was an exclusive reserve of his superior or special specie of human beings was actually available to all after all.

f) Plato and Aristotle could not engage in their serious intellectual work without slaves doing the job for them. The Athenians value democracy for themselves but they went outside their cities and enslaved others. Aristotle, great as he was thought women were naturally born slaves because they can only use their body, whatever that means.

g) Marx was a radical committed to social justice and he inspired many revolutions. Yet he had little or no respect for peasants who he described as Sack of Potatoes. In his writing on India, he wrote off the violence of British colonial rule on India as a necessary path to modernity given his analysis of modes of production.  In this respect, he is like late Professor Milton Friedman, the neoliberal who when asked about the continued suffering of many in America in spite of economic progress or wealth creation, he responded on camera by saying: "You cannot make an omelet without breaking an egg." That means some people have to necessary suffer or be sacrificed for the sake of progress. How about that? Marx recognized what the British did in India but saw it as part of the progressive evolution of society. Interestingly, Edmund Burke, the British conservative, will speak in defense of India, given the way ambitious capitalists were there pursuing their goal of becoming rich quick and in the process destroying India culture and civilization, which according to Burke was as old as Britain's.

g) If one watches the PBS documentary on Benjamin Franklin, in the last part of the documentary, he visited a Black school and observed black kids learning. After doing that for some days, he said publicly that he would never condone the idea that blacks were intellectually inferior because his observation of the black kids indicate that they were learning and progressing like anyone else. This reversal in the thinking of someone who owned slaves only came a time in his life.

Life is a journey and people evolve in their thinking. Deeply reflective and reflexive ones regret what they did earlier that was bad. And they apologize. Some do not apologize. Even Malcom X's biography exemplifies this idea of people evolving in their thinking given greater exposure, reflection and some degree of humility. He initially used strong language that might suggest hate towards White people but after his pilgrimage to Mecca he evolved in his thinking. He had a different kind of encounter with White people in Mecca and that made him start thinking that the problem was not Whiteness per se.

Gandhi confessed his racist attitude towards Blacks.  And the essence of what is discussed here also manifests itself in the form of one of two types of Brain Drains  in Africa. in the literature, one type of brain drain is the type that most of us fit in. We left our continent and countries for greener pastures and even though there is need there for our skills we prefer to be outside because it enables us to thrive better. We support people back in Africa in different ways, one of which is home remittances or migrant-dollars.

While this type of brain drain affects Africa, it is does not do so in very dangerous ways as the second type. The second type of brain drain is in the form of people who are highly educated and placed in Africa, and they are part of the government in Africa, but they have little or no respect for the dignity of the persons living under their control, jurisdiction, rule or supervision. They treat the people under them as sub-human and their taste and orientation is all aligned to the West and they embezzle public resources or funds to satisfy their western tastes.  They are dangerous because they make decisions that have direct and immediate consequences on the lives of the people. When they steal money, they hide it in foreign banks. They cannot live in the West because they are so full of themselves and living in the ways requires a certain degree of accepting that you will not be treated as king and you cannot treat other people any how because of legal protection. This kind of behavior is at the core of the abuse of our people and the backwardness of our country. If documented, it is even more terrible than focusing on a specific moment in the evolution of the thinking of Gandhi, which shows he was an anglophile as he himself confessed.

For those of us interested in the careful reading of biography, this kind of contradiction is very common i.e., some aspects of an historical icon that is very inspiring while another part is disappointing. For instance, Evangelicals in the U.S. see George Whitfield as one of the major Christian revival preachers that shaped the U.S. He often claimed communicating or hearing from the Holy Spirit. Only that the Holy Spirit never directed him to take a strong and unapologetic position against slavery, and if that happened he mistakenly did not hear it. Rather, the spirit directed him to help in institutionalizing or legitimizing slavery in Georgia. What to do with such a claim of a spiritual leader?

 For those interested in understanding the good, the bad and the ugly in George Whitefield as an example of the situation with Gandhi, even though they come from different religious traditions, here is the web-link to a discussion on Whitefield the major revival preacher and the champion of slavery whatever that means:

http://www.christianitytoday.com/ch/1993/issue38/3841.html

Life is complex.

Samuel

On Fri, Sep 4, 2015 at 2:01 PM, kenneth harrow <harrow@msu.edu> wrote:
agreed


On 9/4/15 9:41 AM, Obadiah Mailafia wrote:
Very interesting historical revision here. I would have been very surprised if Gandhi, a high-born Brahmin had not held those views about Africans. Arthur de Gobineau, Hegel, Montesquieu and Churchill held worst views. I think we should not be judging the ethics and morals of people with the standards of our own epoch. Also, Gandhi went through several stages in his intellectual, moral, political and spiritual evolution. The Gandhi that left for England was different from the young proud Westernised barrister that tried to eke out a living in the South African Bar. And the traumas he encountered changed him. He was the same Brahmin who had a metanoia and renamed the low castes as "Harijan" (Children of God). We live in a cruel and sinful world. Every man and woman must carry their own cross. Gandhi carried his. He was not a perfect human being. But he sought a new way of capitalizing on the human spirit to fight injustice and oppression. MLK was an assiduous student of Gandhi and his adoption of AHIMSA made all the difference in the world. I went to college with the grand daughter of Gandhi, a mild-mannered young woman of beauty and grace. Her grandfather was not perfect, but because of the great efforts and sacrifices he made, the world of Humanity has been transformed by the sheer weight of his moral force. The challenge for us is to pick from the elements of what he did and apply it where we are at present. It can make a difference.

On Fri, Sep 4, 2015 at 5:29 AM, 'Ikhide' via USA Africa Dialogue Series <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> wrote:

Was Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, the revered leader of India's freedom movement, a racist?

A controversial new book  by two South African university professors  reveals shocking details about Gandhi's life in South Africa between 1893 and 1914, before he returned to India.

During his stay in South Africa, Gandhi routinely expressed "disdain for Africans," says S. Anand, founder of Navayana, the publisher of the book titled "The South African Gandhi: Stretcher-Bearer of Empire."

According to the book, Gandhi described black Africans  as "savage," "raw" and living a life of "indolence and nakedness," and he campaigned relentlessly to prove to the British rulers that the Indian community in South Africa was superior to native black Africans. The book combs through Gandhi's own writings during the period and government archives and paints a portrait that is at variance with how the world regards him today.

[The dark side of Winston Churchill no one should forget]

Much of the halo that surrounds Gandhi today is a result of clever repackaging, write the authors, Ashwin Desai and Goolam Vahed, professors at the University of Johannesburg and the University of KwaZulu Natal.

"As we examined Gandhi's actions and contemporary writings during his South African stay, and compared these with what he wrote in his autobiography and 'Satyagraha in South Africa,' it was apparent that he indulged in some 'tidying up.' He was effectively rewriting his own history."

Prize-winning Indian author Arundhati Roy says the book, which will hit stores next month, is "a serious challenge to the way we have been taught to think about Gandhi."

Here is a sample of what Gandhi said about black South Africans:

* One of the first battles Gandhi fought after coming to South Africa was over the separate entrances for whites and blacks at the Durban post office. Gandhi objected that Indians were "classed with the natives of South Africa," who he called the kaffirs, and demanded a separate entrance for Indians.

- Rama Lakshmi

Nothing new here. Mahatma Gandhi was a thoroughgoing racist. 


- Ikhide
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--   kenneth w. harrow   faculty excellence advocate  professor of english  michigan state university  department of english  619 red cedar road  room C-614 wells hall  east lansing, mi 48824  ph. 517 803 8839  harrow@msu.edu

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Samuel Zalanga
Department of Anthropology, Sociology & Reconciliation Studies
Bethel University, 3900 Bethel Drive #24
Saint Paul, MN 55112.
Office Phone: 651-638-6023

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