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Gandhi for the Post-Truth Age
- phakding 8y agoEverything is so black and white nowadays or it always was, I dont know. Gandhi had his failings, but if you aggregate his life, he was definitely a positive force in the world.
- jhowell 8y agoUnless you're from a minority group his disparaged from a perspective of genetic superiority... net positive...
- intended 8y agoIs this related to the lines he recanted later? Which groups?
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- boomboomsubban 8y agoEven accepting the worst possible picture you can paint of Gandhi's racism, which doesn't seem an accurate view of his whole life, his anti-imperialist views would likely still be a net positive.
- setr 8y agotbh if he had a viewpoint, good or bad, but wasn't significantly influential with it, does it matter?
- drb91 8y agoIt’s not black and white, so Gandhi is not a pure force for good. Yet, this is often his portrayal, at least in the West. Why judge him as a aggregate? Why not say he was a human who found something new that changed the world. This is hard to dispute.
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- watwut 8y agoIf a breathing human was painted as literal saint in the past with no possible complication, then it was black and white in the past. That being said, I don't think article paints him in as evil or saint. It seems to be more on his side, as in, saying that he was right in his criticism of west.
- fromthestart 8y agoThis is political propaganda and has nothing to do with tech. Also fertile ground for flame topics. Flagged.
- dang 8y agoThe content is inevitably partly political, but the article is not propaganda. It's a review of recent writings about Gandhi, interesting not just for how different they are but because interpretations of Gandhi have changed so much over time. HN is explicitly not just for "tech". Please review the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. Your last sentence breaks them too.
- vijaybritto 8y agoWhat propaganda is this?! Why not have a discussion?
- ionised 8y agopropaganda for what purpose?
- lake99 8y agoReading the first paragraph, and the article already seems off to a shaky start. > The Indian Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, cites V. D. Savarkar, a far-right Hindu supremacist who was accused of involvement in Gandhi’s assassination, in 1948, as his ideological mentor. I am not Hindu, and I can't stand Savarkar. However, I've never heard a justification for calling him a Hindu supremacist. He wanted India to be a Hindu country, not because he thought Hindus were superior, but more as a homeland for what he conceived as Hindu culture. I don't like this recent trend of calling everyone you can't stand a [something]-supremacist.
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- notafraudster 8y agoI do not believe there is a trend of calling "everyone you can't stand a [something]-supremacist" -- surely this is a dishonest retort to a label that is being applied very specifically to a radical nationalist. Now, if your dispute is that you think there's daylight between an ethno-religious nationalist and an ethno-religious supremacist, fine, make that argument, but let's not act like the label is coming entirely out of left field. And please be aware that if you draw a distinction between those things, you provide cover for actual [something]-supremacists, because god knows David Duke has had no problem saying "gee whiz, I'm just saying I see America as a homeland for what I conceive as White culture". In fact, the shift from "white supremacist" to "white separatist" or "white nationalist" has been a very deliberate project by white supremacists, and I suspect the same is true for (ethno-)nationalists of all stripes.
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- lake99 8y ago> surely this is a dishonest retort to a label that is being applied very specifically to a radical nationalist It's not dishonest at all. I have noticed this trend in the last couple of years, where the likes of Sam Harris and Douglas Murray are called white-supremacists. Modi has been called a Hindu supremacist. I don't know much about David Duke, so I'll not comment about him. > if your dispute is that you think there's daylight between an ethno-religious nationalist and an ethno-religious supremacist, fine, make that argument Why does this case need to be made? There have been plenty of common counterexamples throughout modern history. Just look at the plethora of atheist Jews who are Zionists but don't believe in the concept of the promised land, or look at the formation of Pakistan, or even the split up of Czechoslovakia or Yugoslavia, which did not have religious motivations. It's not like I have no skin in the game. If the likes of Pravin Togadia (actual Hindu supremacist -- I've heard his speeches live) have their way, and India became a Hindu country, I'll be made a refugee. But yes, dishonest characterizations of political opponents and calling them [something]-supremacists is a trend now.
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- Dravidian 8y agoWhen, a human such as Gandhi is worshipped especially in an era when factual history is plausible; his shortcomings would definitely be contended with. There is no doubt that he's a tactician & along with great thinkers of that period paved way for the united republic of India; an unition of several civilizations made plausible by the common anger towards colonial British. But is his shortcomings a worthy argument to defame him? One does for sure - 'Casteism'; when a certain group of people are subjugated to carry human feaces in their head & you call it a noble duty defined by your religion; that man - The Gandhi & anyone who endorses the inhuman activity deserves to be shamed.
- gcb0 8y agoagree. but also wonder what is the difference if religious or economic.
- pm90 8y agoHe didn’t call it a noble duty. He said they were gods own people, to try to de-stigmatize them and legitimize them in the eyes of a very religious country.
- saiya-jin 8y agoWell you either make them equal to the rest or keep them at the bottom. I read an article about him recently, basically he was racist towards africans, and also refused antibiotics for his wife which died because of that. Argument was that no foreign agent should be inside her body or something similar. When he got seriously sick, he happily accepted medicine though. I guess any influential/powerful figure has their dark side. Perfectly fine, balanced and nice people don't end up in the spotlight, they just live their ordinary lives and die their ordinary deaths. And sometimes, the dark side can be pretty deep one, especially after some time passes and societal norms change (ie Churchill discussed here recently too). I presume we all have some darker side which we are aware of, that's why maybe the very strong desire to idolize somebody who is so high above the rest.
- 24gttghh 8y ago
- fromtheparty42 8y agoWhy are people even calling out the wrong fact presenters like Pankaj Mishra. He has proved himself to be a wrong, factually, ethically person all the time.
- sbmthakur 8y agoCould you share a few examples of his factual incorrectness?
- qazpot 8y ago>> black activists such as Adam Clayton Powell, Sr., and Benjamin Mays were enthralled by the phenomenon of an Indian leading people of color in the campaign against British colonialism in India. Is the writer calling Indians "people of color"
- nfg 8y agoIs that incorrect? Wikipedia says: The term "person of color" (plural: people of color, persons of color; sometimes abbreviated POC)[1] is used primarily in the United States to describe any person who is not white. I'm not from the US myself and so am not greatly acquainted with how it's usually employed.
- dagw 8y agoIs the writer calling Indians "people of color" Aren't they? Isn't POC just another term for "not white"?
- ex3xu 8y agoI am reminded of restorative justice advocate Bryan Stevenson's quote from his memoir describing his life's work of defending death row inmates: "Each of us is more than the worst thing we've ever done." Certainly this might apply to someone who is credited with world-changing outcomes like Mohandas Gandhi? To me, the fact that these kinds of questions about Gandhi's legacy is even a conversation being held in public discourse -- this says little about Gandhi, and a lot about our collective inability to handle the cognitive dissonance of good people making mistakes or having dark sides. More relevant to this conversation than an appraisal of Gandhi is James Gunn getting kicked off of his movie, or any of the other random people who get fired or lives ruined for some random crap they posted on Twitter. When can we start collectively adopting some understanding of restorative principles and put the days of outrage culture behind us? Sure, Gandhi had real flaws -- MLK as well with his womanizing, Churchill with his drinking and many other men and women with great accomplishments in their lifetime. Nassir Ghaemi wrote an interesting book on how he believes there is even a link between great leaders and certain kinds of mental illness. It is sobering and reasonable to have a conversation about the consequences and harms perpetuated by the flaws and mistakes of our past icons, made throughout a lifetime. But to borrow from the article: > ...even Gandhi’s harshest detractors do not deny that he steadfastly defended, and eventually sacrificed his life for, many values under assault today—fellow-feeling for the weak, and solidarity and sympathy between people of different nations, religions, and races. The guy was a man of tremendous courage and tenacity, who paved a path for other great men of courage and tenacity to win significant moral victories for our collective conscience. (Though this path may have become obsolete as "having a conscience" goes out of fashion among modern overlords.) Having read Zinn's A People's History of the United States, I can confidently say there's plenty of worthwhile things to be conflicted or outraged about when it comes to historical revisionism. But Gandhi? Not high on my list. Attacking the guy because he lacked the full modern conception of intersectionality is like knocking over an Amelia Earhart statue because she didn't fly across the Atlantic in an F-22. How are you going to try to diminish someone's historic accomplishments by comparing them to a modern contextualization of the task? But despite my position on the absurdity of the premise, I think this article does draw some interesting parallels between Gandhi's thought and life's work and some of the challenges we face in political economy today. I'm grateful to the author for mentioning that Tim Rogan book on the moral economists, as I have only recently become of Karl Polanyi and his ideas and have not heard of Tawney or Thompson.
- partycoder 8y agoGandhi is usually associated with peaceful behavior because of his non-violent resistance ideas. But these romanticized portrayals of Gandhi often omit darker aspects of his persona like his racist quotes about Africans.
- intended 8y agoTheres a reddit bad history post on gandhi, and its probably the gold standard for dealing with the new edge to Gandhi's history. (Learning about Gandhi is like peeling off alternating layers - hes a saint, no he isn't, oh he really is a saint). IN essence, Gandhi grew up and discarded his racist views. Do note that this portrayal deals specifically with this particular criticism which is popular today, and provides the (usually) missing context. Heres the bad history post - https://www.reddit.com/r/badhistory/comments/3iiwxr/the_sexual_proclivities_of_one_mohandas_k_gandhi/ https://www.reddit.com/r/badhistory/comments/3iiwxr/the_sexu...
- JohnClark1337 8y agoHe was one violent dude, always trying to capture my cities. And God help you if he got nukes.
- eevilspock 8y agoI find it interesting that there are no comments about how SV culture and ethos compare to Gandhi's ideas, as described in the article, on morality and how to achieve a better world.