• Gandhi changed his views of black Africans

    From Dr. Jai Maharaj@21:1/5 to All on Fri Oct 11 22:07:56 2019
    XPost: soc.culture.indian, alt.fan.jai-maharaj, alt.politics
    XPost: talk.politics.misc, soc.culture.india

    Gandhi changed his views of black Africans

    From Martin Plaut, London, UK
    Financial Times, ft.com
    February 19 2019

    The letter by Rajiv Radhakrishnan about Mahatma Gandhi
    (February 18) is based on a misconception. In his early
    years in South Africa Gandhi was clearly racist, but by the
    time he left, he was on the best of terms with Africans,
    including John Dube, the president of the movement that
    became the African National Congress.

    Evidence for this has been recently uncovered in files held
    at the University of Cape Town. They rely on accounts from
    Betty Molteno, the daughter of a former Cape prime
    minister, and a firm friend of Dube.

    Continues at:

    https://www.ft.com/content/4371bb7a-345a-11e9-bb0c-42459962a812

    Jai Maharaj, Jyotishi
    Om Shanti
    http://groups.google.com/group/alt.fan.jai-maharaj

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  • From Dr. Jai Maharaj@21:1/5 to All on Fri Oct 11 23:11:21 2019
    XPost: soc.culture.indian, alt.fan.jai-maharaj, alt.politics
    XPost: talk.politics.misc, soc.culture.india

    Dr. Jai Maharaj posted:

    Gandhi changed his views of black Africans

    From Martin Plaut, London, UK
    Financial Times, ft.com
    February 19 2019

    The letter by Rajiv Radhakrishnan about Mahatma Gandhi
    (February 18) is based on a misconception. In his early
    years in South Africa Gandhi was clearly racist, but by the
    time he left, he was on the best of terms with Africans,
    including John Dube, the president of the movement that
    became the African National Congress.

    Evidence for this has been recently uncovered in files held
    at the University of Cape Town. They rely on accounts from
    Betty Molteno, the daughter of a former Cape prime
    minister, and a firm friend of Dube.

    Continues at:

    https://www.ft.com/content/4371bb7a-345a-11e9-bb0c-42459962a812

    How Gandhi shed his racist robe

    While as a young man Gandhi may have been a racist, over
    time he overcame his racism comprehensively

    By Ramachandra Guha
    The Telegraph, telegraphindia.com
    December 22, 2018

    M. K. Gandhi with other members of the Tolstoy Farm in
    South Africa, 1910
    The Telegraph file picture

    Was Mohandas K. Gandhi a racist? This question is being
    asked afresh in light of the removal of a Gandhi statue in
    Ghana. The petition that led to the statue being taken down
    quoted several statements made by Gandhi. Notably, however,
    they all date from his early years in South Africa. What
    Gandhi said or thought about Africa and Africans, race and
    racism, in his mature adulthood are ignored altogether.

    In his twenties, Gandhi was unquestionably a racist. He
    believed in a hierarchy of civilizations, with Europeans at
    the top, Indians just below them, and Africans absolutely
    at the bottom. He spoke of the native inhabitants of Africa
    in patronizing and even pejorative language. However, by
    the time he was in his mid-thirties, Gandhi no longer spoke
    of Africans as inferior to Indians.

    The evolution of Gandhi's views find expression in a
    fascinating (and neglected) speech delivered by Gandhi at
    the Johannesburg YMCA in May 1908. He was participating in
    a debate on the topic: "Are Asiatics and the Coloured races
    a menace to the Empire?"

    Gandhi may have been the only non-white present; he was
    certainly the only non-white speaker. Opposing the motion,
    he pointed out that the labour of Africans and Asians had
    made the Empire what it was. "Who can think of the British
    Empire without India?" he asked, adding: "South Africa
    would probably be a howling wilderness without the
    Africans." He went on to insist that it was "the mission of
    the English race, even when there are subject races, to
    raise them to equality with themselves, to give them
    absolutely free institutions and make them absolutely free
    men".

    So by 1908, Gandhi was clear that Africans as well as
    Indians needed to be placed on an absolutely equal footing
    with Europeans. In another speech made in Germiston the
    next year, he said that if the Africans took to non-violent
    resistance against racial discrimination, "there would
    probably be no native question left to be solved".

    The longer Gandhi lived in Africa, the more he shed the
    racism of his boyhood and youth. In 1910 he remarked: "The
    negroes alone are the original inhabitants of this land...
    The whites, on the other hand, have occupied the land
    forcibly and appropriated it to themselves." By now,
    Gandhi's newspaper, Indian Opinion, was featuring reports
    on discrimination against Africans by the white regime. One
    such report dealt with an annual high school examination in
    Pretoria. In past years, African students were allowed to
    sit with their white peers. This time, the Town Hall --
    where the exams were held -- barred them, passing a
    resolution that no African or any other person of colour
    would be allowed to enter the building. Gandhi thought this
    reason enough for non-violent protest. "In a country like
    this," he remarked, "the Coloured people are placed in an
    extremely difficult position. We think there is no way out
    of this except satyagraha. Such instances of injustice are
    a natural consequence of the whites' refusal to treat the
    Coloured people as their equals. It is in order to put an
    end to this state of affairs that we have been fighting in
    the Transvaal, and it is not surprising that the fight
    against a people with deep prejudice should take a long
    time."

    Gandhi returned to India in 1914. His views on race
    continued to evolve in a progressive direction. In his book
    Satyagraha in South Africa, published in the 1920s, Gandhi
    offered a spirited defence of African religion. In
    disputing the claims of European missionaries, Gandhi wrote
    that Africans had "a perfect grasp of the distinction
    between truth and falsehood". He thought they practised
    truthfulness to a far greater extent than either Europeans
    or Indians.

    Gandhi's satyagrahas of the 1920s and 1930s were widely
    reported in the African-American press. Reading these
    reports, a resident of Chicago named Arthur Sewell wrote to
    Gandhi that the blacks were "keenly and sympathetically"
    following his movement. Sewell said his people deeply
    "sympathize[d] and suffer[ed]" with India and Indians, "for
    here, in America, they [the white racists] not only rob us
    of our possessions and hurdle us into the prisons unjustly,
    but they mob, lynch and burn us up with fire..." The
    struggle against British colonialism in India, thought
    Sewell, anticipated "the independence of all the dark
    peoples of the world". "May God Bless you," this African-
    American told Gandhi, "and enable you to carry on the great
    battle for righteous adjustment until you win a glorious
    victory for the common cause of the lowly; that is the
    prayer of fourteen millions of Negroes of America."

    Continues at:

    https://www.telegraphindia.com/opinion/how-gandhi-shed-his-racist-robe/cid/1679529

    Jai Maharaj, Jyotishi
    Om Shanti
    https://tinyurl.com/jaimaharaj

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