महात्मा गांधी

THE Mahatma(n)

"Mahatma" (महात्मा) is not, we must emphasize, the first name of the Indian leader, M. K. Gandhi. Instead it is a bestowed title and is usually translated as "Great Soul". As to what that means, we are always cautioned against trying to use English (or American) to translate non-Western philosophical concepts.

Well, then just look up the dictionary definition - Sanskrit dictionary, that is. There we find the word:

आत्मन्, âtmán (noun): breath; soul; life, self; essence, nature; peculiarity; body; intellect, understanding; universal soul

Now as far as this परदेशी, can figure, the word can be used in everyday conversation for various concepts including simply the reflexive pronoun self. However, the Âtmán - often capitalized in English - represents the existence of a permanent never-changing essence present in living beings that can reappear in newly born individuals but also can be released from all physical restraints.

As for the modifier:

महा, mah-â, great

... it pretty much means what it does in English. It can describe someone as lofty as a "Great Sage":

महर्षि, mahârishi

... as in (for you old timers), the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi.

Or it can mean simply the chief employee or perhaps a foreman:

महाप्रतीहार, mahāpratīhāra, head janitor

Nevertheless आत्मा, âtmá (dropping the n) is almost always translated as "soul". Now if you turn to an dictionary, and look up that word you get something like:

soul (noun): spiritual or immaterial part of a human being or animal, often regarded as immortal.

... which if not identical nevertheless suggests some of the concepts of the Hindu Âtmán.

So if anyone was worried, it's OK to call Mohandas K. Gandhi, the Mahatma.

Mohandas Ante Mahatma

All right. Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi was born in Porbandar, Kathiawar, India, on October 2, 1869, making him a contemporary of Bob Dalton of the Dalton Gang fame. This comparison is not frivolous or sardonic. Instead it is given to emphasize that Mohandas lived his first 30 years in the 19th century, an important point for scholars to keep in mind.

Mohandas - by then the Mahatma - died in 1948, the same year as Jack Guthrie, the famous country and western star. This was also only three years before the first commercial jet-airline service. Again the point is that the Mahatma's life encompassed a time of extreme change, a change that was even more dramatic than encountered by those born after the mid-20th century.

Mohandas grew up in comfortable circumstances. His dad, Karamchand, was the chief government administrator (called the dīwān) in Porbandar which is a city about 400 miles northeast of Bombay (modern Mumbai) on the East Coast. It is also the capital of the district of the same name.

Porbandar the District was what was known as a "Princely State" - ergo, an independent region governed by a native prince who exercised largely autocratic authority but who agreed to accept the authority of the British Raj (ergo, the British government of India). Later Karamchand also served as Diwan of the Princely States of Rajkot and Wankaner.

All of these states are now part of the modern state of Gujarat. Mohandas's native language, then, was Gujarati, one of the 22 languages of India. Of course, you'll sometimes read there are 300 languages. Or is it 700? Or maybe 2000?

The problem, of course, is in defining where a language begins and a dialect ends. For instance, people talk about the various dialects of Arabic - Syrian, Saudi, Egyptian - as if they are part of the same language. And yet some of these - quote - "dialects" - unquote - differ as much as do Spanish and Italian - which virtually everyone recognizes as distinct languages. Ultimately what's a language and what's a dialect is a professional call of the linguists, but pretty much everyone agrees Gujarati is a distinct language.

Karamchand's first three wives died while they were young and his fourth, Putlibai, was Mohandas's mom. Mohandas himself was the fourth of five kids. Putlibai was quite religious and instilled her piety into her children. At the time, though, the teachings didn't really grab Mohandas.

In May 1883, Karamchand and Putlibai arranged a marriage of Mohandas with Kasturba Makhanji Kapadia, a daughter of a local merchant, Gokuladas Kapadia, and his wife, Vrajkunwerba. Mohandas was thirteen, and Kasturba was fourteen.

Mohandas later spoke against teenage marriages and although the ages have risen, today 90% of the marriages in India are still arranged. Although to modern Westerners, having your folks pick out your spouse seems crazy, sometimes the young people are willing to punt the decision to their parents. At the least, one young Indian man said, it avoids a lot of hassle.

We also need to understand that today sometimes "arranging" a marriage might be no more than a couple of mom's setting up a meeting between their kids. Sort of like Western parents arranging a "set-up". If the kids like each other they then start seeing each other regularly, and if it leads to marriage then it was a - quote - "arranged marriage" - unquote.

But even in Mohandas's time arranged marriages were not universal. Sarojini Chattopadhyay was one of the leaders for Indian independence and was a near contemporary of Mohandas. As she was getting ready to study in England, she met Muthyala Govindarajulu Naidu who had studied medicine in Scotland. They hit it off and on their own initiative decided to get married. Their folks - who were fairly artsy people - had no objection.

Despite his husbandly responsibilities, the young Mohandas continued his schooling, and he and Kasturba lived with his parents. Mohandas was not a great student. Although his conduct was good, his handwriting was rotten, which at least fit well with his personal preference to be a doctor. But his parents thought it would be more suitable for him to follow in his dad's footsteps and go into the civil administration. The idea, then, was for Mohandas to study law.

Sometimes Karamchand's job took him away from his family. When he became the dīwān of Rajkot the family remained in Pondachar for about two years before joining him. So to attend Mohandas's marriage, Karamchand had to make the 120 mile drive. To make the trip quickly he traveled by stagecoach. As the fast moving coach neared Pondachar it spun out of control and overturned. Karamchand was thrown clear. Seriously injured, he never really recovered his health.

By 1885 Karamchand was 63 and ailing. His injuries had resulted in a fistula (an abnormal connection between organs), and he was confined to his bed. One night after Mohandas had been tending to his dad, his uncle came in and told him to go get some sleep. He would watch instead.

But rather than fall into immediate slumber, Mohandas woke Kasturba up and took a five-minute welcome break. But as soon as the interlude ended, his uncle came to his room and reported that Karamchand had died. This episode has been touted as having planted the seed (no joke intended) in Mohandas's philosophy that physical pleasure with the ladies was to be avoided.

By all accounts - including his own - Mohandas was not what today we'd think of as a liberated husband. He himself admitted that his demands on Kasturba to be the proper wife prevented her from developing intellectually and at one point one of his feckless ne'er-do-well friends, Sheik Mehtab, had suggested that Kasturba might not be faithful. Mohandas got so suspicious that he even sent her back to her parents for a year.

Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi: Gentleman

Despite his father's death, the plan for Mohandas to study law did not change. He attended college in India but his friends suggested that he study in England. Oddly enough becoming a "barrister" was less demanding than in India. You only attended a few lectures a week and didn't actually attend a university. Instead the fledgling barrister studied at what was called the Inner Temple, a teaching organization that is still cranking them out. Of course that meant traveling to England. So in 1888 with borrowed money leaving Kasturba at home, Mohandas sailed to London. He passed his exams and was - as the British say - "called to the bar" in 1891.

One thing that strikes the modern student is that college life in the late 19th century seemed surprisingly lackadaisical. With a relatively light study load, Mohandas had time for outside activities. Sporting modern suits (bought at an Army-Navy store) and a top hat, he did his best to become the Very English Gentleman. He spent what seemed a long time each day shaving and trying to tame his then rather stiff and unruly hair. He even took dancing and violin lessons.

What surprises those who know of Mohandas's later minimalistic lifestyle is that when he went to England he was - as he said - "a confirmed meat-eater". However, the only time he seems to have eaten meat was a brief time as a teenager in India. His irresponsible friend, Sheik Metab, had convinced him that eating meat was what made him, Metab, such a strapping youth. So every now and then the two boys would sneak off and wolf down some steaks. Mohandas never told his mom and eventually he soon returned to a vegetarian diet.

Mohandas had been a vegetarian mostly because that's what his mom wanted. But in London he began reading books and articles on the benefits of a meatless diet. Although noting that there were degrees of meatlessness (some people didn't count fish and thought eggs and cheese were all right), Mohandas decided to cut out animal products of any kind.

At first, Mohandas found that being a vegetarian in England was rather inconvenient. Since he was not attending an actual college he boarded with private families and although they tried to accommodate his diet, an impromptu vegetarian diet prepared by cooks used to preparing meat-rich meals were not very inspired. Soon, though, he stumbled upon a vegetarian restaurant and began to eat decent and varied cuisine.

Soon his social life became centered on the growing vegetarian community and Mohandas began attending meetings of the London Vegetarian Society. There he met a number of educated people including the social activist and Theosophist, Annie Besant. Annie was not only an advocate of women's rights (including birth control), but she would later play an important role in the movement for Indian independence. At the time Mohandas did not meet the then fledgling playwright and critic George Bernard Shaw who had become a vegetarian in his twenties. But the two men would hook up in later years.

But it was through the members of the society that Mohandas learned of John Ruskin and Leo Tolstoy. Today most people remember John as the critic who accused James McNeill Whistler of flinging a pot of paint at a canvas, and Leo we all know as the author who wrote the big book that nobody reads anymore.

But during their lifetimes John and Leo were also recognized as important social philosophers. John wrote that true wealth was not measured by money but by the good that a person accomplished. Leo in turn felt that the best life was where you resisted evil by non-violent means and even where you gave up material goods - a practice that in later life Leo did his best to follow.

Mohandas liked London. He felt pretty much at home and was surprised to see how positively many Londoners looked on the Hindu religion. Ironically it wasn't until he got to London that he was introduced to the Bhagavad Gita, the famous Hindu poem.

There was also time for short excursions. In 1899, Mohandas crossed the channel to see the Paris Exhibition. It was OK, but he thought the Eiffel Tower, although an impressive feat of engineering, was kind of dumb and served no purpose.

Making a Living

There was probably no one less suited for the legal profession than Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi. Although now an officially qualified lawyer, he was terribly shy, and his command of English was not that great. His skills at cross-examination were virtually nil, and when he tried to give speeches and talks he just looked silly. Actually Mohandas never did learn how to give a good impromptu speech.

Back home in India it was tough for a shy lawyer who had trouble arguing in court. But he now had a wife and a four-year-old son, Harilal, to support. So he had to do something.

Mohandas began working in Bombay on India's west coast, mostly drafting documents and petitions (sometimes called "memorials"). But he certainly wasn't raking in the dough and thought maybe he should switch to teaching. However because he was not actually a university graduate, he didn't get the job.

The next year he moved to Rajkot where he had lived as a kid. He opened up his own office and again spent a lot of time drafting up documents.

At least he was doing a bit better and managed to make about 300 Rs (rupees) a month. That was about £18 8s 12d or £225 a year. We're talking about a $1000 annual income (about 30K today). That was a bit less than a middle level civil servant would make. Not terrible, but not that great either.

What surprised Mohandas was the difficulty in dealing with the British. By logistics alone a good chunk of the Albions were army officers. While in London the military men were off duty and had been affable and cheery. But in India when you went knocking on their doors, they were impatient and snooty. Mohandas began to wonder if things would be easier if the British weren't in charge.

Work prospects weren't getting any better and finally in 1893 Mohandas's brother introduced him to Sheth Abdul Karim Jhaveri, an Indian national and a Muslim (then usually called "Moslem"). The name we gave is as Mohandas's translator spelled it, but "Abdul" is not a valid name. The name is better rendered Sheth Abd el-Karim Jhaveri.

Sheth Abd el-Karim was a partner in the firm of Dada Abdulla and Company in South Africa. He offered Mohandas a job. All expenses would be on the firm, including fare to and from India. He would be gone from India no more than a year. Kasturba and Harilal could remain in the family home in India. It was quite a deal so Mohandas said yes.

A bit of digression is in order. For all the talk about the exoticism of the Mysterious East and Mohandas's positive experience in London, there was still prejudice against people "of color" (as it was said). But in London he could enter the schools, restaurants, theaters, trains, and hotels as any other citizen of the Empire. Personally he encountered little prejudice and legally there was no discrimination.

This was, we said, in England.

But South Africa? Well, that was something else again. The "country" (note quotes) was made up of four regions. Two were British colonies - Natal and the Cape Colony. Then there were also two independent republics, the Transvaal and the Orange Free State, administered by the Dutch Afrikaners who were called the Boers. Within the boundaries of the Cape Colony was Swaziland - nominally an independent Bantu kingdom - and Basutoland which was sandwiched between the Cape Colony and the Orange Free State. The late 19th century history of Basutoland is pretty complex, but by 1893 it was what was called a British High Commission Territory.

Before Mohandas settled in Durban - on the coast of Natal - he had shown little political interest (in fact he rarely read newspapers). Why should he? He was happy being a Loyal Subject of the Crown.

Now it is true that England had little legal discrimination itself, but it had adopted a hands-off policy for its colonies. Colonial legislatures (if they existed) could pass laws as they liked. In principle Parliament or Queen Victoria could refuse to endorse a law, but all in all the colonial governments had wide discretion and did pretty much as they pleased.

So in South Africa prejudice was much more in evident. On one assignment Mohandas bought a first class ticket to Pretoria. All was fine until a white man came in. He immediately left and came back with two railroad officials. Mohandas was told to get to the back of the train. He refused, and so the officials called a cop who tossed the insolent Indian out on the platform.

Such incidents kept happening. In Johannesburg Mohandas wasn't able to stay in a good hotel - it was full the clerk smirked. He couldn't eat in certain restaurants, and he wasn't even allowed to walk along certain paths that were frequented by whites.

To Mohandas such behavior seemed at odds with people who claimed to be devout Christians. But he had always been a bit skeptical of that particular cult. Although respecting some of the teachings - like the Sermon on the Mount - he couldn't swallow that you had to accept the Scripture as unerring and infallible. After all, religious ideas were to be discussed and if they made sense, then accepted. If they seemed stupid then they should be rejected without any fear of any consequences.

Nor could Mohandas buy the idea that unless you thought the way the Christians did you'd have to kiss everlasting life good-by. As one now regularly encountering racial prejudice, perhaps he simply felt that allocating everlasting life based upon the way people thought was too much like apportioning everlasting life based on the color of their skin.

Living in Durban, though, Mohandas could only put up with the discrimination. But at least, he was only staying a year. Then in 1894 just as he was getting to return home came the grain that cracked the saltcellar.

In Africa all minorities were not created equal for discrimination. Some groups had privileges that others didn't. For instance, when Mohandas arrived in Natal, the Indians could vote and the black Africans couldn't.

But at his going-away party the topic came up about some disturbing legislation. The government of Natal was planning to revoke the rights of Indians to vote.

When Mohandas expressed his dismay, Abdullah Sheth shrugged his shoulders. Yes, but what can we do? Laws had become increasingly repressive. Sure, the Indians had tried to get the legislators to change their minds. But it never worked.

Then someone suggested that Mohandas should stay and fight the law. Of course, this meant cancelling his trip home and asking him to stay indefinitely. He'd have to have to move his family to South Africa as well. Everyone was most enthusiastic.

Then with a smile, Abdullah Sheth pointed out this was all well and good. But Mohandas was a barrister. Who was going to pay his fees?

Cut to the quick, Mohandas said this was public work. He would stay on and do routine legal tasks for his keep. But fighting for the Indians' rights would be pro bono. But he acknowledged that extra cash would be needed. Petitioning legislatures wasn't cheap.

Fortunately everybody jumped on board. Twenty local merchants agreed to chip in and provide enough for Mohandas and his family to live on.

The first task was to draft what Mohandas called a "monster petition" - ten thousand names gathered in two weeks - protesting the law. It was submitted to the Natal government.

Suddenly Mohandas was getting noticed - and not just in South Africa. The Times of India, the major Indian newspaper, wrote articles supporting his efforts.

Next Mohandas met with the leaders of South Africa's Indian community. Clearly this wasn't going to be a one-shot deal. They needed to get organized so they could continually combat new repressive laws which would surely keep cropping up. Everyone agreed.

The new organization was the Natal Indian Congress and was based on the Indian National Congress which had been founded in 1885. Today one of India's main political parties, the INC was founded by a Scotsman, Allan Octavian Hume. In later years one of the presidents - and the first woman to fill the post - was Mohandas's old acquaintance from London, Annie Besant.

Originally the Indian National Congress was simply intended to further communication between the indigenous population and the British government. However as little progress was made, the INC began to include what the British government called "extremists". That is, people who dared to contemplate (shudder) Indian independence.

And yes, Mohandas's Big Petition was tossed out. He immediately sent letters of objection to George Robinson, the Secretary of State for the Colonies. Things started looking up when Queen Victoria refused to endorse the law, but then the Natal government refused to endorse Queen Victoria. The disenfranchisement law was passed, and the Indians of Natal lost their right to vote.

It was now 1896, and Mohandas went back to India to pick up his family. His fame preceded him, and he was greeted by cheering crowds.

Not so on his return to South Africa. Waiting on the dock was a hostile mob of whites, none of whom were pleased that this agitator was returning. Why couldn't that darn troublemaker stay in India where he belonged? Fortunately, the police chief of the town and his wife, who both had good personal dealings with Mohandas, came to their rescue.

So 1896 was in some ways the annus mirabilis for Mohandas. He began the year as a simple urban lawyer doing routine legal work on a temporary assignment. The year ended with him being a major civil rights leader.

But then came an unexpected interlude.

Mohandas and Crashing the Boers

Suddenly the Dutch settlers in South Africa and the British were butting heads. It seems that the British - while not coveting their neighbor's house, wife, servants, or ass - began coveting their neighbor's diamond and gold mines.

Located largely in the Dutch Transvaal, the mines were sources of massive wealth for their investors. But as some of the shareholders were British, England claimed they had suzerainty over both the Transvaal and the Orange Free State. Soddy, said the Dutch, both are free and independent countries. So to settle their differences, everyone decided to go to war.

And Mohandas? Did he use this opportunity to continue his fight against British oppression?

Nope. During the war, which lasted from 1899 to 1902, Mohandas supported the British. This may seem strange, but it really fit with his convictions of the time. He knew that the British Empire was at least based in principle on individual liberty. The Boer states, though, were moving toward a totally white run society (and would eventually succeed). So he said the Indians should join with the British.

In fact, for years to come Mohandas considered himself a loyal British subject. So he decided to put any squabbles aside for now and volunteer in the ambulance corps (actually a group of stretcher bearers). But when the British won the Boer War, Mohandas returned to his fight for Indian rights.

Full Rights ...

By 1904 there were so many people working with Mohandas that they needed some kind of headquarters. So he established what he called the Phoenix Settlement near Durban. Mohandas, now pretty well off, was able to dig up the dough to purchase the land.

The Phoenix settlement was a convenient place to hold meetings and conferences as well as publish a newspaper, The Indian Opinion. And because running the settlement wasn't cheap, Mohandas began to adopt a more austere lifestyle although he still dressed in more or less conventional duds.

But two years later and now age 37, Mohandas suspected he was fighting a losing battle. New regulations continued to erode Indians' rights. Now they could even be kicked off a sidewalk when a white person passed. But worse was to come.

The government of the Transvaal - now belonging to England - passed a law requiring all non-whites to register with the government and carry an ID card. When registering they would be subjected to the new-fangled fingerprinting and any distinguishing marks were to be recorded. In essence non-Europeans were being cataloged as if they were criminals. The penalty for not registering was a £100 fine or three months in jail.

Mohandas called a mass meeting in protest. In a resolution passed by the Natal National Congress, he called for the Indians to refuse to register and even go to jail if necessary. But he insisted that no one raise a hand against anyone. This was the beginning of his philosophy of non-violent resistance or satyagraha (सत्याग्रह). Literally meaning "clinging to truth", it's sometimes translated as "civil disobedience".

... For ALL????

Recently a statue of Mohandas was removed from the University of Ghana at the insistence of students and faculty. The man, they said, was clearly a racist and prejudiced against blacks.

Ha? (To quote Shakespeare.) The Mahatma?

A racist?

Prejudiced against blacks?

Obviously some background is needed.

In 1906 the Zulu Nation - largely within the Natal - rebelled against the government. The Natal legislature had been introducing new taxes on the natives and had introduced that one tax too many.

Of course, what do you tax if the culture doesn't generate hard currency and the people live in huts and own dogs? Well, you tax them in commodities and tax their huts and dogs. But that wasn't enough. The government then hatched a plan to get the people making hard cash. They introduced a £1 "poll" tax in the hopes the tax would - well, "encourage" the young men to leave the villages and serve as laborers.

Although £1 doesn't seem like much it was pretty stiff for the time. For the most part, the local chiefs tried to encourage their tribesmen to pay the tax and not make waves.

On February 6, the local chief near Richmond had been trying to get his tribesmen to pay the tax. When he couldn't persuade them, he sent word to the local judge about his naughty boys. The judge then sent in the police and in the fight that ensued, two officers were killed.

Other incidents resulted in the deaths of more policemen and the British declared martial law. Troops were sent in, and homes of the natives burned and livestock taken. Dusting off their hands the troops left, satisfied they had solved the problem.

Then Bhambatha ka Mancinza, the chief of the Zondi clan, declared war on the British. His warriors began attacking patrols and later joined up with other clans. His chief ally was the venerable Siganada who was in his nineties and had fought with the famous Zulu King Shaka.

As the fighting was mostly the British turning machine guns and howitzers on natives armed with spears, there wasn't much doubt about the outcome. All in all about 4000 Zulus were killed and there were an equal number of sjambok floggings (a common and quite severe punishment legally used in South Africa until 1989).

But instead of supporting the Zulus, Mohandas urged the Indians to join the British to crush the rebellion. He even called on the British to enlist the Indians as full-fledged soldiers to carry arms. When that overture was rebuffed, Mohandas again volunteered to head a corps of stretcher bearers, an offer the British accepted.

It's instances like the Zulu rebellion that has fueled the Mashing of Mohandas. And it wasn't just that he supported the British in fighting the natives. Mohandas advocated actual segregation of the native blacks from non-Africans - and that included the Indians. When there was talk about the Indians and the natives (disparagingly called "Kaffirs") being moved into common locations, Mohandas objected:

About this mixing of the Kaffirs with the Indians, I must confess I feel most strongly. I think it is very unfair to the Indian population, and it is an undue tax on even the proverbial patience of my countrymen.

Here the Mohandas defenders step in. You can't just take isolated quotes out of context. From other writings it's clear Mohandas simply felt that the issues for the native Africans and the Indians had to be addressed separately. For instance in 1939, Mohandas was talking with Reverend S.S. Tema who was a member of the African National Congress:

The Indians are a microscopic minority. They can never be a 'menace' to the white population. You, on the other hand, are the sons of the soil who are being robbed of your inheritance. You are bound to resist that. Yours is a far bigger issue. It ought not to be mixed up with that of the Indian.

Huh! snort the critics. Don't give us that बकवास. Look what Mohandas said about the races when he was sending the Mother of All Petitions to the Natal government.

A general belief seems to prevail in the Colony [Natal] that the Indians are little better, if at all, than savages or the Natives of Africa. Even the children are taught to believe in that manner, with the result that the Indian is being dragged down to the position of a raw Kaffir.

And he had also said:

I venture to point out that both the English and the Indians spring from a common stock, called the Indo-Aryan.

So not only did Mohandas believe in discrimination he believed in racial inferiority as well!

Mahatma, indeed!

Mohandas's defenders continue to rant against such cherry-picked quotes. If he was racially bigoted, how can you explain what Mohandas said in the 1930's at Oxford University?

The mighty English look quite pygmies before the mighty races of Africa. They are noble savages after all, you will say. They are certainly noble, but no savages and in the course of a few years the Western nations may cease to find in Africa a dumping ground for their wares.

Racist? Mohandas? Not, as Eliza Doolittle said, bloody likely.

So what, as Flakey Foont asked Mr. Natural, does it all mean?

The astute reader will note the quotes where Mohandas was speaking demeaningly against the Africans were from his time in South Africa. When he spoke of the need for the Africans to assert their rights and of friendship between the Indians and Africans he was older. So maybe, just maybe, Mohandas changed his mind.

Remember Mohandas was born in the 19th century. At that time sophisticated academic anthropological theory was, to speak generously, a laugh. The so-called races were actually artificial constructs created by arbitrarily dividing what was really a continuum of physical differences. Anthropologists armed with rulers and calipers would go into the world and measure people. They would then statistically classify everyone into three basic groups: Caucasian, Negroid, and Mongoloid.

The problem is there were just too many who didn't fit in. So the anthropologists created other "major" groups like the Capoid (which included the San of the Kalahari Desert) and the Australoid, the aboriginal natives of Australia.

But that wasn't good enough either. So these groups started getting divided up even further. Soon you had the Polynesian race, the Japanese race, the Chinese race, the Greek race, the Slavic race, and the Semitic race. The fact that these are actually linguistic families didn't seem to sink in and we even had the Irish race, the English race, and the - get this - "Yankee race". During the 1960's one television personality referred to New York taxi drivers as "the most courteous race" she knew.

By the 1950's, professors of anthropology were postulating a plethora of races - close to 30 (and we're not including the taxi drivers). Unfortunately many people thought these groups represented something inherent in nature. Worse, some - quote - "scholars" - unquote - began ranking the races as superior or inferior usually based on IQ scores even though they sometimes had to assign IQ's to populations who had never taken an IQ test.

It's no surprise, then, that the group that designated themselves superior - white folks - were the ones doing the rating. And for anyone interested, Americans rank lower in IQ than Canadians and are 10 points below the citizens of Hong Kong.

Now if you dust off a few of those not-that-old anthropology textbooks, you'll find that most of the population of the Indian subcontinent was indeed classified as Caucasian. So when Mohandas said the Indians and the British were of the same race, he was simply following mainstream anthropological theory of the time.

But being able to explain why Mohandas was full of बकवास does not mean he was not full of बकवास. So with regret we must conclude that as a young man Mohandas did indeed harbor quite prejudiced ideas regarding race. But of course, that was also true of a fellow named Albert Einstein.

Then - like Albert - as he got older, he publicly modified his views and spoke for the brotherhood of all races. Whether he completely overcame his early prejudices privately is something no one knows. We do wonder since even in his later years the Mahatma still advocated keeping the causes of Africa and India separate.

For now, though, let's have some chap named Nelson Mandela have the last word.

Gandhi must be forgiven those prejudices and judged in the context of the time and circumstances. We are looking here at the young Gandhi, still to become Mahatma, when he was without any human prejudice save that in favour of truth and justice.

Morphing to the Mahatma

Up until 1906 Mohandas lived pretty much a Western lifestyle. He sported business suits and still dressed as the proper English gentleman. But it was in that year that his mother's religious teaching began to take root. So he took a vow of brahmacharya (ब्रह्मचर्य) which is a life of chastity and poverty.

But that didn't mean he'd give up his work for civil rights and go live on the top of a mountain. He kept up his work promoting the rights of the Indians. In 1908 Mohandas went to London to discuss the problem of discrimination with the politicians. There he met a number of activists, some with an anarchistic or a revolutionary bent. Although he appreciated their commitment, he felt that violence wasn't going to help anything.

But on the way back to Africa - it took about two weeks to travel from England to the Cape of Good Hope - Mohandas began to think, not just of South Africa politics, but also about his native India. For all his belief that the Indians were the equals of the British, India had really been a two-tiered country. The English were in charge. They more or less determined how the native Indians lived, what products they bought, and what they could do. Maybe it really was time for the Indians to start running their country themselves.

So taking advantage of the travel time, Mohandas wrote a short book titled Hind Swaraj or in English Indian Home Rule. As it was for the Irish, Home Rule might not mean full independence but that's clearly where Mohandas was headed.

Most importantly in Hind Swaraj Mohandas specifically advocated non-violent resistance and civil disobedience to achieve their goals. The people should refuse to obey laws that were unjust and even go to jail if need be. They could go on strike and hold demonstrations in protest against unjust laws and customs. However, they should never commit acts of violence regardless of how harshly they themselves were treated.

It was also in 1908 that Mohandas was arrested for the first time. This was for refusing to carry the ID card which was now required for non-Europeans (yes, the law had passed). He was soon released but during the next two years he was arrested three more times for not having proper ID. In 1909 he served three months.

The group at Phoenix Settlement was getting bigger. So in 1910, Herman Kallenbach, a wealthy businessman and a supporter of Mohandas, donated some land just on the edge of Johannesburg. This became known as Tolstoy Farm in honor of Leo who had just turned 80 and with whom Mohandas had corresponded. Like Phoenix Settlement, Tolstoy Farm was a place where the followers of Mohandas could gather, hold conferences, and plan strategy.

The number of repressive laws kept increasing. In 1913 Natal passed a law that non-Christian marriages were invalid. Therefore Muslim or Hindu marriages were null and void. That meant that all the kids were deemed illegitimate and were unable to inherit property or money. Then a £3 tax - a pretty hefty amount - was also slapped on Indian workers in hopes they would return to India.

Fed up with the discrimination and low wages, the Indian mine workers of the Transvaal went on strike. In October, they decided to march in protest from Newcastle to Charlestown - a distance of about 40 miles. Mohandas joined what became known as the Great March, and he was arrested three times. His friend Herman put up bail each time, and Mohandas continued the march.

It was after the march that the Nobel prize winner Rabindranath Tagore referred to Mohandas as The Great Soul, that is, the Mahatma. Reportedly Mohandas didn't like the name as it seemed to elevate him to heights he felt he didn't deserve. But the name stuck, and there wasn't much he could do about it.

Finally, though, and rather abruptly it seems the struggle began to bear fruit. In 1914, Natal passed the Indian Relief Act. Most of the repressive laws were repealed. The registration was halted, and immigration laws lifted. Traditional Indian and Muslim marriages were again permitted.

Almost immediately, the Mahatma - as we'll now call him - returned to India. It's hard to know if he felt that enough progress had been made that his efforts were no longer required or that he believed no progress had been made so that his further efforts weren't worth it. After all, the Indian Relief Act had simply returned the laws back to where they had been twenty years before. In any case, in 1915 the Mahatma left South Africa. His one year temporary job had ended up being a two decade struggle for civil rights.

There was also a war on. World War I, that is.

Back Home

And the war may indeed have been the deciding factor in the Mahatma returning to India. Even at this late date and Hind Sawaj notwithstanding, he still considered himself a loyal British subject. And taking England at its word that the War to End All Wars was that small nations might be free, he decided to help as best he could.

Of course after the war ended in 1918, the Mahatma realized England hadn't really meant it. India just made too much dough for the British and the population too lucrative a tax base. There was no hint that any kind of Home Rule was even going to be considered.

Unrest was on the rise. An oft forgotten aspect of Indian's long struggle for independence is that there were more groups than just those of the Mahatma. There were violent revolutionaries who had no problem with targeted assassinations and plots to incite rebellion among the population. Some groups were even fomenting mutiny of the Indian troops in the British army.

Britain now began to implement repressive policies. But the policies were not really in response to the Mahatma. Instead Rash Behari Bose and the violent Ghadar Party had prompted the passage of the Defense of India Act in 1915 and the Rowletts Act of 1919. Internment without trials were permitted, and tribunals without juries or appeal were empowered. Meetings were banned and there was sweeping censorship on the press. For good measure the censorship included the writings of that troublesome malcontent Mohandas K. Gandhi.

On April 13, 1919, a protest was called in Jallianwala Bagh, the principal public park in Amritsar in the Punjab. What made the authorities nervous was the sheer numbers. Perhaps 5,000 people gathered in the park which was enclosed by buildings and masonry walls.

Strictly speaking the meeting had been banned and the commander of the garrison, Colonel Reginald Dwyer, was a strong law and order man. And maybe, just maybe he had a psychopathic personality. Certainly we will see that Reginald could act capriciously (i. e., showed irresponsibility), had no concern for safety of any bystanders (that is, he was uncaring), never showed remorse (possessed shallow feelings), and kept changing his story (indulged in insincere speech). Finally it's hard to deny he exhibited "a low threshold for discharge of aggression, including violence".

Well, we'll let the professionals argue. But when the people were in the park - remember it was an enclosed area with limited exits - Reginald ordered his troops to open fire. People scrambled for the exits and were mowed down. The shooting continued until the ammunition was exhausted.

The number killed that was officially bandied about was 379. Such a low number seems impossible, and others put those killed at nearer 1000 and a like number wounded. Whatever the casualties it's hard to make excuses for Reginald's actions. Not that some people haven't tried (like Reginald himself), but eventually he was relieved of his command.

Reginald never wavered from his belief that he, as commander in charge of a district, could do what he liked, and if he did it, it was legal. While he was sitting on a train a young Cambridge educated Indian overheard Reginald laughing how he annihilated unarmed civilians. The eavesdropper was Jawaharlal Nehru, a young Cambridge educated science major who later became India's first prime minister. It was Reginald's sneering words that convinced Jawaharlal that India needed complete and unfettered independence. A lot of others now agreed.

Of course, the British were determined to stay in charge. India had too many natural resources to turn them over to the Indians. There were also too many consumers in the country. Whatever you couldn't export, you could use to make goods and using cheap Indian labor. Then you would sell everything back to the Indians at a nice profit.

There was also no free enterprise. Virtually all the manufacturing was under monopolies which were strictly controlled by the state. The private companies were also monopolies and were run by wealthy aristocratic (and English) families.

But immediately after the Amritsar Massacre, the Indian National Congress decided to take action. In September, 1920, they met and argued that the Indians should no longer deal with the British economic enterprises, either state or private. They called for a boycott of English goods.

The Mahatma stepped in with a concrete suggestion. One item the British sold to the Indians was cloth. And in India they made sure that the natives had to buy cloth and not make it themselves.

Well, if the British didn't want the Indians to make their own cloth, the Mahatma said that the Indians should make their own cloth. So he sat down and showed people how to use a spinning wheel. True, you couldn't make fancy business suits and evening gowns so favored by the English aristocracy. So the Mahatma returned to the simple loincloth and shoulder cloak, and with them the world saw the Mahatma as we know him.

To the surprise of all, this Non-Cooperation Movement became widespread, mainly because of the solidarity of the Indians. Many with important positions in the administration - teachers, civil servants, and the like - left their jobs.

Then in February 1922 the police were called in to quell a demonstration in Chauri Chaura near the border of India and Nepal. They opened fire and killed several demonstrators. A group of the demonstrators then stormed the police station and wiped out all of the twenty-two policemen inside. The policemen, we should point out, were themselves Indians.

Here we see the fine line in what are intended to be non-violent and yet confrontational demonstrations can spill over into violence. But regardless of how much finger-pointing you use, violence was the last thing the Mahatma wanted. He immediately called for the suspension of the boycott.

That didn't stop the British from arresting him. The British also arrested hundreds of other Indians and 19 were executed. The Mahatma went on a hunger strike.

The hunger strike - or "fast" as the Mahatma preferred - became one of his favored methods of protest. He was actually pretty clever in its implementation. Officially the Mahatma would say that his fast was not an attempt at coercion but was also a gesture of self-rebuke. He was acknowledging, he said, that he bore some responsibility for what had happened and wished to discourage further violence. But the fasts and their rationale began costing the Mahatma some supporters. If the Mahatma said the fasts were for his own penitence, then it looked like he was caving into the British.

Being the Great Soul: It's a Living.

One question many people wonder, but few ask. How the heck do you pay for being the Great Soul of the Indian people? I mean, even a man dedicated to poverty has to eat. The Mahatma also had a wife and kids. How did he manage to get - using the words of a famous American - the "ready"?

Although the Mahatma was pretty frugal, frugality has its costs. Sarojini, the lady we mentioned above who picked a husband without parental intervention, used to joke that it took a fortune to keep the Mahatma poor.

We saw that in Durban the Mahatma was able to find people of means to chip in for his upkeep. He also had Herman Kellenbach, his wealthy friend, put up what George Washington called necessary expenses. Then after he moved to India there was the wealthy businessman, Ghanashyam Das Birla. Ghanashyam made regular contributions to the Mahatma and let him stay at the spacious Ghanashyam mansion whenever he wanted.

Of course this living arrangement provides grist for criticism. Shoot, anyone can declare a life of poverty as long as you can live in the home of a rich fat cat, eat the rich fat cat's food, and get bailed out of jail by the rich fat cat. The Mahatma, say his critics, was just a big phony.

Phony or not, once he was released, the Mahatma decided to prove his salt - literally.

The Salt March

As in most countries, the citizens of India used a lot of salt. In a day before refrigeration, it was important for preserving food as well as being a flavoring. Best of all with such a large coastline it was easy to set up a number of profitable salt works.

But not everyone lived on the coast. So salt had long been a commodity of trade. It was also a traditional source of government revenue and for centuries the various princes, rajahs, rulers, and head honchos had been raking in the dough by imposing a salt tax.

But like most taxes, they kept a-rising, and by 1930 the cost was getting too much to be palatable (no joke intended). And as with most items being sold in India, the salt was manufactured by British monopolies, and the work was carried out by poorly paid Indian labor.

So the Mahatma organized a protest. You didn't have to pay the tax if you didn't buy the salt. And you didn't have to buy the salt if you made it yourself.

Starting on March 12, 1930, the Mahatma walked from Ahmedabad to the ocean - a distance of over 200 miles. As he made his way through the countryside he was joined by more and more people until he was literally leading an army. After 24 days they reached the sea. There everyone began to make salt. Soon they had mounds of the stuff.

Well, once more the British had to enforce the law. So they sent in the troops. They confiscated the salt and stored it in fenced in areas. But the Indians moved in and began to snitch it back.

The British did not repeat the blunder of the Amritsar Massacre. On the other hand newsreels of the British police (who were often Indians) beating unarmed civilians with steel tipped bamboo clubs made the rounds. An estimated 60,000 people were arrested yet again. The Mahatma himself spent the next nine months in jail.

Rally Round the Tables

With the continuing rise of discontent and yes, violence, clearly the British had to do something. In 1930, there were a series of meetings scheduled in London on what to do about the - quote - "Indian Problem" - unquote. Plenty of Englishmen and representatives from other countries showed up. But not a single native Indian was invited. Since he was in jail, the Mahatma sure couldn't go.

Realizing their faux pas the British released the Mahatma and said he could attend the second of what was called the "Round Table Conferences". To the consternation of the politicians, the Mahatma was greeted as a celebrity. Ordinary people flocked to see him and he rubbed elbows with big stars like Charlie Chaplin.

The conferences solved nothing and at the end of 1931, the Mahatma returned to India. He was now working for India's complete independence.

For the next decade the picture of the small, grandfatherly, and wiry figure in loincloth and sitting on a prayer mat became familiar to the world. Public opinion began to tilt. The idea that India should be granted Dominion Status for England was seriously floated. That is, the Indians could manage their internal affairs, have their own legislature, judiciary, and prime minister, and yet Britain would still conduct the foreign policy.

But the Mahatma continued to organize protests. He was arrested in 1932 and only released after he began another hunger strike. Then in 1933 he was arrested again and sentenced to a year in prison. But after beginning another fast he was released, much to the growing chagrin of, well, let's say some of the more traditional British politicians.

Britain had other worries of course. This was the decade where people of some countries that had established democratic and freely elected governments began to turn toward rabble rousing and hate-mongering politicians. In particular, the grandson of Maria Schicklgruber had begun making demands to add territory to Germany. For a while people ignored him and let him do what he wanted. But in September 1939, he said he needed one more country to round off his annexations. Britain said no and when the German army invaded Poland, Britain declared war.

Originally the Mahatma agreed the Indians should fight alongside of the British. But - and it was a big "but" - he said England had to grant India immediate independence. Not after the war, but now. When nothing happened, the Mahatma called for another round of civil disobedience.

The Quitters and the Splitters

At this point, we must admit we have neglected to mention another important organization and individual in the history of the late 19th and early 20th century India. That is the All-Indian Muslim League or just the Muslim League, then led by Muhammad Ali Jinnah.

Muhammad was in fact born a Hindu and had converted to Islam. He believed in Hindu-Muslim harmony, but he also realized that if India gained independence, the Muslims would be a perpetual minority. He began to believe that the establishment of a separate Muslim country within the present boundaries was essential. But this would mean that if there was independence, there would also be partition.

For now, though, the British were in a quandary. They couldn't waste their time putting down disorder in their largest colony and still fight a World War. So they sent Sir Stafford Cripps - of whom during a broadcast Lowell Thomas accidentally switched the vowels - who met with the Mahatma as well as Muhammad. Sir Stafford also spoke with Jawaharlal Nehru with whom Sir Stafford was on friendly terms. Jawaharlal was emerging as one of the India's major politicians, and he thought independence was the only realistic option.

Sir Stafford's efforts came to nothing. You wonder if he got a t-shirt that said "I tried to negotiate India's independence and all I got was this lousy 'Quit India Movement'".

The Quit India Movement was the Mahatma's new demand that Britain immediately "quit" India and get the heck out. Of course, they didn't and Britain tossed virtually all of the important India Quitters in the pokey. The Mahatma was jailed again August 9, 1942, as was Jawaharlal. They remained behind bars for two years.

Caste Makes Waste

Suppose, just suppose, India did gain independence. The more thoughtful of its citizens knew the country would have its own problems. And one of the biggest problems was how to handle the caste system in a country that was supposed to be a democracy.

When you read articles about the Mahatma, sometimes you wonder if you're reading about the same man. Was he an idealist who fought to end discrimination of the lower castes and work for their equality as many writers state? Or was he a firm believer that the castes were necessary for a proper Hindu society?

The two philosophies are not mutually exclusive and other countries have similar issues. For instance, in America there were people who believed in the "Separate But Equal" doctrine regarding segregation of the races (amazingly some बेवक़ूफ़ still do). And yet they still convinced themselves that what they wanted was best for America's black citizens. For instance, folklorist Alan Lomax mentioned that his dad, John, had a real sympathy for the plight of the African Americans, but he still believed in preserving the - quote - "basic goodness" - unquote - of the Southern Way of Life. That seems to have been the Mahatma's attitude toward the castes.

There are four major castes (varna, वर्णा) in India. From highest prestige to lowest these are: Brahmins (teachers and priests), Kshatriyas (warriors and rulers), Vaishyas (merchants, traders, and farmers), and the Shudras (laborers). Clearly the castes are defined by occupation. There are also castes within castes, and these subdivisions can number in the hundreds.

But what is sometimes called the lowest caste - the Avarna (अवर्ण) - is strictly speaking outside the caste system. Commonly called the Untouchables (achut, अछूत), the more proper term today is the Dalits (दलित,"broken, scattered") a word apparently coined by the social reformer Jotirao Govindrao Phule. The Mahatma used the word Harijan, (हरिजन) which means "Children of God).

The Avarna were those who traditionally cleaned latrines, caught rats, handled dead animals (including leatherworkers), picked up or scavenged for garbage and refuse, made fuel from dung, cremated the dead, wove cloth, swept the streets, made booze, and collected "nightsoil".

There is some question as to how old the caste system is. The usual answer is it's so old that no one really knows when it originated (maybe 3000 years ago). Others, though, state that the system, although old, was far less exclusive than it became in modern times. "Caste", in fact, is from the Portugese word casta, and some historians claim that the rigidity of the modern system only arose after the foreign occupiers came in and imposed their misconceptions on Indian society and made castes part of the legal administration.

But whenever the castes originated, like many types of discrimination it has been justified on religious grounds. The Brahmins, we learn, were created from the head of the Hindu god Brahma, the Kshatriyas from his arms, Vaishyas from his thighs, and the Shudras from his feet. In actuality the castes probably originated from certain tribes being specialists in certain occupations which then became hereditary.

The true leader for the rights of the Dalits was not the Mahatma but Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar. Bhimrao was, like the Mahatma, a lawyer and later entered politics.

Bhimarao was himself a Dalit. As is often the case, the higher castes could point to him and say, see, there's no discrimination. I mean if a Dalit can become an important public figure - and who later helped write the Indian constitution - then what's the problem? And look at Kocheril Raman Narayanan! He was born in a thatched hut - the Indian equivalent of America's log cabin - and became the President of India!

All of which means nothing regarding day-to-day discrimination. Many Dalits claim that their lives have changed little over the centuries. They still handle the most disagreeable, unpleasant, and dangerous jobs, and in some instances serve as virtual slaves to their employers. Others though say that the system has loosened up, and Dalits can even intermarry with the other castes. But no one denies that castes are still very much part of Indian society.

The Indian Constitution bans discrimination based on caste. The government also ensures that a minimum number of government jobs must be awarded to the Dalits. In doing so the Constitution specifically defines the Scheduled Caste which is, in fact, the Dalits. So on one hand the constitution forbids discrimination of by castes and yet it officially codifies the concept of caste into the Constitution.

Here's where Bhimrao and the Mahatma differed in philosophy. Bhimrao said you couldn't have equality and end discrimination if people were divided. He felt the caste system was a blot on Indian society and had to be completely abolished.

The Mahatma, though, believed the castes were fundamental in preserving Traditional Hindu Values. For instance he wrote:

I believe that if Hindu society has been able to stand, it is because it is founded on the Caste system.

To destroy the Caste system and adopt the Western European social system means that Hindus must give up the principle of hereditary occupation which is the soul of the Caste system. Hereditary principle is an eternal principle. To change it is to create disorder.

At this point everyone stops and asks, "Say what?"

Is the Mahatma, the Great Soul of the Indian people, actually saying that it's better that people be locked into the jobs of their parents, grandparents, great-grandparents, and way on back?

That's sure what it sounds like.

But if you think this last quote was weird, the Mahatma said things that make even less sense:

It will be a chaos if every day a Brahmin is to be changed into a Shudra and a Shudra is to be changed into a Brahmin. The Caste system is a natural order of society.

"Every day a Brahmin is to be changed into a Shudra and a Shudra is to be changed into a Brahmin???????"

"The Caste system is a natural order of society?????"

JUST WHAT THE नरक IS THE MAHATMA TALKING ABOUT??????!!!!!?????

At this point, we can honestly say we have found one topic where the Mahatma clearly, completely, indisputably, and unambiguously was entirely full of and replete with ...

.... "nightsoil".

In his philosophy of the caste system we clearly catch the Mahatma in what can only be called blatant hypocrisy. There is no way the Mahatma would have insisted on preserving the caste system if it was he who had the "hereditary occupation" of clambering down into a sewer to clean out a stopped-up line by hand and without any protective equipment - as sometimes happens in modern Calcutta. Yet somehow he convinced himself that keeping the castes was necessary for a "moral" society.

But so concerned was the Mahatma that Bhimrao might actually abolish the castes that he worked to keep Bhimrao out of office. His main objection was that the British Prime Minister, Ramsey McDonald, might agree with Bhimrao to bestow on the Dalits a separate electorate.

But what, as Flakey Foont asked Mr. Natural, does this mean?

"Electorates" are just groups of people who vote for the candidates to represent them. In the United States an electorate is based on what states or districts you live in. They are are not based on social status or occupation.

Bhimrao, though, had decided that the Dalits needed more than just the right to vote. He believed that the prejudice against them was so great that only they should vote for their own representatives. Without such a "separate electorate", Bhimrao was afraid that the other castes would actually control who represented the Dalits. Why that would almost be as crazy as if lower income voters were voting for candidates who were mega-millionaires!

In fact, the situation was even worse. The proposal was that the Dalits would be represented proportionally by the percentage of Dalits in the state. And because some states had a low Dalit population some Dalits would not be able to vote for a Dalit candidate at all.

For his part, the Mahatma went on a number of fasts regarding the Untouchables. The first was in 1932 and it did have a positive effect. Some communities began breaking down the Dalit exclusion. In these towns and villages, the Untouchables were allowed to enter temples, permitted to take water from wells used by other castes, and allowed to eat with others.

However, there was more to this fast that just alerting the world to the plight of the Dalits. Some scholars, particularly Dalit historians, have pointed out that the Mahatma was determined to continue this "Fast Unto Death" until the British agreed to squelch the idea of the separate electorates. So far from being a fast for the Dalits, it was a fast against their interests.

Finally a compromise was reached. The agreement - the Poona Pact - specified that a certain number of seats would be reserved for the Dalits. However, they would be selected in ordinary elections, with all the population voting. So although the proposal sounded good on the surface, it still meant that other caste members could vote for - and so perhaps control - the candidates who were representing the Dalits.

To this day there are a lot of Dalits who don't look on the Mahatma with the reverence the rest of the world does. For his part, Bhimrao said he only agreed to the Poona Pact because he believed that if the Mahatma died during his fast there would be violence directed at the Dalits. Years later he stated that the Mahatma was a devious and manipulative man - and undeserving the title of "Mahatma".

It's the Money, बेवकूफ!

For all the marches, protests, and boycotts, the British would have loved to hold onto to a country of over 350 million people. True, virtually none of them wanted to be part of the British Empire, but that was something the English thought they could put up with.

But let's face it. It cost a lot of money to run an Empire on Which the Sun Never Sets. And World War II had left England pretty much broke. There just wasn't the dough to hang on to India much longer.

The war ended in Europe on June 25, 1945. England bowed to the inevitable and decided, yes, they would grant India its independence. But as a face saving gesture India was still listed as a dominion in the British Commonwealth ("British Empire" was sounding a bit tacky). But by then the word "dominion" meant little. Citizens of dominions no longer had to swear allegiance to the Crown and a dominion had full independence regarding membership in the new United Nations. Soon the countries simply became voluntary members of the "Commonwealth of Nations".

Divvying up a Subcontinent

But there still remained a serious question. What was India going to be? Would it have the old historical boundaries or would it be divided? And how could it be divided? India was one of the most diverse countries in the world. You not only had Hindus and Muslims, but also Sikhs, Christians, Jains, Buddhists, Parsees, and Jews.

To work out details of independence, a conference in the Himalayan town of Shimla (then usually spelled Simla) was called on June 24, 1945. The Mahatma, now out of jail, attended the conference as did Jawaharlal and Muhammad.

The situation was strange. On a day-to-day and personal level, the ethnic groups got along well. Hindu kids would have Muslim friends. They went to school together and played together. Their parents saw each other daily and patronized their businesses. So it seems like there would be no problem in keeping up with one happy country.

But on the other hand there were customs that kept the groups separate, customs which in some ways were similar to the boundaries that divided the castes. Members of some religions would not eat with those of other faiths, and they wouldn't shake hands as touching was forbidden. Some people would not even drink water from the same public fountains used by members of other sects.

Where you really had problems was in places like the Punjab in the north of the country. It had a Muslim majority but large Sikh and Hindu pluralities. It was also one of the richer provinces as far as natural resources. If there was partition, would it be part of India or Pakistan, as the new country was now being called? Or would it, too, be split?

The idea of partition began to cause serious trouble. One Sikh kid in the Punjab had a lot of Muslim friends. But suddenly he was told not to have anything to do with them. He didn't know what was going on.

But Muhammad Ali Jinnah had become convinced that there had to be partition. The rights of Muslims would be swamped by the large Hindu population. Muslims needed their own country.

The Mahatma and Jawaharlal were also adamant. India must remain united. Besides Muhammad was worrying unnecessarily. The Muslims would have no problem in a country where freedom of religion was not only a given but a centuries old tradition.

Muhammad remained skeptical. It wasn't just freedom of religion. There was the matter of political representation. There were two Hindus for every Muslim. So the Muslims could always be outvoted.

But Muhammad hastened to say he would be reasonable, and he offered a compromise. As long as a United India had a limited central government and the individual states retained the true functional power, he would drop his demand for partition. That way the Muslims would have true proportional influence in their provinces. After all, if there was the harmony that the Mahatma and Jawaharlal claimed, what did it matter if the actual control was at the state level?

Now it was time for the Mahatma and Jawaharlal to object. They were after all lefties. They believed in a strong central government. A United India, yes. But a United Federal India.

Here Muhammad decided to pull a Mahatma. No, he didn't fast. But on August 16, 1946, he called for general strike of Muslims in Calcutta. Who first dubbed it "Direct Action Day" isn't clear, but the name certainly doesn't imply there would be peaceful marches with singing crowds. On the other hand Muhammad certainly did not want the rallies to initiate what was essentially a civil war.

After the principal meeting broke up, gangs began roaming the city. The first day appears to have been largely Muslims attacking Hindus and their homes and businesses. But on the second day Hindus retaliated in kind.

The violence continued for three days. No one agrees on the total number of deaths, and the estimates range from 4,000 to 15,000. But all agree it was a lot.

The Mahatma decried the violence. He specifically called for Hindus to stop attacking Muslims. So the more Hardline Hindus began thinking the Mahatma was not only a softie on the British, but also easy on the Muslims.

Archibald Wavell, then the Viceroy of India, was criticized for doing too little to stem the violence. But he claimed that sending in soldiers rather than having the local police quell the riots would have only fanned the flames. No one was convinced with the explanation, and the British quickly appointed a new Viceroy.

On February 12, 1947, Louis Mountbatten, who had been Supreme Allied Commander in Southeast Asia, took over. He was a man of incredible tact and all in all was a pretty decent sort of chap. Instead of just limiting attendance at official functions and receptions to a few select Indian politicians, he began inviting ordinary businessmen and community leaders. He became particularly good friends with Jawaharlal Nehu, and there were the inevitable rumors that Louis's wife Edwina was really good friends with Jawaharlal.

But Louis had to get things going. First of all, there was the nagging problem with what to do with the Princely States. You'll remember that these were autonomous provinces which were run by near-absolute rulers. The only stipulation was they had to acknowledge the British were ultimately in charge. There were so many Princely States - over 500 - that they took up nearly half of the Indian subcontinent.

The princes naturally (and naively) figured that they would be able to set up their own independent countries. Officially they had that option, but Louis cautioned them that in the end they would end up as part of a United India, willingly or no. The only Princely State to declare independence was Hyderabad, and as Jawaharlal warned, it was soon forced to join the All-India Club.

Now all Britain had to do was to decide how to divvy up the country.

Louis set up a Boundary Commission. The man in charge of actually drawing the line was Sir Cyril Radcliffe. Sir Cyril knew he had a thankless task. No matter where he put the boundary there would be trouble.

But he did his best. Making sure the boundaries avoided crossing major railroad and river routes, he drew a line that defined the regions by the religious majorities. In other words, nationality would be defined by religion. And yes, the Punjab was divided between the two countries.

Afraid that the boundary would not meet with universal approval (and it didn't) Louis decided they would keep the border a secret. In fact, the public wasn't informed where Pakistan began and India ended until after the independence ceremonies were over.

The plan was for the British to leave India in 1948. But suddenly Louis announced they'd move up the date by a year, and the British would pull out by the summer of 1947. When asked why, he privately said if he waited, he'd bear responsibility for the law and order - or lack thereof.

Exactly what no one wanted to happen happened. People began moving from regions where their families had lived for generations. Hindus in Pakistan and Muslims in India began crossing the borders. People traveled on foot and on the few trains available. They literally sat on the roofs of the cars, hung on to the sides, and sat on the cowcatchers of the engines.

Violence broke out, and refugees were attacked and killed. Even riding on trains wasn't safe, and in some cases a train would pull into a station with none of the passengers left alive.

Resettlement was a nightmare. Refugee camps sprang up in both countries. It's estimated that 15 million people crossed the new borders and a million died. Today there are less than 15% Muslims in India and less than 2 % Hindus in Pakistan.

Finally on August 15, 1947, India and Pakistan became independent countries. Since then they've fought at least four wars with numerous border confrontations and standoffs. Both countries, by the way, have nuclear weapons.

For Pakistan the logistics of running a new country was complicated by its division into East and West parts which were separated by a thousand mile chunk of India. Non-contiguous countries rarely last, and in 1971, East Pakistan declared its independence. After another horrible war, it became the country of Bangladesh.

Will the Real Mahatma Please Stand Up?

A popular pastime today is to find honored and revered historical figures and write how they were really jerks. George Washington? Just another slaveholder. Andrew Jackson? The author of Native American genocide.

And Mohandas ....?

Yep. He's a popular target too. In fact, you'll find more and more "You-Don't-Know-the-Real-Gandhi" articles popping up on the Fount of All Knowledge. Look what Mahatma wrote in 1940 to the person we mentioned earlier - the grandson of Maria Schicklgruber.

Dear Friend

That I address you as a friend is no formality. I own no foes.

We have no doubt about your bravery or devotion to your fatherland, nor do we believe that you are the monster described by your opponents.

I am,
Your sincere friend,
M. K. Gandhi.

Huh? The Mahatma is writing to Hitler that he was his friend, that Hitler was brave, and that he wasn't the monster his opponents claimed?

You call that a "Great Soul"?

Not, as Eliza Doolittle said, bloody likely.

Of course the Mahatma's fans rise to the occasion. They point out that the curmudgeons are leaving out the most important parts of the letter. If you read the rest of it, you'll find the Mahatma also said:

But your own writings and pronouncements and those of your friends and admirers leave no room for doubt that many of your acts are monstrous and unbecoming of human dignity, especially in the estimation of men like me who believe in universal friendliness. Such are your humiliation of Czechoslovakia, the rape of Poland, and the swallowing of Denmark. I am aware that your view of life regards such spoliations as virtuous acts. But we have been taught from childhood to regard them as acts degrading humanity. Hence we cannot possibly wish success to your aims.

If you attain success in the war, it will not prove that you were in the right. It will only prove that your power of destruction was greater.

If not the British, some other power will certainly improve upon your method and beat you with your own weapon. You are leaving no legacy to your people of which they would feel proud. They cannot take pride in a recital of cruel deeds, however skillfully planned. I, therefore, appeal to you in the name of humanity to stop the war.

So you see the letter was far from being a "let's-get-cozy-with-Adolph" missive. Instead, the friendship parts and the sign-off actually come off as irony, if not sarcasm.

Well, his answer was definite. You stand up to the Gestapo, the NKVD, or the Black Shirts as you do to any other terroristic state dictatorships, said the Mahatma. You instigate passive resistance.

What? Oppose Hitler and the rest by passive resistance? How ridiculous! How absurd!

There were, though, some Germans who did just that. Organizations like The White Rose took a completely non-violent approach to resisting Hitler and distributed anti-Nazi leaflets throughout the country. Although the tale of these brave students makes inspiring reading, if we're honest we have to admit that the effect of the White Rose in defeating Hitler was practically nil. Virtually all of the members were captured and executed.

The Mahatma's letter also had no influence on Hitler. The British intercepted the message and so Adolph never got it.

The Not-So-Gentle Family Man

It's one thing to venerate the Mahatma when seen from decades after his death and from the window of carefully selected films and photographs. But as we learn from the life of Albert Schweitzer, actually living with a saint could be a pain in the नितंब.

Remember that the Mahatma's and Kasturba's nuptials were a parental arrangement. So it's likely neither Mahatma nor Kasturba really got much of a chance to see if they were really compatible. The Mahatma himself ruefully mentioned he didn't treat Kasturba as well as he should. But even his self-description as a "cruelly kind husband" seems a bit generous.

There's one story that once the Mahatma noticed that Kasturba was doing her household chores. But she wasn't doing her chores cheerfully. So the Mahatma upbraided her for this fault.

Kasturba's exasperated response then prompted the Mahatma to grab her by the hand and drag her to the front gate where told her to beat it. She told him to cut the [nonsense] and quit making scenes in public. Where did he expect her to go, anyway? Although Mahatma admitted he regretted his behavior, he couldn't admit it to Kasturba.

Naturally the Mahatma's critics seize on such stories as an example of how rotten this supposed saint really was. And then when they really want to bash the Mahatma, they pull up the story about Kasturba's last illness.

According to the often told story, in 1944 Kasturba contracted pneumonia. Their youngest son, Devadas, pushed for the modern treatment using penicillin. But supposedly Gandhi snorted "Why don't you trust God?" Kasturba soon died.

And yet when the Mahatma contracted malaria, say the critics, he had no hesitation in letting the doctors treat him with up-to-date and state of the art Western medicine.

You can read this story not only on the Fount of All Knowledge, but also in books, those non-electronic devices with white flappy things in the middle.

So it must be true, सही बात?

Well, hold on there, यात्री.

This all happened during the time that the Mahatma was imprisoned by the British for circulating the "Quit India Resolution". The British did try to negotiate with him for his release, but he remained steadfast and was kept a prisoner. Kasturba had also been arrested - she too was an activist - and imprisoned with him.

The couple were being held at the Aga Khan Palace. The routine was scarcely arduous. The Mahatma got up around 6:30, washed, and ate breakfast. He'd read newspapers and then walked in the garden. He would discuss politics and make notes. Next he would teach Sanskrit to Sushila Nayyar, who was his personal physician as well as the sister of his secretary, Pyarelal Nayar. He'd end his day with more reading, political discussions, and making more notes for articles, books, or speeches.

So staying with her husband was probably much more healthful for Kasturba than living by herself. The Mahatma himself suggested the cost for his upkeep was too high to justify. He would be happy to be in a regular prison.

As far as Kasturba's last illness, the actual cause seems to be in dispute. One author pointed out that Kasturba was not simply suffering from pneumonia. She had been having irregular heartbeats for some time and then also suffered a number of heart attacks. The author pointed out that the Mahatma did not deny Kasturba western medicine, but simply stated that her conditioned had deteriorated to the point that no medicine - western or traditional - was having any effect. So further treatment of any kind was discontinued.

Mahatma's letters to Devadas also seem to go against the story. He mentions there was a physician who provided treatment but if anything it made her worse. This is not necessarily unexpected. Sometimes in elderly and infirm patients their frailty can't stand up to what would be the preferred treatment.

Finally what we don't have is Kasturba's own part in the decisions. It may very well be she was the one who refused any further treatment. Certainly the Mahatma said that they both were willing to accept whatever happened.

As far as the Mahatma's accepting - quote - "modern treatment" - unquote - for malaria, what he took was quinine. Far from being a new-fangled innovation, quinine had been effectively administered as cinchona bark extracts since the early 1600's. If anything, taking quinine was a traditional treatment which just happened to work.

As far as his behavior toward Kasturba, Mahatma's friends will point out that he was doing nothing worse than harboring the then almost universal attitudes of the husbands toward their wives - and not just in India. Even in the (snort) enlightened West, a goodly number of men expected to call the shots for family decisions. The wives are then expected to do their bidding and more or less cheerfully. The famous "dinner-on-the-table" attitude was common well past the mid-20th century.

If being married to the Great Soul could be more like living with a Great Chauvinist, then what was it like being one of his kids? Well, that's where you have to read about Harilal, Manilal, Ramdas, and Devdas.

The Mahatma could be a demanding and strict father and in some accounts you'll read he refused to let his sons attend schools in England (as he himself had done) and wanted them to work at "honest" labor of blue-collar jobs. Huh! And here is the man who was able to declare a life of poverty by sponging off his rich multi-millionaire friends!

This scenario, if not completely untrue, is certainly an oversimplification. The Mahatma's most difficult associations were with his oldest son Harilal. Harilal had been left in the care of a well-to-do uncle in India when his mom joined the Mahatma in South Africa. Living without a firm parental hand, Harilal began to prefer the good life. As an adolescent, he found the pleasures of wine, women, and song, particularly the first two.

But when Harilal finally went to South Africa, he was a bit non-plussed to find he was not given preferential treatment. Then when a friend offered to get Harilal a scholarship to study in England, the Mahatma turned it down saying there were more deserving young men. There was some justice in the Mahatma's action since Harilal had been a bit slack in his studies.

On the other hand, Harilal did enter the fight for the rights of the Indians. He even went to jail for his satyagraha, and the Mahatma praised his son in a letter to Leo Tolstoy.

But the friction still existed. At one point Harilal become so irritated with his dad that he left South Africa and went back to India without bothering to say he was leaving. He returned to Africa briefly, but in 1911 he moved back to India for good.

But the Mahatma was still Harilal's dad. Recently there were found a number of letters the Mahatma wrote to his son. They show a concerned father giving advice but at times lapsing into irritation and even anger. The Mahatma now offered to send his son to England, but Harilal was no longer interested.

Out on his own, Harilal caroused with the ladies and reveled with his friends. After his first wife died he began drinking even more heavily and often showed up drunk when visiting his relatives. In what some have referred to as a "stunt", Harilal publicly converted to Islam but soon reconverted back to Hinduism.

In the motion picture, Gandhi, My Father, Harilal was found lying comatose on a street in Bombay. Although taken from a movie, this scene is more or less what really happened. Harilal was taken to a hospital where he died on June 18, 1948.

The Mahatma and Les Femmes

Today people point to the Mahatma's strong advocacy of women's rights:

I passionately desire the utmost freedom for our women. I detest child marriages. I shudder to see a child widow, and shiver with rage when a husband just widowed contracts with brutal indifference another marriage. I deplore the criminal indifference of parents who keep their daughters utterly ignorant and illiterate and bring them up only for the purpose of marrying them off to some young man of means. Notwithstanding all this grief and rage, I realize the difficulty of the problem. Women must have votes and an equal legal status.

Others, though, point out that this statement was nothing more than what was already held by progressive men of the time. It's also only what many women had been saying for decades. And there is a rather cryptic comment he added that gives us pause:

But the problem does not end there. It only commences at the point where women begin to affect the political deliberations of the nation.

Hm. A "problem" begins when women begin to affect the political deliberations of the nation?

This doesn't sound quite so far-seeing.

As for his actually dealing with the ladies, the Mahatma was decidedly strange.

You remember that when he was in his mid-thirties that the Mahatma took a vow of chastity. But he also decided that what was good for him was necessary for others. If they marry, he said, all good Indian men and women should abstain from, well, from all intimacy.

Here's where we see similarities with the Mahatma and many other religious leaders. That is, for someone who preached abstention from physical congress the Mahatma sure thought a lot about it.

And we wonder how much of this was just thinking.

By now everyone knows that the Mahatma would "test" his spiritual resolve by sleeping next to nubile young ladies - but the Mahatma's friends say, without embracing them. He would also bathe with them and have the girls give him a massage. All of this was while he was - as Harry Houdini put it - "in a nude condition".

Now here's where the Mahatma fans go into spittle flinging diatribes. The criticism, they say, simply shows how salacious the ethnocentric Puritanical westerners are. For one thing we are dealing with a culture where privacy was a luxury. Many of the women we are talking about were his relatives. You'll see pictures of the Mahtama walking along with two of the young women at his side. He is leaning on them and he jokingly called them his "walking sticks". These were usually his grandnieces Manuben (called Manu) and Abhaben (Abha). So they were just helping the now elderly Mahatma in getting around, cooking his meals, and assisting him in his work. And one of the young women often seen with him was Shusila Nayar, his personal physician.

For their part the young ladies never spoke against the Mahatma. Manu said she actually felt that far from acting in a questionable manner, the Mahatma was simply taking the part of her mother. Yes, her mother.

The problem with this it's-the-culture-and-the-times-stupid explanation is that a heck of a lot of people from the Mahatma's own culture and times were concerned with what one author has called Mahatma's "kookiness". Even the Mahatma's political allies and personal friends (including Jawaharlal Nehru) opposed his lifestyle with the ladies and sometimes expressed their dismay most vehemently.

But the point is that the Mahatma's habits with the ladies were diametrically opposite to what he preached for others - again something we see with increasing frequency in modern public figures and religious leaders. I mean a man who preaches that wives should avoid and "resist" their husbands shouldn't be testing his own resolve by getting into the sack with young ladies or have them give him a rubdown.

The recent discovery of Manu's diaries have also raised disconcerting questions about the effect of the Mahatma's behavior on the young ladies themselves. Far from keeping his distance under the sheets, Manu reports at least one time when he did embrace her. A bit more disturbing is that Manu's diaries show us a manipulative Mahatma who delighted in sowing discord in his ashram. He would sometimes speak disparagingly to Manu about Abha and Shusila and the other girls. We strongly suspect that he spoke similarly to the others when Manu wasn't around. On the other hand, maybe the Mahatma was simply pioneering the interpersonal techniques of the modern corporate manager.

We can't avoid the fact that some of the Mahatma's ideas regarding the ladies were ridiculous to the point of gaffawibility. In 1935, he met the early women's rights advocate Margret Sanger who lived long enough to be interviewed by television reporter Mike Wallace.

Margaret was one of the earliest advocates of birth control and said that smaller families were far better for the wives. The Mahatma agreed that smaller families were better for women, but he pooh-poohed Margret's ideas on how to achieve that goal. The Mahatma was still stuck on his "just say no" philosophy and said that even married couples should always keep their distances. Total abstinence was the only answer, and if need be the women should resist their husbands [non-violently we hope, Mahatma] and perhaps even leave them altogether.

Everyone knows that the most rabid proselytizers are really not preaching to convince the unbelieving. Instead they're preaching to convince themselves. The Mahatma knew darn well you could not have a society if everyone quit reproducing, and it's hard to accept that he believed that nonsense himself.

Regardless of what the Mahatma did or did not do, he seems neither to have considered the subject or cared about how his "experiments" or his overall philosophy affected the ladies. One of the Mahatma's followers remembered one of the women alternatively weeping and laughing unrestrainedly for no apparent reason. And in her later years Manu suffered psychological problems and she died at age 40. She never married.

Of course, the cause of Manu's later problems may not have been her helping out her uncle. After all, she was also right standing next to the Mahatma on January 30, 1948, and that must have been a traumatizing experience.

Post-Raj Mahatma

You'd think that the Mahatma could now step back - after all he was 77 years old - and take it easy. But his troubles were far from over. After all, the Independent India he wanted wasn't the Independent India he got. Instead of a single diverse-but-unified country with people living in harmony and guided by morality, he got two countries that have been at near constant conflict for over half a century. And a lot of curmudgeons blamed the Mahatma.

Even before partition there had been assassination plots. Then on January 20, 1948, someone lobbed a grenade while the Mahatma was giving a speech. It landed outside the crowd which promptly scattered. No one was hurt and perhaps this was simply meant as a warning. Either that or the would-be assassins simply got cold feet.

But ten days later the Mahatma was staying at the home of his wealthy friend, Ghanashyam Das Birla. The Mahatma was walking to a prayer meeting, and as usual he was leaning on Manu and Abha. Then from the crowd a young man named Nathuram Godse stepped up. He pulled a gun and fired four shots.

Hit three times, the Mahatma was carried back to the house. No doctor was around, and the Mahatma soon died.

Godse was a member of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (राष्ट्रीय स्वयंसेवक संघ). Usually called the RSS or the National Volunteer Organization, this conservative and nationalistic group had opposed partition. Controversial even today, the RSS has been praised because of its assistance during national emergencies, but criticized for its paramilitary organization and regimented ideologies. The RSS denied any part in the assassination.

Godse's own explanation was long and rambling. But briefly he blamed the Mahatma for India's partition and the crisis that followed. That partition had been a done deal for over six months, that the death of the Mahatma would change nothing, and that Godse and his friends had failed to keep the country united too shows the irrationality of Godse's mind. The truth is that the Mahatma and most of the Hindu leaders saw that options were either to accept partition or have a civil war which would have resulted in partition anyway. Godse was convicted, and although the Mahatma's youngest sons, Manilal and Ramdas, asked for clemency, he was executed nearly two years later.

The Mahatma, the Marvelers, and the Mashers

Today it seems you have to be either a Mahatma Marveler or a Mahatma Masher. He's a saint that led his nation to freedom by the force of his spirituality. Or he's a misogynistic swindling con-man continuously practicing what he didn't preach.

Either way you have to selectively choose your evidence to prove your case. So rather than rant about which Mahatma was the real Mahatma, let's turn to contemporary opinions as they are not influenced by the rose-tinted glasses of hindsight.

A recent book - written for children - quoted a British official about the time of the Round Table Conferences. This official, we read, called the Mahatma:

A Half-Naked Seditionist

Of course, no one wanted to point out that this "British official" has also been voted:

THE GREATEST
BRITON
OF ALL TIME

Yes, no one wanted to tell the kiddies that Winston Spencer Churchill couldn't stand the Mahatma.

Well, since the anonymity has been stripped away, we can reveal that what Winston really said was:

"It is alarming and also nauseating to see Mr. Gandhi, a seditious Middle Temple lawyer, now posing as a fakir of a type well known in the east, striding half-naked up the steps of the Viceregal Palace, while he is still organizing and conducting a defiant campaign of civil disobedience, to parley on equal terms with the representative of the king-emperor.

The book, as we said, was for young readers. So it also left out the last sentence of the paragraph which is also sometimes omitted from articles intended for an adult audience:

Such a spectacle can only increase the unrest in India and the danger to which white people there are exposed."

As to what Winston said when the Mahatma began a hunger strike:

"Gandhi should not be released on the account of a mere threat of fasting. We should be rid of a bad man and an enemy of the Empire if he died."

What particularly irritated Winston was he saw Mahatma's purpose as plucking out the Jewel of the Empire leaving the English with only the brass.

"Gandhi stands for the expulsion of Britain from India. Gandhi stands for the permanent exclusion of British trade from India. Gandhi stands for the substitution of Brahmin domination for British rule in India. You will never be able to come to terms with Gandhi."

Winston finally summarized his views most succinctly:

"Gandhi-ism and all it stands for will, sooner or later, have to be grappled with and finally crushed."

Clearly, the Mahatma really put a wedgie in Winston's famous pink silk skivvies - his Finest Undies you might say. For his part, Winston never wavered from his belief that Britain must control India and never grant it independence. When the Mahatma came to London, Winston couldn't be bothered to see him.

This is, as we said, one contemporary opinion.

Not every Englishman was a Mahatma Masher or a Marveler. George Orwell, known best for writing the novels Animal Farm and 1984 and a steadfast foe of colonialism, seemed a bit unsure on how to rate him. As he wrote the year after the Mahatma died:

In Gandhi's case the questions one feels inclined to ask are: to what extent was Gandhi moved by vanity - by the consciousness of himself as a humble, naked old man, sitting on a praying-mat and shaking empires by sheer spiritual power - and to what extent did he compromise his own principles by entering politics, which of their nature are inseparable from coercion and fraud?

What flummoxed George was the Mahatma's statements that in World War II the Indians should employ passive resistance to a feared Japanese invasion or that the Jews in Germany should resist Hitler by committing collective suicide. George's opinion was that refusal to actively fight against these dictatorships was for all practical purposes supporting them. Therefore during World War II, George labeled pacifists as being "objectively" pro-fascists.

Naturally such an opinion irritated many pacifists. One of pacifists who wrote George expressing his disagreement was a young medical doctor named Alex Comfort who wrote a number of popular books in the 1970's. (Yes, it was that Alex Comfort, M. D.)

George questioned whether the Mahatma really understood totalitarianism. He dealt only with the British who, despite establishing discriminatory laws in the colonies, usually maintained an open press which would print stories about the resistance and the marches. So you could walk into any theater and see newsreels showing the police attacking unarmed protesters. So for non-violent and passive resistance to be effective, you had to have an open society.

But in a country like Hitler's Germany or Stalin's Russia where people simply disappeared in the night and the films, newspapers, and magazines were simply organs for state propaganda, any demonstration or protest would never be reported. Would Gandhian tactics work there? Clearly George doubted it.

In the end George said:

One may feel, as I do, a sort of aesthetic distaste for Gandhi, one may reject the claims of sainthood made on his behalf (he never made any such claim himself, by the way), one may also reject sainthood as an ideal and therefore feel that Gandhi's basic aims were anti-human and reactionary: but regarded simply as a politician, and compared with the other leading political figures of our time, how clean a smell he has managed to leave behind!

References and Additional Reading

A Practical Sanskrit Dictionary, Arthur Macdonell, Oxford University Press, 1924.

Autobiography, Mohandas Gandhi, Dover, 1983 (Original US Publication: Public Affairs Press, 1948.

Gandhi: A Life, Yogesh Chadha, Wiley, 1997.

Gandhi: The True Man Behind Modern India, Jad Adams, Pegasus, 2011.

Gandhi: Profiles in Power, David Arnold, Pearson Education, 2001.

Gandhi: The Man, His People, and the Empire, Rajmohan Gandhi, University of California Press, 2007.

Gandhi: Against the Tide, Antony Copley, Historical Association Studies, Basil Blackwell, Limited, 1987.

"Misunderstanding Gandhi", Antony Copley, The Gandhi Foundation, October 2, 2009.

Mahatma Gandhi: Nonviolent Power in Action, Dennis Dalton, Columbia University Press, 1993.

"Indian Languages", Encyclopedia Britannica

Jadoo, John A. Keel, Julian Messner, 1957.

"Mahatma Gandhi: Indian leader", B. R. Nanda, Encyclopedia Britannica.

Was Gandhi a Racist?, The Hindu, December 3, 2016.

India in the Victorian Age: An Economic History of the People, Romesh Chunder Dut, Kegan Paul, London, 1904.

Pocket Dictionary of the English Language, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1996.

"Rare Pictures of the Last 10 years of Gandhi's Life,", Soutik Biswas, BBC News, January 11, 2016.

Anthropology, William Haviland, Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1974.

Mohandas Gandhi, SparkNotes, 2014.

"First Comes Marriage, Then Comes Love", Myrna Toledo, ABC News, January 30, 2009.

"The Mahatma in the Bedroom", Neelam Raaj, The Times of India, May 1, 2010.

"Was Mahatma Gandhi a Racist?", Soutik Biswas, BBC News, September 17, 2015.

"What Is a Psychopath?", William Hirstein, Psychology Today, January 30, 2013.

"The Lincoln-Douglas Debates: The First Complete, Unexpurgated Text", Harold Holzer, Ed., HarperCollins, 1993., New Edition: Fordham University Press, 2004.

"When to Use Insure, Ensure, and Assure", Your Dictionary, 2018.

"The Real Mahatma Gandhi, Questioning the Moral Heroism of India's Most Revered Figure", Christopher Hitchens, The Atlantic, July/August 2011.

Bulletin of the United States Bureau of Labor, No. 29, Volume V.

The South African Gandhi: Stretcher-Bearer of Empire, Ashwin Desai and Goolem Vahed, Stanford University Press, 2016.

"Sanger and Gandhi: A Complex Relationship", Robin Pokorski, The Sanger Papers Project, October 2, 2013.

"The Forgotten Violence That Helped India Break Free From Colonial Rule", Joseph McQuade, The Independent, November 10, 2016

"Map Shows How Long It Took to Travel the World in 1914", Soo Kim, The Telegraph Travel News, December 1, 2015.

"What Did Mahatma Gandhi Think of Black People", Rama Lakshmi, The Washington Post, September 3, 2015.

"India Needs to Know the Real Gandhi", Ramesh Rao, The Guardian, May 2, 2011

"South African Police to End the Use of Whips", Christopher Wren, The New York Times, September 12, 1989.

"Years of Arrests & Imprisonment of Mahatma Gandhi", mkgandhi.org

"Some of Gandhi's Early Views on Africans Were Racist. But That Was Before He Became Mahatma", E.S. Reddy, The Wire, October 18, 2016.

"Kitty Marion: The Actress Who Became a 'Terrorist'", Megha Mohan, BBC News Stories, May 27, 2018.

"Assassination of Mr Gandhi", The Guardian, January 31, 1948.

"Why It is Time to Dump Gandhi", Thenmozhi Soundararajan, Medium, June 14, 2017.

Doing Business in India For Dummies, Ranjini Manian, For Dummies, 2007.

"India's Caste System: Weakened, But Still Influential", Timothy Jones, Deutsche Welle, July 17, 2017.

"What is India's Caste System?", BBC News, July 20, 2017.

"Still at the Margins: Dalits and the Nehruvian State's Efforts against Untouchability", Shayok Chakraborty, Claremont Journal of Law and Public Policy, June 27, 2017.

"Albert Einstein's 'Shocking' Racism Revealed by Publication of Private Diaries", Chris Baynes, The Independent, June 14, 2018.

"The Dalits", Jeff Hays, Facts and Details.

"Why Do India's Dalits Hate Gandhi?", Thomas Mountain, Countercurrents.org, March 20, 2006.

"Does America Have a Caste System?", Subramanian Shankar, The Conversation, January 26, 2018.

"How India's Iconic Gandhi Cap Has Changed Sides", Andrew Whitehead, BBC World Service, April 28, 2014.

Partition: The Day India Burned, Chiwetel Ejiofor (narrator), BBC, 2007

"I Have a Dream...", Martin Luther King, 1963, Transcript, National Archives.

"A Collation of Transcripts of a Speech Given by H. Rap Brown on July 24, 1967, in Cambridge Maryland", Lawrence Peskin and Dawn Almes, Documents for the Classroom, MSA SC 2221-12-8-7, Maryland State Archives.

"Father to a Nation, Stranger to his Son", Sarfraz Manzoor, The Guardian, August 9, 2007.

"The Prodigal Who Didn't Return", Sheela Reddy, Outlook, August 27, 2007.

Gandhi in the West: The Mahatma and the Rise of Radical Protest, Sean Scalmer, Cambridge University Press, 2011.

"Reflections on Gandhi", George Orwell, Partisan Review, January 1949. Reprinted: In Front of Your Nose: The Collected Essays, Journalism, and Letters of George Orwell, Volume IV, 1945-1950., George Orwell, Sonia Orwell (editor), and Ian Angus (editor), Secker and Warburg, pp. 463-470,

Great Soul or Great Schemer? Exploring the Myth of Mahatma Gandhi, Bidisha Ray (Lecturer), Simon Fraser University, November 5, 2013.

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