The Gandhi Nobody Knows (1983) | Hacker News Reader

The Gandhi Nobody Knows (1983)

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66 pointsasciilifeform40 comments

I stopped reading at this point:

  > ...when Gandhi's wife lay dying of pneumonia and British doctors
  > insisted that a shot of penicillin would save her, Gandhi refused to
  > have this alien medicine injected in her body and simply let her die.

True as far as it goes, but a near-slanderous distortion of what actually happened:

  To those who tried to bolster her sagging morale saying "You will get
  better soon," Kasturba would respond, "No, my time is up." Shortly after
  seven that evening, Devdas took Mohandas and the doctors aside. In what
  he would later describe as "the sweetest of all wrangles I ever had with
  my father," he pleaded fiercely that Ba be given the life saving
  medicine, even though the doctors told him her condition was beyond
  help. It was Mohandas, after learning that the penicillin had to be
  administered by injection every four to six hours, who finally persuaded
  his youngest son to give up the idea. "Why do you want to prolong your
  mother's agonies after all the suffering she has been through?" Gandhi
  asked. Then he said, "You can't cure her now, no matter what miracle
  drug you may muster. But if you insist, I will not stand in your way. 
  (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kasturba_Gandhi)

The OP's calumny is reminiscent of an earlier incident where Kasturba was ill, and doctors insisted that she needed to eat beef to get better. They asked his permission, and he said that he would not grant it, but that if she was in a position to indicate her wishes, she could choose for herself. http://www.gandhi-manibhavan.org/gandhicomesalive/chap01.htm

If there is something actually interesting and historically verifiable elsewhere in this apparent hit job of an essay, I'd be grateful for a pointer, though.

What is it with the recent campaign to slam Gandhi? (http://www.metafilter.com/101933/We-believe-as-much-in-the-p...)

"What is it with the recent campaign to slam Gandhi?"

Perhaps it's that, even with his flaws, Gandhi raises the bar really high. He reminds us that we have much more internal power and potential than we want to admit to ourselves and that we have a responsibility to others.

I'm not sure what version to trust on that particular story[1], but read on. It's more an attack on the movie (and an establishment's propaganda) than on the man.

I'm Indian, and I grew up steeped in the legend of Gandhi. I've always had a close identification with him. His birthday is adjacent to mine, and I used to wear these round glasses as an adolescent. I say these things to show that I should dislike this essay. And yet I find myself unable to. It's a good, balanced, exquisitely written essay.

And having read it and pondered it and enjoyed it I find my opinion of Gandhi hasn't materially changed. He had the hustle of an entrepreneur.

"Gandhi was erratic, irrational, tyrannical, obstinate. He sometimes verged on lunacy. He believed in a religion whose ideas I find somewhat repugnant. He worshipped cows. But I will say this: he was brave. He feared no one."

Even the attack on Hinduism is interesting (I assume that's the part http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2409364 referred to as looney-land. I call it 'things you can't say'). It's cathartic to find that there's as much to criticize about Hinduism as about any of the other major religions, something I hadn't quite focused on until now. Perhaps I'm losing my roots.

---

[1] http://www.hark.com/clips/fcxrvdvphc-who-cares, http://www.imdb.com/character/ch0068895

I'm glad you said it first. This is a REALLY well written essay. The writer obviously knows something about Ghandi. He has clearly read much of the man's letters, knows who he associated with, has read several biographies, and seems to know the time period like the back of his hand.

And yet that doesn't seem to matter.

I will politely disagree, from his repeated mention of V.S.Naipaul and also his suggestion to read his books at the end, it seems the writer had a conviction and then just decided to justify himeslf by reading and quoting material which suited his point of view. The article throughout seemed written by a british apologist and if someone was to form an opinion of the british rule in india entirely upon this article it would seem that british committed no atrocities at all on India post the Jalianwala Bagh Massacre in 1919 due to the deep guilt that the incident inflicted on them. So i am uncomfortable accepting the fact that this article was written by a well-reasoned individual.

Without meaning to indulge in conversational terrorism (http://www.vandruff.com/art_converse.html, nit-picking), I don't think you meant 'at pains' where you used it.

http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/at_pains

Thanks for that. I have removed the phrase from my answer.

  > I'm not sure what version to trust on that particular story[1]

WTF? How do the Mad Men citations relate to this?

  > It's a good, balanced, exquisitely written essay.

The distortions in the first anecdote of the essay show that it's anything but balanced, and not good by any set of values which holds the truth in high regard. I can't really see the exquisiteness of the writing, but I don't really see how that relates, either.

Your response is very strange.

"WTF? How do the Mad Men citations relate to this?"

  "Mr. Campbell, who cares."
  <shocked pause>
  "What?"
  "Who *cares*? Even if this were true, who cares?"

Perhaps you had to see it in context. Anyway, I was trying to say I don't know what version to trust, and it doesn't seem that important to me. It's super easy to distort incidents from people's lives where just a couple of people were involved. All you have is hearsay.[1]

"The distortions in the first anecdote of the essay show that it's anything but balanced."

I said balanced, not truthful. The essay interleaves harsh criticism with things like, "more complex.. more interesting than the character shown on the screen," "supported the empire ardently in no fewer than three wars.. with the most extreme zeal" (which didn't strike me as criticism), "a leader looking for a cause". I think the essay has a tone of admiration for the man just beneath the surface. And given the harsh tone, the things he's not able to claim are equally remarkable. Really, you couldn't find anything better than that he changed his mind? That's pretty awesome over a whole lifetime. So he was blind to the plight of non-indians? Lincoln would be racist by today's standards.

To me the essay didn't claim a neutral point of view, so I didn't expect facts. I expected interpretation. I was not disappointed.

[1] The second link was just for fault tolerance. Who knows how long a link from hark.com will continue working.

Wow, that was... crazy. A slightly less frothing at the mouth response:

http://groups.google.com/group/soc.culture.indian/msg/38b451...

The OP article had me going, because it was partially correct about the film being a hagiography. But it went quickly into looney-land about half way through. If you look up the author and his other writings, you'll realize why.

"The strongest words, however, have come from Richard Grenier, film critic for 'Commentary'. Not satisfied with simply attacking the movie and the man, Grenier in a March article for the magazine went on to vilify all of India, all of Hinduism, and then to flail at a target closer to home, and close to the hearts of his fellow neoconservatives: American liberals. Grenier's 13,000-word tirade was widely reprinted and subsequently released as a book dedicated to Norman Podhoretz and Midge Deeter."

No wonder.

> The OP article had me going, because it was partially correct about the film being a hagiography.

I think the idea and principles that Gandhi stood for are nevertheless important just as the ideas and principles the Founding Fathers of the US had in mind when framing the constitution are considered important. The details of Gandhi's life are slightly less important. Also, people fail to realize the context behind a lot of Gandhi's misgivings. It was a different era (which is no excuse) but even Abraham Lincoln wasn't of the opinion that blacks are equals and the Founding Fathers owned slaves themselves.

The lesson is to take their stories with a pinch of salt, but nevertheless feel motivated and inspired by the goals and ideals these famous people represented, not the minutiae of their actual lives.

I think the more valuable lesson is that you don't need to white-wash history to paint a figure as better than they were (especially if they were not particularly good at all in some cases), simply to uphold the value of the things we associate with them. Society doesn't have to confuse the two. A worthy idea or concept can stand on its own, even if we uncover unpleasant truths about the people involved.

I agree with this, and have for a long time, but I also think that human society is still evolving, and that evolution has until recently precluded that kind of behavior.

Great causes have been championed by heroes, moreso than on the merits of the causes themselves. Heroes are people we can identify with, and reflect a kind of perfection that most people look up to.

I think this is starting to change, thanks in part to the communication age, which is not only stripping the white-wash from our heroes but also making them gradually less necessary.

If there's one thing you don't do, it's offer any criticism of Mother Theresa, no matter what information there is in the world about her outside of the perpetuated religious and media portrayal of her to the masses.

If there's a second thing you don't do, it's offer any criticism of Ghandi.

People cling so irrationally to the persona that have been drilled into their head throughout their entire life that offering any insight or raising any contradictory perspectives on certain characters draws the same response you'd get if you went up to a devout religious person and started asking about their crazy mythology. That is, you encounter a brick-wall that only spouts that you are wrong, because (instead of The Bible Says So) "she was a saint" or "he was a pacifist". And that's as far as you'll get. People who have no investment or interest in either person will be highly offended that you would dare make any assertions.

Hyped figures perpetuated by media and society are destined to be remembered this way for eternity and any contradictions -- no matter how scholarly -- will always be categorized as hateful.

Oh, if there's a third thing you don't do, it's offer any criticism of Nelson Mandela.

Oh, and if there's a fourth thing you don't do, it's offer any criticism of Che Guevara.

5th: Dalai Lama

Well, unless it's to the Chinese. Then you can't compliment him.

The other day I was pondering if non-violent resistance really would help the Tibetans. If Gandhi's revolution really wasn't non-violent (and the transition was already well underway), that doesn't leave many cases where non-violence worked.

Che Guevara was Stalinist murderer who ran a gulag. Those are facts, not a criticism.

http://www.slate.com/id/2107100/

http://reason.tv/video/show/killer-chic

I almost commented a second ago, too, on how Che is actually controversial, because hippie kids wear him on a t-shirt they got at the mall as a generic symbol of resistance, and then some conservative asshole always has to come in with an extremely selective outrage towards human rights, and use overheated terms like "stalinist" and "gulag". Was Che ever in Russia? How did he run a gulag?

Meanwhile, neither the hippie nor the conservative could likely tell you offhand what country the guy was born in. I had to wiki it myself.

I was surprised Che was outside of South America. Here's the list of places he been to: https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/File:CheGueva... (Including being in Congo during the war)

A mirror rule applies to the monsters of history. Try to argue that Adolf H., Joseph S. or Mao Z. had some positive traits or did beneficial things.

Or even mention that, say, they liked raspberry jam on their bread for breakfast.

They were human beings, but they're better left comfortably demonized.

People value having inspirational figures more than they value knowing random facts which just happen to be true.

"People", here, might have a point.

People should value truth and authenticity. It's far more valuable than attributing inaccuracies to persons or events simply to manipulate the emotions and aspirations of mankind. If I discovered that the Moon landing was falsified, I wouldn't simply continue with a lie, because it makes me feel better to believe we really achieved such a feat. I also don't think that the truth is something one should belittle as "random facts".

I'm sure this is an argument that people like Nixon would solidly support and probably did.

(Note, I'm not a Moon landing conspiracist -- it was just an example.)

"Gandhi was erratic,irrational, tyrannical, obstinate. He sometimes verged on lunacy. He believed in a religion whose ideas I find somewhat repugnant. He worshipped cows."

That line from the article is ridiculous. Anyway, it is not an original idea to claim that Gandhi was a puppet of the British Government, an opportunist, etc. by Western AND Indian thinkers. Yes, the Indian Government has, in many ways, manufactured his character, as the article claims. Most Indians are aware of that. However, establishing hero figures is not different than what many countries, religions, and other "imaginary communities" have done to move past horrific injustices like Britain's brutal occupation of India. This article serves no beneficial purpose but to restate: history is written by the victors.

Yep. Just try and tell a conservative American what kind of person Christopher Columbus really was, or that Washington nearly got all of his men and himself captured or killed and was saved only by a freak fog one night.

He is trying to say Gandhi is flawed and trying desperately to prove it.

I celebrate any man with many flaws who goes on to create wonderful impact in the world.

I don't think I learned much from the original post. I already knew Gandhi was flawed. That is why he was wonderful. Being a man with many flaws, he achieved what was thought impossible.

This reaffirms that we each can change the world despite our own deep flaws.

Critics like to find flaws in each detail and strip us all naked. Thats what the original post seemed to me.

I learned a lot. I don't think the article is of a high quality, but it has now broadened my viewpoint on Gandhi. I find it hard to believe in something with no faults. And it seems that human nature shows that the more adamant someone is in being pure and showing the world, the more a deeper darker side they seem to have.

I hate it when people are portrayed as super human. Finding out about their weird quirks takes them down a peg..gando is just a bloke...

Apologies if this was posted recently. I couldn't find it in a cursory search via searchyc.com:

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2011/apr/28/differe...

I think there's some valid criticism of the film "Gandhi" to be had. However, an essay that insists on being flippant and glib through the repetitious use of terms like "Sir Dickie" (to describe Sir David Attenborough, used on ten occasions in the essay) is probably not it.

Nitpick: you mean Sir Richard Attenborough, who's the director of the movie. Sir David Attenborough is a naturalist.

It's of course tempting for storytellers to make their characters one-dimensional. In this case the makers of the movie decided to portray a singularly good and humanitarian Gandhi. Usually we see purely good or purely bad characters and know they are good or bad because the movie tells us. We usually don't know why characters are bad, other than the fact that they're fighting against the main character, so they must be.

The problem is this makes for boring characters. I love it when I see more complex characters and their motivations. I know that's not exactly the Gandhi the movie makers wanted to portray, but maybe it would have made for a better story.

I'm always amazed at people's desire to disparage those who have had a positive impact on the world.

Ghandi obviously wasn't perfect, but he did plenty of good things.

It's easy to be a critic, but before you decide you need to criticize something, ask yourself "what good have I done lately?"

Then shutup and get to work.

I don't see the point in attacking the character of people who have accomplished great things.

What does a person's private life have to do with their struggle against a government? Usually, not very much. It's just a more intellectual version of gossip rags. Just trying to tear down historical celebrities.

The Julian Assange Nobody Knows (2007) [0]

[0] http://web.archive.org/web/20071020051936/http://iq.org/

To the naysayers:

What would you have to find out about this man to stop worshipping him? That he ate kittens?

Or are the facts simply irrelevant?

Why is this on HN?

Lets keep it real,

There is no perfect man! A man leaves behind his persona of what he believed or did. His karma is respected.

There is always a down side to everyone, as for Gandhi he failed as a father & many more things. Accept it, this should not affect your believe for what he did which no one else could.

I believe Steve Jobs for what he doing, I know he is not perfect.

lol my 2cents :P

One man's hero is another man's villain. Remember the "good stuff" about them, follow said "good stuff" and forget the not so "good stuff".

If you don't have anything "good" to say, shut up and go about doing "good stuff" yourself.

Do explain the down-votes when you make them.

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