Showing posts with label Gandhi. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Gandhi. Show all posts

October 2 - Happy Birthday, Mahatma Gandhi

 Posted on October 2, 2021


This is an update of my post published on October 2, 2010:




Born on this day in 1869, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi became the political and spiritual leader of India during the India independence movement. He led his people to stand up to British rule—what might be called tyranny—through mass civil disobedience. But he made sure that the protests were also nonviolent.



Not only was Gandhi successful in helping India gain independence from Great Britain, he inspired other civil rights and freedom movements around the world. For example, Martin Luther King, Jr., was very influenced by Gandhi's philosophy and tactics as he led the African American civil rights movement, and Nelson Mandela continued the tradition as he worked to end apartheid in South Africa.

Many people think that Gandhi's first name was Mahatma, but Mahatma is a title that means “Great Soul.”

Gandhi was a Hindu and a vegetarian. For a while he was a fruitarian—which is someone who not only avoids meat, but also avoids dairy products, vegetables, and grains. That means that fruitarians only eat fruits and nuts! Gandhi famously used fasting—that is, not eating at all for hours or even days—to purify himself and to call attention to his political goals.


Nowadays, the memory and legacy of Mahatma Gandhi are facing fresh scrutiny for his attitudes about race and about women. When he was young, Gandhi was decisively racist. However, biographer Ramachandra Guha states that Gandhi learned and grew and became anti-racist. Some of the push-back on Gandhi as a great man has come from women who question some of his words and deeds - and such criticism is fair. However, Gandhi did work on ending discrimination based on sex and gender, and he also was a huge promoter of women in politics.

All in all, Gandhi was a hero for Hindus, and Indians, and he added some great ideas for making needed changes through ethical and non-violent resistance. And that benefitted the whole world! It was a tragic day in 1948 when a Hindu extremist assassinated him.


Find out more...

  • Here is a short biography on Gandhi. 

  • Here is a bio that also has puzzles near the bottom of the page, including a jigsaw puzzle of Gandhi and his wife. 


Powerful words...from Mohandas Gandhi

  • A small body of determined spirits fired by an unquenchable faith in their mission can alter the course of history.


  • If we could change ourselves, the tendencies in the world would also change.


  • An ounce of practice is worth more than tons of preaching.





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January 9 - Pravasi Bharatiya Divas

Posted on January 9, 2020


On this date in 1915, Mahatma Gandhi returned to India from South Africa, where he had lived for more than two decades. Gandhi had raised his family in South Africa (although he had married in India - at just age 13! - an arranged marriage! - and two of his four surviving children were born in India). Also, Gandhi had begun his civil rights activism in South Africa and developed his non-violent resistance techniques there. 

An older Gandhi - one who has
adopted the simplest Indian
loincloth and robe - looks more
familiar to us!
But it was after Gandhi's return to India, at age 45, that he became a folk hero to Indians and world famous for his non-violent efforts for human rights. It is not surprising that his October birthday is celebrated as a national holiday - but I didn't realize that the anniversary of his return to India is used as the date to celebrate Non-Resident Indians.



The holiday was established in 2000, and the concept of the Overseas Citizen of India (OCI) was launched on this date in in 2006, and since then celebrations and award ceremonies have been held from January 7 to 9 in different Indian city each year. (In 2018 the celebration was held in Singapore.) Each year the celebration has a different theme and various guest speakers.

Non-Resident Indians include people who were born in India but immigrated elsewhere and people who were born outside of India but are Indian by descent. Apparently Indians who they themselves migrated (as opposed to Indians whose parents or older ancestors migrated) are the largest group of all global migrants, with more than 17.5 million Indian migrants in 2019, out of 272 million migrants worldwide.

The largest population of Indians outside of India is in the United States, but Saudi Arabia isn't far behind! Another Middle Eastern nation, United Arab Emirates, is in third place, with Malaysia close behind it. Large populations of Indian migrants and descendants of Indian migrants live on every continent of the world, other than Antarctica of course, with the U.K. taking the top spot in Europe, South Africa having the largest group in Africa, Trinidad and Tobago in South America, and Australia being home to almost half a million Indians. Because India was part of the British Empire for almost a century, it seems pretty natural to me that Indians are especially likely to migrate to English-speaking nations.

Here are a few Non-Resident Indians who have made big contributions to the world:

Above, Khosla.
Below, Chawla.
Narinder Singh Kapany - fiber optics

Salman Rushdie - literature

S. Chandrasekhar - the mathematics of black holes

Vinod Khosla - computers, programming languages, and green (environmental) factories and products
 
Har Gobind Khorana - biochemistry

Pan Nalin - director and screenwriter

Venkatraman Ramakrishnan - structural biology

Mira Nair - film maker

Anita Desai and Kiran Desai - literature

Kalpana Chawla - astronaut

Indra Nooyi - CEO and Chairperson of PepsiCo

I could go on and on and on and on...Movies, medicine, engineering, business, art, music, technology - Non-Resident Indians are making splashes in every field I can think of!




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November 6 - Hero or Villain? Hindsight Helps...

Posted on November 6, 2018

Today I'd like to highlight three historical anniversaries:

It's the date that, in 1860, Abraham Lincoln was elected president of the United States.



It's the date that, a year later, Jefferson Davis was elected president of the short-lived Confederate States of America.


And it's the date that, in 1914, Mohandas Gandhi was arrested while leading a march of Indian miners in South Africa.





The thing about these three items that just jumped out at me is, not the events themselves, but the people. Are they heroes? Anti-heroes? Neither? 

Does a person's status as a hero (or anti-hero) depend on where you live, how you worship, your political beliefs? Or do the judgements of heroism depend on core values that should be everywhere and every-when?
Before we get into the people involved with our three historical anniversaries, let's talk about viewpoints during the lifetime of another person - and the changes that occurred through hindsight:


Doctor Martin Luther King, Jr.
Martin Luther King, Jr., was viewed during his lifetime with a ton of negativity. He was at times - and by some - criticized for being too patient and too peaceful, and at other times - or by others - criticized for being too radical and aggressive. 

 Sure, crowds flocked to hear him speak, people followed him, and he won the Nobel Peace Prize. But he was also vilified, arrested and imprisoned, threatened and beaten and bombed and stabbed and shot at and - of course - finally killed. 

 At the time of his death, about 75% of Americans disapproved of him.

Does that shock you? Today more than 90% of Americans approve of him; we celebrate him with a national memorial and multiple postage stamps, loads of places and institutions named after him, statues and plaques; we almost revere him.

Don't get me wrong - Martin Luther King, Jr., had faults, and not every one of his words and deeds were perfect. But not only do most Americans agree, now, that he was and still is a hero, we SHOULD agree! With hindsight, we understand that he had courage and conviction, we see that not only did he stand up for the civil rights of "his people" - meaning African Americans - but he also stood up for workers, and against an unnecessary war, and against economic disparities and inequality of opportunity. His stances were unpopular when he first spoke of them, worked for them, agitated for them - but now the majority of Americans believe the Civil Rights Movement was a good thing, that the Vietnamese War was a mistake, and that the government and economic systems work too much in favor of the wealthy.

When we see how hindsight has changed our view of MLK so much - going from a 75% negative approval rating at the time of his death to 90%+ positive approval rating now! - we can see that time very much impacts our judgement of people. 

Gandhi

Mohandas Gandhi is now almost universally called Mahatma Gandhi; Mahatma means wise one and is a title reserved for those who are lovingly respected. 

 Of course, Gandhi was human - he was flawed - he definitely wasn't perfect. During his lifetime he was harshly criticized and hated, by some, and praised and even revered, by others. Most of us consider him in the "hero" category now - so much so that many think that "Mahatma" is his first name. 

 Gandhi fought against racial discrimination and the caste system, he campaigned for independence using peaceful civil disobedience and non-cooperation, he traveled to areas on unrest and tried to bring peace between peoples.


Hindsight isn't so very clear that there isn't disagreement among biographers and historians. There are many books and articles about things Gandhi did or said that are problematic, and there are other books and articles pointing out that Gandhi's great accomplishments shouldn't be tarnished by quibbles about his imperfections. I myself think that Gandhi's life choices about denying himself pleasure and food is not particularly admirable - I mean, it was his choice, but I don't think that others should try to follow his example in some sort of attempt to make themselves "pure" - but I really question his hunger-strike method of protest. I gather that many people were moved by his self-sacrifice, and I gather that the attention given to and sympathy won by his increasing thinness did work to make some improvements. But I pretty much dislike self-harm and making other people feel guilty as a manipulation technique.


Lincoln vs. Davis

Everyone knows Abraham Lincoln's a hero. I mean, he's got a prominent memorial in D.C., his face is all over U.S. money and on Mount Rushmore, and and and - well, I could go on. Most polls of historians and scholars rank Lincoln as the #1 best president in U.S. history - and 12 out of 20 rankings of Lincoln by historians / scholars in polls listed by Wikipedia are #1, with six polls ranking him #2 and two ranking him #3. 


Lincoln preserved the Union during a terrible and terribly dangerous time, he freed the slaves, and with victory almost sure he made plans for amnesty for the "Rebels" and a humane reconstruction of the South. His 1863 Proclamation of Amnesty and Reconstruction allowed a full pardon of, along with a restoration of property to, everyone who had rebelled against the nation, except the highest Confederate officials and military leaders. 

 Of course, the Civil War was a vicious, costly, gruesomely deadly tear in the nation. It's not exaggeration to say that brother fought against brother, and many families and friendships were shattered before and during the war. So it wasn't going to be easy for Lincoln to heal these wounds.

 Many Confederates found it difficult to swallow the fact that the slaves were free. Many Radical Republicans of the North thought that Lincoln's plan was much too easy on the South.

 But Lincoln had proved himself a leader, and many were willing to sign onto the plan under that leadership. When Lincoln was assassinated, however, Reconstruction efforts were badly hurt. The strife of the war was replaced by strife over whether to punish the South or to try for Lincoln's more conciliatory ideas.
Did you notice that Lincoln's proclamation promised a full pardon to all but the highest Confederate officials? Well, that would have to include Jefferson Davis, the President of the Confederate States of America. He was arrested by Union soldiers on May 10, 1865, less than a month after Lincoln's assassination, and he was confined to a small room at Fort Monroe, in Virginia, monitored by soldiers who made sure that he ate and made no attempt to escape nor to commit suicide.

 After no link was found between Davis and Lincoln's assassination, Davis was moved to a larger space in the officers' hall. He was then allowed visitors and exercise, and eventually his wife moved to the fort to be with him. Some people claimed that Davis was treated poorly, but apparently Davis himself did not believe that to be true. 


After two years of imprisonment as a military prisoner, he was transferred to civilian custody and then released on bail. 

 Many Americans thought that Davis should be punished for leading a rebellion against the nation, for treason, or at least for mistreatment of Union prisoners of war. U.S. President Andrew Johnson thought he should be charged for murder (I guess he thought for sure that Davis was "in" on the assassination). Many people wrote to the president with requests that Davis be hanged and a few offers to personally build the gallows! 

 On the other hand, many Americans from the North opposed punishing Jefferson Davis personally. Some of them wanted to punish the former Confederacy as a whole, and others wanted to just move forward.

 Johnson finally decided that treason was the best charge, and Davis demanded a trial in order to make the case that states could secede. There were a LOT of delays to the trial - and President Johnson was impeached although not removed from office - and there was a request made to the U.S. Supreme Court on whether or not to dismiss the charges.

 With all of that mess hanging over everyone's heads, Johnson ended up releasing an amnesty proclamation on Christmas Day in 1868. This amnesty pardoned EVERYONE, even the top officials and military leaders of the Confederacy.

 Jefferson Davis was a free man and began to write a book about the rise and fall of the Confederacy. He encouraged reconciliation, and he urged Southerners to be loyal to the Union. 

 Davis hadn't been disgraced, exactly, but his lack of leadership skills during the Civil War meant that Davis wasn't the most fabulously exalted hero in the South. (General Robert E. Lee, for example, was much more popular with Southerners immediately after the war.) However, the memories of Davis's leadership problems began to fade as the years went by, and he became more a more a symbol to many of Southern pride. He became a hero to a lost cause. 
Can you imagine if Germany glorified Hitler and other Nazis with statues
and every other street being named for them, plus Nazi flags?

It's...unthinkable!

 And a statue honoring Jefferson Davis sits right smack dab in the halls of the Capitol, honored along with figures such as George Washington and Helen Keller, Sakakawea (often known as Sacagawea) and Thomas Edison, Dwight D. Eisenhower and artist Charles Russell.

Whhhhyyyyy? The reason that Davis (and Lee and eight other Confederates) are honored by statuary at the Capitol is because each state is allowed two choices for statues of honored citizens. Representative Bennie Thompson of Mississippi called on lawmakers of both parties to remove permanently all the "Confederate imagery" from the Capitol, saying that "these images symbolize a time of racial discrimination and segregation that continues to haunt this country and many African-Americans who still to this day face racism and bigotry." That was back in 2015, and Republican lawmakers wouldn't even allow a vote on the resolution.

 More recently, Representative Cedric Richmond of Louisiana has suggested that lawmakers consider removing Confederate statues out of the Capitol. He said, "We will never solve America's race problem if we continue to honor traitors who fought against the United States in order to keep African Americans in chains...By the way, thank God, they lost."
This is another elementary magnet
school named after Obama - this one
in Georgia!
So far these pleas to remove Confederate statues and other images that glorify or honor Confederate "heroes" or "traitors" have gained little traction. On the other hand, some places and institutions named after Jefferson Davis and other Confederates may choose to change their name. A school in Mississippi named after Davis is now called the Barack Obama Magnet International Baccalaureate Elementary School. An article about the change concluded with the words, "There is no sense in honoring the men who attempted to split the United States so they could maintain the practice of slavery."

Also on this date:




Constitution Day in the Dominican Republic 

































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