Gandhi: “Struggle Hero” or Segregationist and Indian Supremacist?
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In October 2006, because of its large Indian population and M.K. Gandhi’s close association with the country, many in South Africa celebrated the 100th anniversary of his philosophy of Satyagraha - passive resistance - as well as the 137th anniversary of his birth. Those who were celebrating included many within the ruling Communist-dominated African National Congress. And the most famous Indian in history was lauded by the most famous Xhosa in history, Nelson Mandela, for his supposed “contribution” to the “struggle against apartheid” (in truth, the Communist terrorist revolution against the South African State). And Indian prime minister, Manmohan Singh, hailed Mandela as “the greatest Gandhian of them all” for supposedly transforming the lives of millions of South Africans. He said that Gandhi would have been “elated” to see his aspirations realised in the transformation of South Africa under Mandela’s leadership. He added that in the eyes of the world, the mantle of Gandhi seems to have “descended” on Mandela.
It has always made me smile to read of the mutual back-slappings by black African Communists and Indian followers of Gandhi, for the “passive resistance” of Gandhi should really be a world removed from the armed resistance of the Communists! I do not support any form of sinful resistance against the State (Rom. 13:1-7). All I am pointing out is that African Communists in my part of the world, who were very willing to take up arms against the State and who used them to murder tens of thousands of people during their Red terrorist revolution, loudly praise Gandhi, who did not take up arms at all; and Indian Gandhians loudly praise the likes of Mandela and other terrorists, even going so far as to call Mandela the greatest Gandhian of all. Surely nothing could be further apart, ideologically, than Gandhi’s passive resistance and the terrorists’ armed resistance?
Of course, today both India and South Africa are Marxist states, so that alone goes a long way to explain this strange situation. Gandhi has been hijacked by the Reds and turned into an icon of the terrorist revolution (ridiculously called the “struggle” by the terrorists themselves), whereas his methods should disqualify him from ever being considered a hero by the Reds. This is precisely the kind of propaganda, of distortion of the historical reality, that Communists love to use, and unfortunately the masses are usually too ignorant of the truth to perceive the smokescreen. Certainly this is so in South Africa. Really, Gandhi and Mandela can hardly be called comrades-in-arms.
But what makes all this heaping of praise upon Gandhi’s head by South African black Marxists even more bizarre, is Gandhi’s own attitude towards the blacks themselves! He did not think all that much of them! It reminds me of the way in which millions of black Africans are embracing Islam, even though the founder of Islam, Mohammed, despised blacks and wrote very disparagingly of them. Evidently this is a fact that is kept well away from black converts to Islam; and just as evidently, the fact of Gandhi’s true attitude towards blacks is something that his present-day followers would rather did not become too widely known. Its potential consequences are devastating to the myth they are seeking to perpetrate, that Gandhi was a man deeply concerned with the plight of blacks, and always working to improve their lot.
For most of the twentieth century in South Africa, there was a lot of animosity between blacks and Indians. There still is. But it suits SA’s present black leaders to promote the idea that Gandhi united with the blacks against the white rulers of the past. It suits them because this serves to encourage Indian South Africans today to throw in their lot with the black Marxist organisation, the ruling African National Congress. They are given the impression that Gandhi was cut from the same cloth as Mandela. The truth, however, is that they are the same only in their racial prejudice. Mandela looks down upon white South Africans, and Gandhi looked down upon black South Africans.
Let’s look at the evidence. In quotations I will often add italics for emphasis.
In the early twentieth century, when he came to South Africa, the young lawyer Gandhi was thrown off a train at Pietermaritzburg station for sitting in the section reserved for whites. Of course, liberals and Communists never tire of narrating this incident, milking it for all it is worth, and in the process embellishing the truth to suit their own purposes. We are given the impression that Gandhi was protesting about the exclusion of all non-whites from the railroad coach. That is the myth. What is the truth?
The truth is that Gandhi was attempting to get the white authorities to only let Indians ride in the coaches with the whites! He didn’t do it for the blacks, he did it solely for Indians! Here are his own words:
“You say that the magistrate’s decision is unsatisfactory because it would enable a person, however unclean, to travel by a tram, and that even the Kaffirs [i.e. blacks; the word "Kaffirs" was not always used in a derogatory sense in those times, although today it is] would be able to do so. But the magistrate’s decision is quite different. The Court declared that the Kaffirs have no legal right to travel by tram. And according to tram regulations, those in an unclean dress or in a drunken state are prohibited from boarding a tram. Thanks to the Court’s decision, only clean Indians or coloured people other than Kaffirs, can now travel in the trams.”[1]
Quite clearly, Gandhi was relieved that the court had not given blacks permission to travel in this way! Gandhi, in fact, believed in the segregation of blacks and Indians! He wrote in his newspaper in1906: “We consider that it was a wise policy on the part of the British Indians throughout South Africa, to have kept themselves apart and distinct from the other coloured communities in this country.”[2] Having attended school in England, he became “an advocate of the English lifestyle for his people. For example, except for his first year, he never lived in the Indian section of town.”[3] Today Mandela and his Communist comrades in the ANC praise Gandhi as a “hero of the struggle” against “white domination”, but the truth is that Gandhi believed in a form of (wait for it…) - apartheid!
Let him speak for himself again, in these words, which he wrote and published in his newspaper in 1905. Blacks had been granted permission to settle in an Indian residential area in Johannesburg, and this was written by Gandhi to a Dr Porter, the white Medical Officer of Health in Johannesburg: “Why, of all places in Johannesburg, the Indian location should be chosen for dumping down all Kaffirs of the town, passes my comprehension. Of course, under my suggestion, the Town Council must withdraw the Kaffirs from the Location. 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.”[4]
Imagine it: the ANC condemns apartheid and those whites who believed in it, and yet praises Gandhi, a man who also believed in it! This just shows that the Reds and their fellow-travellers will distort the historical truth any which way they can, so as to get some mileage from it. And it suits them to hail Gandhi as being “one” with black Marxists in their revolution in South Africa, even though this is simply not the historical truth at all. Yes, Gandhi was a segregationist, an advocate of a form of apartheid, and had no desire to share living space with blacks in South Africa! Nor, at that time, did other Indians, even though today many Indians, having thrown in their lot with the ANC, point fingers at the whites and call them racists, claiming an imaginary moral high ground. It is only because the whites were in power in SA that their form of racial segregation was employed. In India, where of course Indians are in power, their own version of apartheid has been enforced for centuries.
Summing Gandhi up, James D. Hunt in Gandhi and the Black People of South Africa writes: “Gandhi began as a conventional Victorian Indian, seeking accommodation and personal success within the British Empire. He shared the prejudices of his class concerning Black people, and his lifestyle and work kept him isolated from them. In this respect he became a segregationist, albeit a liberal one, arguing for a special status for his own people while objecting to the treatment given the Black Africans.
“Gandhi also exhibited class limitations within the Indian community. Recent studies such as Swan’s have demonstrated the inability of Gandhi to recognize the needs of indentured Indians or to offer leadership to the mass of Indians until the very end of his South African career.”[5]
Thus not only was Gandhi a segregationist, who viewed blacks as culturally inferior to Indians and whites, but he was also not really interested in the upliftment of most Indians! He was more concerned with upper-caste Indians than with the masses. It becomes very obvious, then, that this man has been raised to a pedestal he does not deserve if one follows the Communist doctrine of a “non-racist”, “classless” society! For he laboured for the abolition of neither race nor class distinctions. They have made a “struggle hero” out of a man who was not really concerned with the interests of either the blacks, or the very poor Indians!
And let the ANC chew on this: not only was Gandhi a believer in segregation, but furthermore, he believed in racial purity; and (Shock! Horror!) he believed that the white race in South Africa should predominate! Here are his words, published in his newspaper in 1903:
“We believe as much in the purity of race as we think they [i.e. white nationalists] do, only we believe that they would best serve these interests, which are as dear to us as to them, by advocating the purity of all races, and not one alone. We believe also that the white race of South Africa should be the predominating race.“[6]
He also wrote a few months later: “The petition dwells upon ‘the co-mingling of the coloured and white races.’ May we inform the members of the Conference that so far as British Indians are concerned, such a thing is particularly unknown. If there is one thing which the Indian cherishes more than any other, it is the purity of type.”[7]
Imagine if the ANC leaders were honest and really took Gandhi’s words to heart! If they really believed in Gandhi’s teaching, then they would reinstate apartheid, and hand over control of South Africa to the whites again! Imagine that! Imagine Nelson Mandela saying to the whites, “As the ‘greatest Gandhian of them all’, I submit to his wisdom and return South Africa to your control.” Yes, pigs will fly first.
Gandhi was solely occupied with the interests of Indians in South Africa - not blacks. And there is nothing wrong with that! There is nothing wrong with working solely for the betterment of one’s own people (even though his methods were wrong). The reason this point is being emphasised is not because there was anything wrong with his desire to serve his own people, but because he is being upheld, today, as a “struggle hero”, fighting for all non-white people against white “oppression.” This is a myth. “There is no record in the Mahatma’s published remembrances or in the pages of Indian Opinion [Gandhi's newspaper] during this period to suggest that Gandhi saw passive resistance as anything other than an instrument of protest on behalf of the Indian in South Africa.”[8] And James D. Hunt in Gandhi and the Black People of South Africa writes: “It is quite true that Gandhi confined his efforts to his own Indian community in South Africa and never formed a common front with Black leaders or Black organizations. He consistently sought a special position for his people which would be separated from and superior to that of the Blacks.”[9]
He definitely viewed blacks as inferior to Indians and whites. Here is yet more evidence:
In Bombay on September 26, 1896, Gandhi addressed a public meeting, and this is what he said about the Indian “struggle” in South Africa: “Ours is one continued struggle against degradation sought to be inflicted upon us by the European, who desire to degrade us to the level of the raw Kaffir, whose occupation is hunting and whose sole ambition is to collect a certain number of cattle to buy a wife with, and then pass his life in indolence and nakedness.”[10]
Thus Gandhi, while fiercely opposed to European domination of the Indians, was incensed that, to his mind, the Europeans wanted to “degrade” the Indians “to the level of the raw Kaffir”! He wasn’t seeking equality for blacks and Indians in South Africa! - he placed the blacks on a lower level, as being degraded lazy naked savages. His ambition was to get Indians treated as equal with whites, not to get all non-white peoples to be treated as equals!
This attitude was shown again in 1904, when he opposed the plan of the British authorities in South Africa to draw up a register of all non-whites living in urban areas. He wrote: “It is one thing to register natives [i.e. blacks; "natives" was the term often applied to blacks back then] who would not work, and whom it is very difficult to find out if they absent themselves, but it is another thing - and most insulting - to expect decent, hard-working, and respectable Indians, whose only fault is that they work too much, to have themselves registered and carry with them registration badges.”[11]
Once again, we see from this that he was not working for the betterment of the blacks at all. He worked solely for the betterment of the Indians, whom he regarded as superior to blacks. And this is reinforced by the following statement, which he wrote concerning legislation aimed at restricting the movement of Indians in the British Cape Colony: “The by-law has its origin in the alleged or real, impudent and, in some cases, indecent behaviour of the Kaffirs. But, whatever the charges are against the British Indians, no one has ever whispered that the Indians behave otherwise than as decent men. But, as it is the wont in this part of the world, they have been dragged down with the Kaffir without the slightest justification.”[12] In other words, as far as Gandhi was concerned the Indians and the blacks were worlds apart, and that while there was reason to impose this legislation on the blacks for their (at times) “indecent behaviour”, Indians should not be “dragged down” to their level.
On March 18, 1905, commenting on legislation planned by the (white) Natal Municipal Authority, Gandhi wrote in his newspaper: “Clause 200 makes provision for registration of persons belonging to uncivilized races, resident and employed within the Borough. One can understand the necessity of registration of Kaffirs who will not work, but why should registration be required for indentured Indians who have become free, and for their descendants about whom the general complaint is that they work too much?”[13]
That Gandhi thought the blacks of South Africa to be lazy and incompetent is clear from other statements of his as well. For example, in the editorial of his newspaper on September 9, 1905, under the heading of “The Relative Value of the Natives and the Indians in Natal”, he wrote: “A little judicious extra taxation would do no harm; in the majority of cases it compels the native to work for at least a few days a year.” And: “Now let us turn our attention to another and entirely unrepresented community - the Indian. He is in striking contrast with the native. While the native has been of little benefit to the State, it owes its prosperity largely to the Indians. While native loafers abound on every side, that species of humanity is almost unknown among Indians here.”[14]
There is no space to go into any detail, here, about the merits of Gandhi’s statements on this topic. Suffice it to say that his statements did have merit. He was not alone in thinking these thoughts: many, probably most, Indians at the time would have thought the same thing, and certainly most whites. Neither whites nor Indians in South Africa would have disagreed with his statements regarding the laziness of most blacks; and (although it is “politically incorrect” to say it) with justification! Within the black tribes, the man was the warrior and the hunter; as a general rule he did not have anything like the work ethic of whites or Indians. That is the fact of it, and facts are stubborn things. As Paul the apostle wrote of the Cretians of his day, that they were “alway liars, evil beasts, slow bellies” (Tit. 1:12,13), we see that it is not wrong to point out the reigning sins in a nation; and we can definitely speak of the indolence of the blacks at that time. So what Gandhi wrote, in this instance, would have been viewed as very truthful by most. But the reason why these statements of his are being inserted here is simply because it reveals that Gandhi was not hard at work to improve the lot of all the non-white nations in South Africa! He was concerned solely with the Indians.
If truth be told, he had a lot of sympathy with the British subjugation of the black tribes! As a Hindu with a deeply-entrenched attitude of racial superiority, he viewed Indians as equal with whites but superior to blacks. He was disgusted, for example, by the prospect of a black policeman ever laying hands on an Indian. On the 8th June 1907, writing in his newspaper about a series of amendments to the “Asiatic Law” No. 3 of 1885, he said that he was very concerned that a black police constable could detain an Indian. “At present, only the Permit Secretary is authorized to inspect a permit. Under the new Act,” he wrote, “every Kaffir police constable can do so. Under the new Act, a Kaffir police constable can ask [an Asiatic] for particulars of name and identity, and, if not satisfied, can take him to the police station.” He added: “Is there any Indian who is not roused to fury by such a law? We should very much like to know the Indian whose blood does not boil. And it is incredible to us that any Indian may want to submit to such legislation.”[15]
What made Gandhi’s blood boil was the fact that a black policeman could arrest an Indian! Can it be said, then, that he viewed all men as equal? Gandhi was Indian by birth, but he deeply admired many things about the British, and the British Empire. He desired equality between Indians and whites, but he definitely did not desire that the black races should share in that equality.
Is more proof needed? There is plenty. For example, in his day (and for many decades afterwards) post offices had separate entrances, one for whites and one for blacks and Indians. Gandhi established the Natal Indian Congress, the first Indian political organisation in South Africa; and one of the first achievements of the NIC was the creation of a third separate entrance to the Durban Post Office - for Indians! Indians no longer had to share the same entrance as blacks.[16] No doubt the fact that Indians could not enter the post office through the same door as whites was offensive to Gandhi; but it appears he was more offended by the fact that he had to share an entrance with blacks!
This is why, when the “Franchise Amendment Bill” was introduced in 1896, prohibiting Indians from registering to vote, Gandhi could act as the spokesman for the Indians, who stated that “the Bill would rank the Indian lower than the rawest Native.” He, like other Indians, had an abhorrence of being ranked with the blacks in any way. This is why various prominent Indian colleagues of Gandhi often complained that they were thrown together with blacks in railway cars, lavatories, etc.[17] In the words of James D. Hunt in Gandhi and the Black People of South Africa: “In attempting to protect their own position, they [Indians] believed they had to separate themselves from the native Blacks. They wanted to present themselves, with their long cultural heritage, as among the civilized peoples. In their view, the Blacks were not civilized; they were ‘raw’.”[18]
In 1906 Gandhi wrote a letter to an English friend in London, W.T. Stead. This letter shows that he was fully convinced of the great differences that existed (and let it be said, still exist) between blacks and Indians:
“As you were good enough to show very great sympathy with the cause of British Indians in the Transvaal, may I suggest your using your influence with the Boer leaders in the Transvaal? I feel certain that they did not share the same prejudice against British Indians as against the Kaffir races but as the prejudice against Kaffir races in a strong form was in existence in the Transvaal at the time when the British Indians immigrated there, the latter were immediately lumped together with the Kaffir races and described under the generic term ‘Coloured people’. Gradually the Boer mind was habituated to this qualification and it refused to recognize the evident and sharp distinctions that undoubtedly exist between British Indians and the Kaffir races in South Africa.”[19]
Here again we see that Gandhi prided himself on being a “British Indian”. As far as he was concerned, the black races were very inferior, culturally, to the British and the Indians. He was firmly convinced of “evident and sharp distinctions” between Indians and blacks. And in this he was correct. Today’s Marxist leaders of South Africa, like Marxists everywhere, arrogantly think that they can create a raceless, classless society, in which all distinctions are obliterated. But this will never be! There are distinctions, and they are “evident and sharp”! Christians, of course, are not to treat any man as inferior; but we would be naive to think that differences and distinctions do not exist. They do, and they always have - ever since the tower of Babel! Only “in Christ” is there “neither Jew nor Greek” (Gal. 3:28), no racial distinctions of any sort. In the world, however, the distinctions are very evident and very sharp. One would have to be blind, or deliberately deceptive, not to concede this point.
So: would Gandhi have really been “elated” to see the transformation of South Africa under Mandela, as India’s prime minister said? No, he would not have been; for Gandhi wanted the whites to stay in power, and he looked down upon the blacks as inferior. And did Gandhi’s “mantle” really descend on Mandela? Hardly. Not that we should believe for a minute that Gandhi was a man who had any mantle of moral “greatness” to pass on, for he did not; but the mantle he did have certainly did not descend upon Mandela, given that the two men used very different methods for achieving their objectives.
The concept of “Gandhi the hero of the black struggle” is nothing but a myth. All we ever hear about is the tired old lie about how evil white authority in South Africa was. Gandhi, who for all his faults was a very intelligent man, did not view white dominance in such a light. Yes, there were aspects of it which he was strongly opposed to, certainly; but he wanted it to continue! He would be horrified to see what black Marxists have done to this wonderful country: replacing the civilized standards of the British Empire he admired with barbarism, brutality, and chaos.
January 2006
Shaun Willcock is a minister of the Gospel, and lives in South Africa. He runs Bible Based Ministries. For other articles (which may be downloaded and printed), as well as details about his books, tapes, pamphlets, etc., please visit the Bible Based Ministries website, or write to the address below. If you would like to be on Bible Based Ministries’ electronic mailing list, to receive all future articles, please send your details.
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ENDNOTES:
[1].MK Gandhi, The Hindu-Muslim Unity, pg.45. The Official Mahatma Gandhi Archive, Mahatma Gandhi Foundation, India.
[2].Indian Opinion, March 24, 1906.
[3].Gandhi and the Black People of South Africa, by James D. Hunt, pg.2, Shaw University. Reproduced at “The Complete Site on Mahatma Gandhi”, http://www.mkgandhi.org/articles/jamesdhunt.htm
[4].Indian Opinion, February 15, 1905.
[5].Gandhi and the Black People of South Africa, pg.11.
[6].Indian Opinion, September 24, 1903.
[7].Indian Opinion, December 24, 1903.
[8].Les Switzer, quoted in Gandhi and the Black People of South Africa, pg.1.
[9].Gandhi and the Black People of South Africa, pg.1.
[10].The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, Vol. II, pg.74. Ahmedabad, 1963.
[11].The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, Vol. IV, pg.193.
[12].The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, Vol III, pg.285.
[13].Indian Opinion, March 18, 1905.
[14].Indian Opinion, September 9, 1905.
[15].Indian Opinion, June 8, 1907.
[16].Gandhi and the Black People of South Africa, pgs.3,4.
[17].Gandhi and the Black People of South Africa, pg.3.
[18].Gandhi and the Black People of South Africa, pg.3.
[19].M.K. Gandhi, Letter to W.T. Stead, London, November 16, 1906, as reproduced at “The Complete Site on Mahatma Gandhi”, http://www.mkgandhi.org/cwm/vol6/ch092.htm
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