Is non-violence violence?

[Thinking Skins]

http://o3.indiatimes.com/dinakaran/archive/2006/04/07/596017.aspx

Are Mahatma Gandhi (and Medha Patkar) violent?

This question may sound preposterous, but according to Osho, Gandhi's non-violence, was in fact, acts of violence. This is what he says:

"Gandhi thinks fasting is a kind of right means to a right end. And like his last fast he resorts to fast unto death every now and then. If a threat to kill another person is wrong , how can the threat to kill oneself be right? If it is wrong for me to make you accept what I say by pointing gun at you, how can it be right if I make you accept the same thing by pointing gun at myself? It would be a greater wrong on my part if I ask you to accept my views with the threat if you don't , Iam going to kill myself.

"If I threaten to kill you, you have an option, a moral opportunity to die and refuse to yield to my pressure. But if i threaten to kill myself , I make you very helpless, because you may not like to take the responsibility of my death on yourself.

"Gandhi once undertook such a fast unto death to put pressure on Ambedkar. Ambedkar had to finally yield to Gandhi's pressures, but said later Gandhi would be wrong to think he had changed his heart and still believed he was right and Gandhi was wrong, but in order not take the moral repsonsibility of the consquence he had to yield.

"It makes no difference whether i threaten to kill you or to kill myself to make you accept my view. In either case I am using pressure and violence. In fact, when I threaten to kill you, I give you a choice to die with dignity, to tell me you would rather die than yield to my view which is wrong. But when I threaten you with my own death, then I deprive you of the option to die with dignity. I put you in real dilemma . Either you have to yield and accept you are wrong or you take the responsibility of my death onto you. You are going to suffer guilt in every way and there is no choice."

"Violence to an extent is necessary if one has to live. Even which we term as an instrument of non-violence could be violence. If I put a knife on your chest and ask you to obey me, it is violence. And if I sit and starve at your doorstep, threatening to die if you do not do what I say? Is this not violence? The former goes out from me to you, the latter is going towards myself. The latter is self-violence. A forcible pressure, mental cruelty, it is!"

[Prosperity]

that's absurd

[G.A.C.O.L.B.]

that's absurd

Agreed.

[PeterMP]

It is an interesting point.

[PokerPacker]

wasn't ghandi a racist?

[Prosperity]

no he wasn't

[Hardcoreskinsfan]

Deep thinking gone wild!!!! BUY YOUR DVD TODAY!!!!!

[PokerPacker]

no he wasn't

i'm pretty sure he didn't like black people

[Prosperity]

that's because you are wrong

[G.A.C.O.L.B.]

Hmmm. I googled "ghandi racist" and it came back with a bunch of stuff. But then, the internets are the internets. Gotta take it for what it's worth. Everything I know about him says absolutely not.

[PokerPacker]

that's because you are wrong

uh, you got me!

[Prosperity]

That's because Ghandi lived a long he was probably less enlightened when he was a whitewashed lawyer in his early twenties than when he was before he passed away.

The people that accuse Gandhi of racism are refering to his days in South Africa when he was fighting for the rights of the India population there. Really all of these accusations are based on what Gandhi didn't do (i.e. not solving every evil in the clusterf*ck of racism and oppression that was south africa) instead of something Gandhi did. I suppose the question one should ask when contemplating this question is, is it really fair to hold anyone to those standards? If we were all judged for the great things we did not accomplish, there wouldn't be too many people worthy of reverence in this world.

[Prosperity]

uh, you got me!

ok so you make a claim with no evidence then get mad when I say you are wrong without providing any evidence either?

huh?

[Touchdown Redskins]

That's actually an interesting point of view. I'm not going to complain about his tactics, because his tactics (in part) freed my country, but it does make you wonder whether he ever though in those terms.

[PokerPacker]

ok so you make a claim with no evidence then get mad when I say you are wrong without providing any evidence either?

huh?

your entire rebuttle is "your wrong". that's hardly a statement worth making. if you wanted to explain why i was wrong, then i wouldn't have made that comment. as for proof that he was a racist, try this:

http://www.raceandhistory.com/historicalviews/ghandi.htm

and for reference to understand his comments, http://www.bartleby.com/61/23/K0002350.html

[Thinking Skins]

that's absurd

Why do you say its absurd? I've read the great stories of how Gandhi won the independence of India through nonviolent means and how MLK was a great leader in the civil rights movement through similar means. Those are astonishing accomplishments and should not be ignored.

But I have also read stories of mothers standing in front of bull-dozers trying to stop what they thought an unjust cause, and they've been killed and only heard about in the minute stories on the back page of some minor paper.

In the writings of Gandhi and MLK on nonviolence, they talk of using nonviolence as a means of 'winning the souls of those who oppress', which is in itself a worthy cause. But it has its limitations. It depends greatly how wrong those in power actually feel their actions are. If for example, an American were to go on a hunger strike until we stopped buying oil from Iraq, we'd probably lose an American life because we're not going to do this. It even applies exposing people to be the victims of violence when they don't need to be, not only when the 'unjust' law really is just, but even when there is a better way to change that unjust law than by going about breaking that law, as both Gandhi and MLK suggest doig with unjust laws.

[Prosperity]

your entire rebuttle is "your wrong". that's hardly a statement worth making. if you wanted to explain why i was wrong, then i wouldn't have made that comment. as for proof that he was a racist, try this:

http://www.raceandhistory.com/historicalviews/ghandi.htm

and for reference to understand his comments, http://www.bartleby.com/61/23/K0002350.html

it is worth making when you are wrong, especially when you don't even try to prove you are right. Don't get defensive about it makes you look whiney. Now what you do is post some random essay from some random geocities website.

btw your source called Ghandi a Nazi... yup sounds like a good source to me

And really what is proof someone was a racist? Do you mean he was always a racist? Or when he lived under imperial britain as a lawyer? I mean seriously guy, what's the point of your trolling post? Is this thread about ghandi being a racist? No, it is about non violence as violence.

If you want a decent response make a decent post.

[Prosperity]

your entire rebuttle is "your wrong". that's hardly a statement worth making. if you wanted to explain why i was wrong, then i wouldn't have made that comment. as for proof that he was a racist, try this:

http://www.raceandhistory.com/historicalviews/ghandi.htm

and for reference to understand his comments, http://www.bartleby.com/61/23/K0002350.html

this link you provided seems very uncredible for all of the following reasons

a) the article is false (i'll get to that later in the post)

the author (Velu Annamalai) identifies himself as a PhD but doesn't identify what he got his PhD in, what school he teaches in (in fact his email address is just a generic web based one, when academics write scholarly articles they always identify both their institution and their discipline)

c) he doesn't site any of his quotes or facts.

Now, as for the reasons why the article is false, 1) because even if we are to give full weight to the select quotes mr. annamalai uses, it's not hard for anyone who knows gandhi to see that they are taken out of context. In Gandhi's own autobiography (in which he details his transition from faithful subject of the British Empire, to anti-imperialist) offers a clear rebuttal to all of these claims, and even if you make the argument that his autobiography is biased, i'll simply ask you why Gandhi would bother outlining his entire political and philosophical basis in a dishonest manner? Generally, when when people have serious convictions, they tend not to shy away from them.

anyway, this entire thread is an example of revisionist history at its worst, true stupidity.

[BlueTalon]

(i.e. not solving every evil in the clusterf*ck of racism and oppression that was south africa)

This is a little off the topic of Ghandi, but... how much "racism and oppression" really existed in Apartheid, anyway? Was it a system designed to keep down all blacks? Or was it a system designed to keep those particular blacks from grabbing the reigns of power?

Everything that happened subsequent to Apartheid going away points to the fact that the blacks there were little more than tribal thugs. It certainly took everyone here off guard (myself included) when the blacks there started killing everyone against whom they had grudges. Speaking for myself, I was surprised mostly because I didn't know enough about the situation to educate myself about it beyond what was in the news, which means I was abysmally ignorant, as were many others. And those that were motivated enough about the situation to learn more were likely of the anti-Apartheid persuasion, and therefore likely to ignore things that went against their pro-black, anti-Apartheid paradigm (like Nelson Mandela's "soccer team" of bodyguards/enforcers/hitmen).

Which leads to the question of how much anyone really knows about Apartheid. The only way to know would be to read histories written by objective observes or researchers -- and can there be any objective people? I'm guessing that people choosing to write about Apartheid would mostly be critics, with perhaps a few defenders, largely the same situation as when it existed. This same question was raised about Bush in a different thread -- how will history treat him? It depends on the historians doing the treating.

Which brings me ciruitously back to Ghandi. How much do we really know about him? Were the histories written about him merely examples of literary adoration? Or were there critical histories written as well?

It seems to me that the original post raises an excellent point. It is no less excellent because/in spite of the fact that it is critical of Ghandi.

[Prosperity]

This is a little off the topic of Ghandi, but... how much "racism and oppression" really existed in Apartheid, anyway? Was it a system designed to keep down all blacks? Or was it a system designed to keep those particular blacks from grabbing the reigns of power?

that happened subsequent to Apartheid going away points to the fact that the blacks there were little more than tribal thugs. It certainly took everyone here off guard (myself included) when the blacks there started killing everyone against whom they had grudges. Speaking for myself, I was surprised mostly because I didn't know enough about the situation to educate myself about it beyond what was in the news, which means I was abysmally ignorant, as were many others. And those that were motivated enough about the situation to learn more were likely of the anti-Apartheid persuasion, and therefore likely to ignore things that went against their pro-black, anti-Apartheid paradigm (like Nelson Mandela's "soccer team" of bodyguards/enforcers/hitmen).

Which leads to the question of how much anyone really knows about Apartheid. The only way to know would be to read histories written by objective observes or researchers -- and can there be any objective people? I'm guessing that people choosing to write about Apartheid would mostly be critics, with perhaps a few defenders, largely the same situation as when it existed. This same question was raised about Bush in a different thread -- how will history treat him? It depends on the historians doing the treating.

Which brings me ciruitously back to Ghandi. How much do we really know about him? Were the histories written about him merely examples of literary adoration? Or were there critical histories written as well?

It seems to me that the original post raises an excellent point. It is no less excellent because/in spite of the fact that it is critical of Ghandi.

Are you ****ing serious?

your post does not deserve a serious response.

[BlueTalon]

Do you even know what happened there after the fall of Apartheid? Google the term "necklacing" and see what you get.

[Prosperity]

go away guy

if you want to defend apartheid go make a thread about it

[BlueTalon]

I'm not defending it. I'm making the point that most people, especially you, don't know as much about it as you think.

By the way, thank you for proving the point of my earlier post. Your attitudes toward Apartheid are quite strong, but what exactly are they based on (besides emotion)? They're based on what you think you know about the situation. And you apparently don't care if your knowledge base is incomplete, which is the thing I find interesting.

[rincewind]

I'm not defending it. I'm making the point that most people, especially you, don't know as much about it as you think.

NOTHING that has happened since the end of apartheid can justify racially motivated segregationalist laws and oppression. You seem to be suggesting that because some blacks in S. Africa are violent and oppressive themselves it justifies one of the most racist governments to ever exist on Earth.

[Prosperity]

go make a thread about it then and educate us about those tribal thugs