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+--- Thread: Was Mahatma Gandhi a Racist ? (/thread-27119.html)
Was Mahatma Gandhi a Racist ? - ketchim - 09-17-2015
Gandhi was a young man in South Africa
![[Image: _85571974_gettyimages-3429188-1.jpg]](http://ichef-1.bbci.co.uk/news/660/cpsprodpb/BB2D/production/_85571974_gettyimages-3429188-1.jpg)
Re: Was Mahatma Gandhi a Racist ? - ketchim - 09-17-2015
A picture of Gandhi when he was practising as a lawyer in South Africa
![[Image: _85572097_gettyimages-2673991.jpg]](http://ichef-1.bbci.co.uk/news/624/cpsprodpb/134B3/production/_85572097_gettyimages-2673991.jpg)
Re: Was Mahatma Gandhi a Racist ? - ketchim - 09-17-2015
Mahatma Gandhi has been variously described as an anti-colonial protester, a religious thinker, a pragmatist,
a radical who used non-violence effectively to fight for causes,
a canny politician and a whimsical Hindu patriarch.
But was India's greatest leader also a racist?
Re: Was Mahatma Gandhi a Racist ? - ketchim - 09-17-2015
The authors of a controversial new book on Gandhi's life and work in South Africa certainly believe so.
South African academics Ashwin Desai and Goolam Vahed spent seven years exploring the complex story of a man
who lived in their country for more than two decades - 1893 to 1914 -
and campaigned for the rights of Indian people there.
Re: Was Mahatma Gandhi a Racist ? - ketchim - 09-17-2015
In The South African Gandhi: Stretcher-Bearer of Empire
Desai and Vahed write that during his stay in Africa, Gandhi kept the Indian struggle :
"separate from that of Africans and coloreds even though the latter were also denied political rights
on the basis of colour and could also lay claim to being British subjects".
Re: Was Mahatma Gandhi a Racist ? - ketchim - 09-17-2015
In 1893, Gandhi wrote to the Natal parliament saying that a :
"general belief seems to prevail in the Colony that the Indians are a little better, if at all,
than savages or the Natives of Africa".
Re: Was Mahatma Gandhi a Racist ? - ketchim - 09-17-2015
In 1904, he wrote to a health officer in Johannesburg that the council "must withdraw Kaffirs" from an unsanitary slum called the
"Coolie Location" where a large number of Africans lived alongside Indians.
"About the mixing of the Kaffirs with the Indians, I must confess I feel most strongly."
Re: Was Mahatma Gandhi a Racist ? - ketchim - 09-17-2015
The same year he wrote that unlike the African, the Indian had no "war-dances, nor does he drink Kaffir beer".
Re: Was Mahatma Gandhi a Racist ? - ketchim - 09-17-2015
When Durban was hit by a plague in 1905 :
Gandhi wrote that the problem would persist as long as Indians and Africans were being
"herded together indiscriminately at the hospital "
Re: Was Mahatma Gandhi a Racist ? - ketchim - 09-17-2015
South Africans have always accused the man who led India to independence of working with the British colonial government
to promote racial segregation. In April, a man was arrested in connection with vandalising a statue of Gandhi.
A hashtag #Ghandimustfall (click)
White paint was used to deface a statue of Mahatma Gandhi and its plaque
![[Image: _85572100_gandhi.jpg]](http://ichef-1.bbci.co.uk/news/624/cpsprodpb/007F/production/_85572100_gandhi.jpg)