I am working on some very smart things to say here. Really. Meanwhile, there's 
When I was about 15 or 16, I read Gandhi's autobiography. I clearly remember how much his simplicity and honesty impressed me. Later while in college, I re-read it and as young men are wont to do, stopped eating meat for seven years - as a sort of pledge of allegiance to non-violence and ahimsa principles. Whatever my immature reactions to Gandhi were at that time, his message of compassion and truth left a deep mark on my mind and I still carry it.
After college I went through a phase and held views perhaps similar to that of Orwell about Gandhi. It evolved over the years as I read more and now, like Orwell, I have come around to see the man for the moral genius he is with all the flaws of someone who dared to think for his people and their future.
Last word. The claims that Anarchists have laid on Gandhi is very amusing. As an Indian with a very religious background, Gandhi was, temperamentally and intellectually, diametrically opposite to an anarchist (often European) intellectual. Still, if one knows how Indian religion (and some dialects of Christianity like Quakers, as well) treat saints as dispensable in the eyes of ultimate reality, one can understand the claim. Gandhi never accepted authority other than that of Truth and God. In this sense, he is at home with anarchists.
Comments
Sure, some anarchists are ignorant of what Gandhi said and did. But Gandhi himself acknowledged the large influence of Tolstoi on his thought. And Tolstoi was certainly a European anarchist intellectual.
Posted by: bob koepp | October 2, 2008 10:42 AM
Nice to see you write in this way about Gandhi. I get worried when I read retarded things about him these days. It has become a kind of fashion to abuse him. Which is very worrying.
Posted by: Shubhendu Trivedi | October 10, 2008 3:58 AM