October 15, 2013
To:
Director Dr. Tara Sethia
Ahimsa Center
CSU Pomona, CA, USA
An Open Letter Regarding:
Celebration of Mohandas Gandhi at “Ahimsa Day 2013”
It has come to our attention that you are planning to invoke and celebrate Indian politician and religious leader Mohandas Gandhi at “Ahimsa Day 2013,” an October 18 event hosted at Claremont Lincoln University in Claremont, CA. Will you kindly consider how deeply disrespectful celebration of Gandhi is to the present distressed situation of women and other minorities in India whose ongoing sufferings can be credited as the outcome of his life’s work?
Your promotional flyer invites us to join “a provocative conversation about the realities of violence.” The flyer also advises: “Bring your idealism, skepticism, and questions.” As modern scholarship demonstrates, Gandhi must be handled with significant skepticism because, especially for a peace idealist, his actions leave far more questions than answers. An informed examination of Gandhi’s life suggests that, if we follow him as an example, the result will more likely than anything else be provocation of hate crimes and perpetuation of Earth’s deadly spiral of violence.
Why would we say such a thing, you may well ask?
That question is best answered by Indian feminist Rita Banerji, who founded the 50 Million Missing Campaign to raise awareness of ongoing female gendercide (infanticide or selective abortion of females) in India. In her September 4, 2013 article, “Gandhi to Asaram: Who Empowers the Sex Crimes of ‘Gurus?’,” Banerji links crimes against women in India to the degrading treatment and view of women practiced and taught by widely idolized religious figures.
Asaram Bapu is the 74-year-old religious leader who, after the New Delhi gang-rape case in 2012, infamously said that the rape would not have happened if only victim Jyoti Singh Pandey had “taken God’s name” and “held the hand of one of the men and said, ‘I consider you my brother.'”
His website claims he has more than 20 million followers and 425 ashrams across 12 countries. Asaram, who calls himself a “god-man,” was recently discovered taking a page from Gandhi’s playbook. Claiming he was “exorcising evil spirits” from a 16-year-old girl, Asaram raped her at his ashram. He was arrested for this crime on September 1. Other victims have bravely spoken out, including two sisters who say that Asaram and his son imprisoned and raped them both for years.
Banerji sees much commonality between Asaram and Gandhi. Both have millions of rabid followers who call them “Bapu” (meaning “Father”), both teach that sexual desire is “sinful” and preach abstinence, and both are frauds whose schemes and scams entrap and destroy women. Furthermore, Banerji writes:
Both Gandhi and Asaram in hypocritical violations of their own preaching, indulged in sexual gratification of one kind or another, even when it resulted in the sexual abuse of girls and women in their flock.
Details that continue to emerge about Asaram’s past indicate that he not only sexually abused and raped other women, but that he regarded the women in his ashram as his sexual “toys.” Gandhi on the other hand would have among the younger of his female followers, some in their late teens, sleep naked with him, in his bed, at night. He claimed that was his way of testing his ‘power’ of abstinence. More shockingly, this was open knowledge not just among his followers, but among everyone who came in contact with him—his large fan following of politicians, activists, philosophers, and journalists—both from India and abroad. While having the girls and women sleep naked with him was in and of itself a form of sexual abuse – a privilege Gandhi exercised because of his position and stature, what actually took place in his bed remains hidden, because the women were sworn to secrecy. Nonetheless, studying the behavior and responses of the women around him, and examining excerpts from some of their diaries, there are clear indications of sexual manipulation and exploitation.
In short, Gandhi is a villain spun as a hero. If living in your city today, he would be arrested for sexual assault (at least). As we strip away Gandhi’s veneer by digging deeper into his history, it is obvious that villainy is his only true legacy. He openly talked about his “experiments with truth,” but the unvarnished truth is that the victims of his experiments are legion. Numbered among those victims, foremost, are his own female relatives such as his grandniece Manu and his wife Kasturba.
Gandhi’s many other victims include the black people of South Africa, where he lived for 21 years, as well as the lower castes of India. Essentially, there is not one marginalized community living in regions influenced by Gandhi’s legacy which are not now in a more fragile position because of his work. We can only touch on the depth of that disturbing legacy in the short space we have here, and so we present five primary reasons why you should question your celebration of the man:
1) Gandhi sexually abused his grandnieces in a manner which would have led to his arrest and imprisonment if done in your city today;
2) Gandhi psychologically abused his deathly sick wife, denying her access to medicine, which directly resulted in her death;
3) Gandhi is rejected by India’s most marginalized communities as the one responsible for increasing their social and political oppression;
4) Gandhi spread sympathy for Adolf Hitler at the height of the Nazi leader’s bloodiest massacres and suggested Jews should cooperate with Hitler’s Holocaust;
5) Gandhi promoted racial supremacy and racial segregation while living and working in South Africa shortly before Apartheid.
1) Gandhi’s sexual abuse of his grandnieces
When in his 70’s and long after becoming internationally famous, Gandhi forced his 17-year-old great-nice Manu and 18-year-old great-niece Abha to share his bed, naked, on a daily basis over a period of years. This was reported in a 2010 article in The Independent:
Gandhi called for his 18-year-old grandniece Manu to join him – and sleep with him. “We both may be killed by the Muslims,” he told her, “and must put our purity to the ultimate test, so that we know that we are offering the purest of sacrifices, and we should now both start sleeping naked.” … [18-year-old] Abha, the wife of Gandhi’s grandnephew Kanu Gandhi, rejoined Gandhi’s entourage in the run-up to independence in 1947 and by the end of August he was sleeping with both Manu and Abha at the same time.
Ahimsa, as you are no doubt well aware, means “do not injure.” This ancient concept, which originated in India millennia before Gandhi, particularly means refraining from causing pain to any living creature. Pain, of course, can be psychological as easily as physical — indeed, it is often psychological pain which is most enduring.
Consider the enduring psychological pain suffered by the young girls injured in process of Gandhi’s so-called “celibacy tests.” Manu’s newly discovered diaries, as reported in India Today, reveal a young girl who was only 12 when Gandhi snatched her up after her mother’s death. She died “a lonely spinster at the age of 40.” The writings expose her sad loss of life as Gandhi devoured her innocence to the point of destroying her mind. As reported by India Today in June 2013:
The deep imprint the Mahatma left on Manuben’s psyche is best reflected in a letter to Jawaharlal Nehru from Morarji Desai on August 19, 1955, soon after he called on Manuben in August at the Bombay Hospital where she had been admitted for an “unknown” ailment. Desai writes: “Manu’s problem is more psychological than physiological. She appears to have despaired for life and developed allergy to all kinds of medicines.
Commenting on the diaries, psychoanalyst and scholar Sudhir Kakar writes: “So focused was the Mahatma on his own feelings during these experiments that I believe he may have ‘chosen’ to overlook their consequences for the women involved. Except for the flaring up of violent jealousy between the various women, we do not know the psychological effects, if any, that these experiments left on each of the women.”
Now, thanks to the recovery of Manuben’s diaries, we can assess the psychological impact the Mahatma had on his intimate companion.
2) Gandhi’s psychological abuse of his wife
Gandhi’s abusive treatment of his wife is brutally but effectively illustrated by the story of her death when, invoking his religious faith, he denied her penicillin for her pneumonia and then weeks later hypocritically took quinine for his malaria. Russ Kick wrote the following account of that incident:
Space doesn’t permit a full exploration of Gandhi’s numerous, consequential skeletons – his racism toward blacks and whites, his betrayal of the Untouchables, his acquiescence toward the Nazis. Instead let’s focus on something more personal and, in some ways, more upsetting.
In August 1942, Gandhi and his wife, Kasturba, among others, were imprisoned by the British in Aga Khan Palace, near Poona. Kasturba had poor circulation and she’d weathered several heart attacks. While detained in the palace, she developed bronchial pneumonia. One of her four sons, Devadas, wanted her to take penicillin. Gandhi refused. He was okay with her receiving traditional remedies, such as water from the Ganges, but he refused her any medicines, including this newfangled antibiotic, saying that the Almighty would have to heal her.
The Life and Death of Mahatma Gandhi quotes him on February 19, 1944: “If God wills it, He will pull her through.” Gandhi: A Life adds this wisdom from the Mahatma: “You cannot cure your mother now, no matter what wonder drugs you may muster. She is in God’s hands now.” Three days later, Devadas was still pushing for the penicillin, but Gandhi shot back: “Why don’t you trust God?” Kasturba died that day.
The next night, Gandhi cried out: “But how God tested my faith!” He told one of Kasturba’s doctors that the antibiotic wouldn’t have saved her and that allowing her to have it “would have meant the bankruptcy of my faith.” (Emphasis mine.)
But Gandhi’s faith wasn’t much of an obstacle a short time later when it was his ass on the line. A mere six weeks after Kasturba died, Gandhi was flattened by malaria. He stuck to an all-liquid diet as his doctors tried to convince him to take quinine. But Gandhi completely refused and died of the disease, right? No, actually, after three weeks of deterioration, he took the diabolical drug and quickly recovered. The stuff about trusting God’s will and testing faith only applied when his wife’s life hung in the balance. When he needed a drug to stave off the Grim Reaper, down the hatch it went.
3) Gandhi’s rejection by India’s marginalized communities
South Asian civil rights champion Dr. B. R. Ambedkar, a contemporary of Gandhi, said: “If a man with God’s name on his tongue and sword under his armpit deserved the appellation of a Mahatma, then Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi was a Mahatma.” Regarding Gandhi’s lifelong support for the Hindu Caste System, a social structure similar to Apartheid and other segregationist models, Dr. Ambedkar also stated:
[Gandhi] was all the time double-dealing. He conducted two papers. One in English…. In Gujarati, he conducted another paper…. If you read the two papers, you will see how Mr. Gandhi was deceiving the people. In the English paper, he posed himself as an opponent of the caste system, and of untouchability, and that he was a Democrat. But if you read his Gujarati magazine… he has been supporting the caste system and all the orthodox dogmas which have been keeping us down all through the ages….
We want untouchability to be abolished. But we also want that we must be given equal opportunity so that we may rise to the level of the other parties…. Mr. Gandhi was totally opposed…. He wasn’t like Garrison, in the United States, who fought for the Negroes.
4) Gandhi’s sympathy for Hitler
On May 15, 1940, just five days after the horrific invasion of France began, Gandhi remarked on the Nazi führer’s conquest, saying: “I do not consider Hitler to be as bad as he is depicted. He is showing an ability that is amazing and he seems to be gaining his victories without much bloodshed.” This despite over 80,000 French who died in combat during the unprovoked invasion of their country.
On May 26, 1940, Gandhi wrote: “I do not believe Herr Hitler to be as bad as he is portrayed. He might even have been a friendly power as he may still be.” He said this just two days before the Wormhoudt Massacre, a May 28, 1940 incident in which Nazi troops slaughtered 80 unarmed British and French prisoners of war.
Gandhi sent a lengthy letter directly to Adolf Hitler on December 24, 1940. His letter begins “Dear Friend,” which he explained, saying: “That I address you as a friend is no formality.” He then wrote: “We have no doubt about your bravery or devotion to your fatherland, nor do we believe that you are the monster described by your opponents.”
The twisted logic and perverted reasoning employed by Asaram to suggest rape victim Jyoti should have submitted to her killers is hauntingly similar to that found in Gandhi’s post-Holocaust advice to the Jewish people: “Throw yourselves off a cliff.” During a 1947 interview with George Orwell, just two years after Hitler committed suicide, Gandhi further demonstrated a further shocking disregard for the brutality of the Nazi regime, saying:
Hitler killed five million Jews…. But the Jews should have offered themselves to the butcher’s knife. They should have thrown themselves into the sea from cliffs.
5) Gandhi’s promotion of racial supremacy and racial segregation
Gandhi worked as a lawyer in South Africa for 21 years before gaining fame in India. His time in South Africa was spent promoting the racial segregation of black Africans from the rest of society. Gandhi bragged about this victory for racism in a speech given in 1896 to a Bombay, India audience, claiming:
Ours is one continual struggle against a degradation sought to be inflicted upon us by the Europeans, 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.
In the Durban Post and telegraph offices there were separate entrances for natives and Asiatics and Europeans. We felt the indignity too much and many respectable Indians were insulted and called all sorts of names by the clerks at the counter. We petitioned the authorities to do away with the invidious distinction and they have now provided three separate entrances for natives, Asiatics, and Europeans.
Gandhi also cheered and volunteered to fight in two British colonial wars to suppress black freedom movements. In response to Gandhi’s racism, South African journalist Sentletse Diakanyo, who grew up under Apartheid, concluded in 2008: “To continue to honour and celebrate this man is to insult humanity.”
Gandhi usually used the term “Kaffir” to describe black Africans. This word is a South African pejorative for blacks which is equivalent to “nigger” and has been a legally punishable offense in South Africa since 1975. It was no mistake that he used this term, which he clearly knew was offensive. For instance, at another time, Gandhi wrote: “If ‘Kaffir’ is a term of opprobrium [meaning “harsh criticism”], how much more so is Chandal [a racist term for low-caste Hindus]?”
Conclusion
Although he was nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize five times — in 1937, 1938, 1939, 1947 and 1948 — Gandhi never received that award. In addition to his racism, one reason for this was because he supported every single major war of his lifetime and even volunteered to serve in two of them. In 1937, Nobel committee advisor Professor Jacob Worm-Müller cited one very specific reason for rejecting Gandhi, writing: “It is significant that [Gandhi’s] well-known struggle in South Africa was on behalf of the Indians only, and not of the blacks whose living conditions were even worse.”
In short, Gandhi’s struggle was to the benefit of almost no one. His life and actions harmed his grandnieces, his wife, India’s marginalized communities, the Jewish people, and the African people. Consequently, we humbly ask you to do your due diligence in re-considering how celebrating Gandhi is deeply disturbing to his victims, whose sufferings have not ceased.
Very sincerely yours,
Organization for Minorities of India
Arvin Valmuci, Coordinator