Re: [Marxism] Mahatma Gandhi
POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * Bhaskaran Kesavan wrote Mahatma Gandhi.'s role in the Indian national movement cannot be just evaluated in the Marxian perspective followed by R.Palme Dutt etc.History proceeds in a sinusoidal wave form,where every movement at any phase takes positions in the background of contemporary developments. I take your point. And I am aware that Palme Dutt was beholden to Comintern policy in much of what he wrote; but I would be interested to learn in what respect what is quoted here by Chris Harman is distorted or falsifies the record. Also. whatever the shortcomings of the Indian communists, that does not in any way, without further explication, mitigate the evidence that Gandhi was reflecting the interests of his capitalist supporters in much of what he did. I would like to be pointed to the accounts as well about the relevance of history proceeding in a sinusoidal wave form, an interesting concept, the specific way in the quoted contexts in which "every movement at any phase takes positions in the background of contemporary developments." _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] Mahatma Gandhi
POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * Mahatma Gandhi.'s role in the Indian national movement cannot be just evaluated in the Marxian perspective followed by R.Palme Dutt etc.History proceeds in a sinusoidal wave form,where every movement at any phase takes positions in the background of contemporary developments.Gandhi backed the British war efforts,they accuse.True.Did not the Communists back the same imperialist forces during the Second World War,while Gandhi called for "Quit India"?.The Indian communists failed in understanding the social,political and economic realities on Indian soil in the 1920s,when the movement originated.They failed in grasping the essence of the "Popular (United) Front" theory of Lenin and hence continued to criticize Gandhi and INC.Eventually they toed the Comintern line which was formulated in the international interests of the Soviet Union,controlled by Stalin.The present debacle of the communist movement in India,as in other countries world around,is the consequence of the negative attitude it pursued toward the national movements.Marxian historians should be prepared to reread world history of the 20th century.Mahatma Gandhi also should be reread by them.This will help in paving a new communist path suitable for 21 st century ,not only in India but elsewhere too. On Sat, Sep 5, 2015 at 11:47 PM, Ralph Johansen via Marxism < marxism@lists.csbs.utah.edu> wrote: > POSTING RULES & NOTES > #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. > #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. > #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. > * > > Vijaya Kumar Marla wrote > > Louis, Your post has been a shocker to me. I hope you don't really agree > with much of what has been projected in this articlea consistent > campaign going on to distort Mahatama Gandhi, Nehru and many other icons of > India's freedom struggle. > > > > I gather that you agree that Gandhi, while he may be seen as the father of > his country and as a seminal figure in the Indian struggle for > independence, like Washington or Mao or Castro or Mandela, and while he > should not be unfairly portrayed, should also be seen for what he was, > including being a thoroughly bourgeois politician. From the excerpts below > it appears to me that there might be more to be learned, in the context of > his class biases and the interests of his Hindu capitalist supporters, as > to his record on the discord between Hindu and Muslim as well. > > I learned much from Chris Harman in his A People's History of the World > http://digamo.free.fr/harman99.pdf where he documents in a few brief > passages, quoting B. Stein and R. Palme Dutt, Gandhi's track record on > class and capitalism, and in his backing of the British war effort, aspects > of nationalism as well: > > p. 450: > ...wide sections of India’s privileged classes still clung to the British > connection. When the world war broke out both Tilak and Mahatma Gandhi (who > returned to India from South Africa in 1915) backed the British war effort. > The authorities found enough recruits to expand the Indian army to two > million, and sent most to join the carnage in Europe. > . > pp. 455-6: > The first six months of 1920 saw more than 200 strikes, involving 1.5 > million workers. A government report noted: ...unprecedented fraternisation > between the Hindus and the Muslims... Even the lower classes agreed to > forget their differences. Extraordinary scenes of fraternisation occurred. > Hindus publicly accepted water from the hands of Muslims and vice versa. > > Yet the very militancy of the protests worried the leaders of the > nationalist movement, of whom the most influential figure was Mahatma > Gandhi. He was the son of a government minister in a small princely state, > who had studied to be a barrister in London. But he found that dressing in > peasant clothes and stressing Hindu religious themes enabled him to bridge > the linguistic and cultural gap between the English speaking professional > classes and the great mass of Indians in the villages—in a way that the > young Jawaharlal Nehru, Harrow- educated and with a poor grasp of Hindi, > could not. At the same time Gandhi was close to a group of Indian > capitalists who looked to the Indian Congress to push their case for > protected markets. Holding together such a coalition of different interests > meant discouraging agitation which might spill over from conflict with > British capitalists to conflict with Indi
Re: [Marxism] Mahatma Gandhi
POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * Vijaya Kumar Marla wrote Louis, Your post has been a shocker to me. I hope you don't really agree with much of what has been projected in this articlea consistent campaign going on to distort Mahatama Gandhi, Nehru and many other icons of India's freedom struggle. I gather that you agree that Gandhi, while he may be seen as the father of his country and as a seminal figure in the Indian struggle for independence, like Washington or Mao or Castro or Mandela, and while he should not be unfairly portrayed, should also be seen for what he was, including being a thoroughly bourgeois politician. From the excerpts below it appears to me that there might be more to be learned, in the context of his class biases and the interests of his Hindu capitalist supporters, as to his record on the discord between Hindu and Muslim as well. I learned much from Chris Harman in his A People's History of the World http://digamo.free.fr/harman99.pdf where he documents in a few brief passages, quoting B. Stein and R. Palme Dutt, Gandhi's track record on class and capitalism, and in his backing of the British war effort, aspects of nationalism as well: p. 450: ...wide sections of India’s privileged classes still clung to the British connection. When the world war broke out both Tilak and Mahatma Gandhi (who returned to India from South Africa in 1915) backed the British war effort. The authorities found enough recruits to expand the Indian army to two million, and sent most to join the carnage in Europe. . pp. 455-6: The first six months of 1920 saw more than 200 strikes, involving 1.5 million workers. A government report noted: ...unprecedented fraternisation between the Hindus and the Muslims... Even the lower classes agreed to forget their differences. Extraordinary scenes of fraternisation occurred. Hindus publicly accepted water from the hands of Muslims and vice versa. Yet the very militancy of the protests worried the leaders of the nationalist movement, of whom the most influential figure was Mahatma Gandhi. He was the son of a government minister in a small princely state, who had studied to be a barrister in London. But he found that dressing in peasant clothes and stressing Hindu religious themes enabled him to bridge the linguistic and cultural gap between the English speaking professional classes and the great mass of Indians in the villages—in a way that the young Jawaharlal Nehru, Harrow- educated and with a poor grasp of Hindi, could not. At the same time Gandhi was close to a group of Indian capitalists who looked to the Indian Congress to push their case for protected markets. Holding together such a coalition of different interests meant discouraging agitation which might spill over from conflict with British capitalists to conflict with Indian capitalists. Gandhi’s answer was to stress peaceful, disciplined, non-cooperation with the authorities. The man who had urged support for British imperialism in its war with Germany only four years earlier now made non-violence (ahimsa) a matter of principle. And there were tight limits even to this peaceful non-cooperation, in case it turned into class struggle. Gandhi refused to call for non-payment of general taxes, because it could lead to peasants not paying rent to zamindars. . But a movement like that which swept India in 1918-21 could not be disciplined in the way Gandhi wanted. The level of repression meted out by the British police and military on the one hand, and the level of bitterness among the mass of peasants, workers and the urban poor on the other, ensured that peaceful protest would repeatedly escalate into violent confrontation—as it did in Ahmedabad, Viramgam, Kheda, Amritsar and Bombay. In February 1922 it was the turn of Chauri Chaura, a village in Bihar. Police opened fire after scuffles with a demonstration, people responded by burning down the police station, killing 22 constables, and 172 peasants were killed in retaliation. Without consultation with anyone else in the Congress leadership, Gandhi immediately called off the whole protest movement and gave the British authorities the breathing space they desperately needed. The governor of Bombay, Lord Lloyd, later admitted that the campaign ‘gave us a scare’ and ‘came within an inch of succeeding’. Now they had a free hand to clamp down on the movement and arrest Gandhi. The movement was set back ten years. Worse, religious divisions came to the fore now each group was left to look after itself in the face of British power. The
Re: [Marxism] Mahatma Gandhi
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Marla, I'm biased because one of the authors (Ashwin) is my best mate in
Durban and the other (Goolam) is a very well respected colleague at my
university, so this reply may not be sufficiently objective.
On 2015/09/03 04:08 PM, Marla Vijaya kumar via Marxism wrote:
Your post has been a shocker to me.
There have been, surely, warnings about how racist Gandhi was while
living in Durban and Johannesburg? You've seen Arundhati Roy's
comparison of Abedkar and Gandhi, where this was made clear enough?
I hope you don't really agree with much of what has been projected in this
article. As for Arundhati Roy, well I really don't give much weight to her grey
matter. She blabbers so much, that she loses track of what she is trying to say
- another noisy character.
Her work on mega-dams, nuclear madness, the oppression of rural people,
Kashmir geopolitics, the extreme inequality of India, the brutalities of
world capitalism... on these matters and many others she blabbers much,
thank goodness. And she keeps track of a progressive narrative as well
as anyone else I've read. But your standards are extremely high.
There is a consistent campaign going on to distort Mahatama Gandhi,
But surely the distortion has been from your local ruling elite, for
several decades?
Nehru and many other icons of India's freedom struggle by you know who - The
Hindutva Brigade.I agree that Gandhi's views were emerging at the time of his
stay in South Africa.
Of course he retained some of these most brutal racist views against
black ('African') South Africans into the 1930s, as Ashwin's and
Goolam's book shows.
I hope you open your mind and have a look at /Stretcher-bearer of
Empire/, and if you still despise what the authors are doing, I hope you
can pen a review so that they get the message. I'll certainly pass it along.
Cheers,
Patrick
From a supporter of the empire seeking a few reforms, he slowly metamorphosed in to
fighter for full fledged freedom from colonial rule. Even after his arrival in
India, he was more of a reform minded politician, who was not ready to confront the
British rulers headlong. His progressive involvement had driven him to the call for
"poorna swaraj' (sovereign freedom). He is a very ordinary man with his own
flaws. He was even a dictatorial husband and father, which his sons resented all
their lives. But remember, he lived in another epoch, that of an India emerging from
medieval mindset in to modernity. But what was great about him was his thorough
grasp of Indian realities and his emotional appeal to the higher consciousness of
the uneducated Indian mind.As a Communist, I disagree with many of his notions of
benevolent oligarchy and his tacit approval of the feudal system. But he is the one
who had brought about a consciousness of a united secular India. He will remain the
'Father of
our Nation", whether RSS and their ilk like it or not.Vijaya Kumar Marla
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[Marxism] Mahatma Gandhi
POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * Louis, Your post has been a shocker to me. I hope you don't really agree with much of what has been projected in this article. As for Arundhati Roy, well I really don't give much weight to her grey matter. She blabbers so much, that she loses track of what she is trying to say - another noisy character. There is a consistent campaign going on to distort Mahatama Gandhi, Nehru and many other icons of India's freedom struggle by you know who - The Hindutva Brigade.I agree that Gandhi's views were emerging at the time of his stay in South Africa. From a supporter of the empire seeking a few reforms, he slowly metamorphosed in to fighter for full fledged freedom from colonial rule. Even after his arrival in India, he was more of a reform minded politician, who was not ready to confront the British rulers headlong. His progressive involvement had driven him to the call for "poorna swaraj' (sovereign freedom). He is a very ordinary man with his own flaws. He was even a dictatorial husband and father, which his sons resented all their lives. But remember, he lived in another epoch, that of an India emerging from medieval mindset in to modernity. But what was great about him was his thorough grasp of Indian realities and his emotional appeal to the higher consciousness of the uneducated Indian mind.As a Communist, I disagree with many of his notions of benevolent oligarchy and his tacit approval of the feudal system. But he is the one who had brought about a consciousness of a united secular India. He will remain the 'Father of our Nation", whether RSS and their ilk like it or not.Vijaya Kumar Marla _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
