Standing Bear wrote: > About face. Ghandi was lucky! Just 80 years earlier a far different Britain > in 1857 conducted mass executions of all who would stand in their way, > especially if those waystanders were not white Anglo-Saxon protestants. > One picture showed ranks of cannon, each with a Sepoy rebel prisoner tied > across the muzzle, just before those guns were fired with grisly results.
Yes, this is my exact point. But Ghandi wasn't lucky, he knew exactly what he was doing. No one makes a ridiculous spectacle of himself by going around in a diaper, unless he knows he can use the PR to gain an advantage. >> And ask yourself this. How many people died in the violence of the >> partition of India and Pakistan following Ghandi's "success"? > Most of those deaths were caused by Moslem extremists rioting in > uncontrollable bloodlust. Christians have had their pogroms as well. > The million or so deaths then probably prevented a larger conflagration > later......or maybe just let off some pressure and postponed the next > bacchanal to a later date. That area has known religious war for > thousands of years. You make my point again. The average Indian was likely better off under the British Raj than under the local home-grown Moguls and other native despots. If the British had been allowed to withdraw in a more orderly fashion, without the intervention of Ghandi, this violence might have been avoided. Ghandi's absurd idea that somehow everybody would just sing cumbaya and get along just fine after the British left, resulted in an orgy of murder and mayhem beyond imagining. But you know, he was a saint, it wasn't really his fault. He didn't mean it, poor baby. >> It seems we tend to make saints of people who accomplish a goal while >> killing a lot of people, and at the same time we virtually ignore those >> who accomplish an equally laudible goal with no killing at all. As an >> example, take a look at the Lincoln Memorial. There sits Abraham Lincoln, >> resembling for all the world a martyred saint. Yet, even though we agree >> with what he did, he was responsible for the death of more Americans than >> anyone else in our short history. I suspect if he had pulled the whole >> thing off with some deft politics, people would still be arguing about what >> a terrible president he was. > No amount of 'deft politics' were going to deter some of the most ruthless and > vicious gangsters on the face of the planet at that time, southern 'plantation > owners', from practicing their peculiar institution. I don't argue that Lincoln could have avoided what he did. I merely argue that in the unlikely event that had he been able to accomplish his goal of keeping the United States united without all the bloodshed, we would still be arguing about what an awful president he was. Massive killing = sainthood. M. _______________________________________________ Join Excite! - http://www.excite.com The most personalized portal on the Web!
