Gandhi is a figure that has been practically deified for his influence in overthrowing the British Raj, and because the education system that we currently have tends to have quite a few biases, he is also a figure whose flaws and prejudices have been completely wiped out by the mainstream curriculum that we are exposed to throughout our lives. Luckily I find topics involving recognizing and eradicating prejudice to be interesting, which is why I try to surround myself with media involving this topic. If this had not been the case, I may not have ever found out about the side of Gandhi that is a lot less accepting and progressive than people tend to think.
Luckily this information is something that is not too difficult to find if you know to look for it, although getting even to the point of looking for this information can be difficult. However, just a short google search can reveal all kinds of information about Gandhi’s racism, sexism, and general strangeness.
Regarding Gandhi’s racism, I find it to be sadly ironic that the man who Martin Luther King looked up to and inspired so much actually held the black population of South Africa in contempt despite living there for 21 years. Despite this, he regarded them as being on the same level as India’s untouchables, which was the lowest caste system there. (The caste system is also something that he supported). He unapologetically referred to them as the South African equivalent of the n word and referred to the entire race as dirty animals. Additionally, he refused to meet with African American’s who were leading the civil rights movement. Not only was he fully aware of the inequalities that Africans faced, he also thought they were justified and became offended when he felt as though Indians were being treated as though they were on the same level as Africans. Here, his hypocrisy is clear because of his acceptance of the horrible things Africans had to go through while being completely horrified whenever any type of racism was directed towards him or those who he considered to be at the same level of him. This category does not even include all Indians, considering the fact that he was also completely accepting of the caste system that kept so many people in inescapable poverty. This article reveals a few of the horrible things Gandhi has said about black people specifically, such as:
“Are we supposed to be thieves or free-booters that even a Kaffir policeman can accost and detain us wherever we happen to be going?”
Gandhi’s strange way of dealing with celibacy was also something that one could say came from his sexism. Despite being married, Gandhi was so determined to rid himself of any sexual desires that he would sleep naked, surrounded by young women who were also naked, something that would certainly be distressing to one’s spouse. This strange method truly seemed to have no limits when one considers the fact that he also did this with his grandniece.
Adding another level of hypocrisy to his character, Gandhi was also homophobic despite his strangely homoerotic relationship with a male German bodybuilder, saying that this man had “taken possession of my body”. Despite this, he and Nehru, whose work we have also read, took on the task of any ancient art that depicted homosexuality in Hindu temples to be cleared in order for them to be sexually cleansed.
I remember the first time I came across information about Gandhi being less of a role model than I originally thought. Gandhi was one of the only, if not the only Indian person who I learned about through the American schooling system, and because of that lack of representation he was one of the few examples I had of someone of my ethnicity making an impact on the world. That is why when I first learned about the less progressive side of him I refused to accept it and went on with my day without doing any fact checking of my own. Somehow this information kept popping back up, and eventually I decided to do my own research, which left me with a feeling of disappointment and disillusionment that I had no idea what to do with. However, as time passed I continued to read about this topic and eventually became comfortable with this information, even if it meant the man who I had thought of as a role model for all of my childhood was actually anything but that. My own reaction is something that I’m not proud of. I think of myself as fairly good at critically thinking, and yet in this situation when I was presented with information that I did not like, I chose to remain willfully ignorant, which shows that I absolutely have more work to do in improving this skill.
Although I have known how biased the American education system is for years, this was the first time I realized how easy it is to continue with the system of misinformation that is rampant in the American education system–another clear example of this being how Columbus is also deified despite his cold blooded slaughter of Native Americans. Even my high school program, which I have discussed in previous posts, was determined to teach us to critically think and provided us with information to help us do that, taught me the incorrect idea from Todorov that the Inca thought of Cortes as a god, which was information I willingly accepted up until college. Essentially, it is important for all of us to doubt the information we are given in order to be able to identify where it has been rewritten. Biases are present throughout all of society, especially American society, and as a result it is easy for us to go through life with a false sense of security regarding the information that we know. This false narrative is important to question because once the falsities become clear, it often becomes easy to identify that they came from a place of prejudice.
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