Quote of the Week: Mahatma Gandhi
“Be the change that you wish to see in the world.
“
Mahatma Gandhi
The above picture is of the statute of Gandhi ripped down in California. Why? Because he was a bad guy? I’m sure the police will someday prosecute those who did this. LOL.
ALong those lines, Gandhi did great things and also held racist views, not clear how much those racist views modified over the years. So he wasn’t perfect.
Face it. Oskar Schindler was an a-hole. He was a cheater. He was a philanderer and not discreet about it, he humiliated his wife. He joined the Nazi party because he thought it would profit him. He spied for the Nazis against the Czechoslovakians and the Poles.
But he did one great thing……..
Aristides de Sousa Mendes of Portugal saved…….orders of magnitude more Jews than Schindler, ten thousand, maybe twenty. “Official” number of 30,000 is felt to have been excessive. Ten or twenty thousand, Jews and non-Jews, with some royal families allowing the Allies to create gonernments-in-exile.
Mendes couldn’t keep it in his pants. Wife was well aware of his mistress (plural?), bearing reportedly Mendes’ fifteenth child. Maybe the wife appreciated the rest.
Great humans have feet of clay, probably the rule, not the exception.
There have been arguments that Gandi held racist attitudes towards Africans. The British tended to use Asian Indians as managerial middlemen in their African Colonies. I can imagine in the eyes of Africans, perhaps chafing under British rule, the actual face of that British rule all too often was not British, but Indian. Not surprised there are bad feelings.
See – “The South African Gandhi, Stretcher-Bearer of Empire”, by Desai and Vahed
Gandhi appears to have changed his mind about the British, as the century progressed.
“Progress is impossible without change, and those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything”. – George Bernard Shaw
Changed minds change everything. I think the interesting read is the conversion from the South African Gandhi to the leader of the independence movement. I’m sure some racist views persisted. Gandhi was human.
So, tear down the statues. There will be none left. Maybe the angels in the cemetery. I hope the Antifa types can see fit to keep “The Peace That Passeth All Understanding” by Gaudens in Rock Creek Park. Henry Adams was known to be pretty racist and elitist. He also loved his wife, and commissioned a beautiful monument when she died.
I hear George Washington kept slaves.
See #ghandimustfall on Twitter
It appears our country is not the only one where differing factions show their displeasure by pulling down or vandalizing statues.
https://www.thehindu.com/news/international/indian-americans-condemn-vandalism-of-gandhi-statue-in-new-york/article38395364.ece
The article mentions several incidents of destroyed Ghandi statues, but each cited was in the US. However, I don’t doubt similar things occur in Europe and elsewhere. These are truly strange times. I often say the country is upside down and on fire.