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Celeb News: Mahatma Gandhi exposed as racist, misogynist, and pedophile
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Member Since: 8/7/2015
Posts: 4,477
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Mahatma Gandhi exposed as racist, misogynist, and pedophile
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... My maternal grandfather went to jail with Gandhi in 1933, so I grew up knowing this myth was cobbled together from half-truths. My grandfather took the lessons he'd learned in jail to begin an ashram in the bowels of West Bengal. As a consequence, my parents raised me with an intimate understanding of Gandhi that teetered between laudatory and critical. My family adored him, though we never really bought into the idea that he single-handedly orchestrated India's independence movement. This is to say nothing of Gandhi's bigotry, which we didn't touch in our household. In the decades since his assassination in 1948, the image of Gandhi has been constructed so carefully, scrubbed clean of its grimy details, that it's easy to forget that he predicated his rhetoric on anti-blackness, a vehement allergy to female sexuality, and a general unwillingness to help liberate the Dalit, or "untouchable," caste.
Gandhi lived in South Africa for over two decades, from 1893 to 1914, working as a lawyer and fighting for the rights of Indians—and only Indians. To him, as he expressed quite plainly, black South Africans were barely human. He referred to them using the derogatory South African slur kaffir. He lamented that Indians were considered "little better, if at all, than savages or the Natives of Africa." In 1903, he declared that the "white race in South Africa should be the predominating race." After getting thrown in jail in 1908, he scoffed at the fact that Indians were classed with black, not white, prisoners. Some South African activists have thrust these parts of Gandhi's thinking back into the spotlight, as did a book published this past September by two South African academics, but they've barely made a dent on the American cultural consciousness beyond the concentric circles of Tumblr.
Around this same time, Gandhi began cultivating the misogyny he'd carry with him for the rest of his life. During his years in South Africa, he once responded to a young man's sexual harassment of two of Gandhi's female followers by forcibly cutting the girls' hair short to make sure they didn't invite any sexual attention. (Michael Connellan, writing in the Guardian, carefully explained that Gandhi felt women surrendered their humanity the minute men raped them.) He operated under the assumption that men couldn't control their basic predatory impulses while simultaneously asserting that women were responsible for—and completely at the mercy of—these impulses. His views on female sexuality were similarly deplorable; according to Rita Banerji, writing in Sex and Power, Gandhi viewed menstruation as the "manifestation of the distortion of a woman's soul by her sexuality." He also believed the use of contraceptives was the sign of *****dom.
...When he vowed celibacy (without discussing it with his wife) back in India, [he began] using women—including some underage girls, like his grand-niece—to test his sexual patience. He'd sleep naked next to them in bed without touching them, making sure he didn't get aroused; these women were props to coax him into celibacy.
Kasturba, Gandhi's wife, was perhaps his most frequent punching bag. "I simply cannot bear to look at Ba's face," he once gushed about her, because she was caring for him while he was sick. "The expression is often like that on the face of a meek cow and gives one the feeling as a cow occasionally does, that in her own dumb manner she is saying something." ... When Kasturba came down with pneumonia, Gandhi denied her penicillin, even though doctors said it would cure her; he insisted the new medicine was an alien substance her body should not take in. She succumbed to the sickness and died in 1944. Just years later, perhaps realizing the grave mistake he'd made, he willfully took quinine to treat his own malaria. He survived.
There's a Western impulse to view Gandhi as the quiet annihilator of caste, a characterization that's categorically false. He viewed the emancipation of Dalits as an untenable goal, and felt that they weren't worth a separate electorate. He insisted, instead, that Dalits remain complacent, waiting for a turn that history never gave them. Dalits continue to suffer from the direct results of prejudices sewn into the cultural fabric of India.
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These are the mental gymnastics we engage in when we're eager to mythologize. The vile traits Gandhi exhibited persist in Indian society at large today—virulent anti-blackness, a blasé disregard for women's bodies, careful myopia around the piss-poor treatment of Dalits. It's not a coincidence that these very strains of Gandhi's rhetoric have been stamped out of his legacy.
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Creating a false idol involves a great deal of forgetting. It's easy to slobber over a man who didn't really exist.
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wow this is horrifying  i cant believe people respect him 
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Member Since: 10/14/2010
Posts: 6,781
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You need to stop with these vice articles. They are clearly fabricating them for clicks.
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Member Since: 3/16/2012
Posts: 5,660
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Pretty much all South Asians know him as a disgusting creature, glad the word is getting out.
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ATRL Contributor
Member Since: 1/1/2014
Posts: 35,912
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"manifestation of the distortion of a woman's soul by her sexuality." He also believed the use of contraceptives was the sign of *****dom.
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??? What's it supposed to say?
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Banned
Member Since: 8/7/2015
Posts: 4,477
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Originally posted by 113th Post
??? What's it supposed to say?
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wh0redom
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Member Since: 4/23/2011
Posts: 16,377
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Vice always posts really old news, but I'm glad it's getting attention now. South Asians already know he's a fraud and western people love exaggerating how great he is.
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Member Since: 8/7/2015
Posts: 2,869
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already knew this, like Mother Teresa he was EXTREMELY problematic. glad it's spreading though, he definitely does not deserve to be seen as a such a nice guy when he was actually horrifically racist. its okay to admire his peace efforts, but he had a lot of flaws (like any person really)
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Banned
Member Since: 8/7/2015
Posts: 4,477
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Originally posted by ToxDuris
You need to stop with these vice articles. They are clearly fabricating them for clicks.
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..... no and no ????
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Member Since: 6/19/2012
Posts: 29,579
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Member Since: 8/19/2013
Posts: 34,855
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Originally posted by HEARTCORE
already knew this, like Mother Teresa he was EXTREMELY problematic. glad it's spreading though, he definitely does not deserve to be seen as a such a nice guy when he was actually horrifically racist. its okay to admire his peace efforts, but he had a lot of flaws (like any person really)
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Oh, what's this? I knew about Gandhi but this is the first I'm hearing about Teresa.
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Member Since: 4/6/2014
Posts: 12,514
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Everybody's got a dark side. 
But a vast majority of people were racist/homophobic/misogynist in the time that he lived. Not surprising.
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ATRL Contributor
Member Since: 8/20/2011
Posts: 18,900
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Quote:
Originally posted by HEARTCORE
already knew this, like Mother Teresa he was EXTREMELY problematic. glad it's spreading though, he definitely does not deserve to be seen as a such a nice guy when he was actually horrifically racist. its okay to admire his peace efforts, but he had a lot of flaws (like any person really)
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I've already heard bad things about Mahatma but not about Mother Teresa. What she has done?
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Member Since: 1/1/2013
Posts: 17,232
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Mess I didn't know any of that 
I have NEVER seen anyone say or point out anything negative about him before
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Member Since: 2/17/2012
Posts: 33,611
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Originally posted by Sazare
Oh, what's this? I knew about Gandhi but this is the first I'm hearing about Teresa.
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Well, for starters she had the whole "suffering is a part of life" outlook. She didn't really care about "helping" that much. She just cared about salvation. Typical catholic/christian nonsense.
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Member Since: 12/29/2011
Posts: 1,963
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The fact that people are just now getting that Gandhi was a piece of ****
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Member Since: 2/4/2014
Posts: 2,860
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Originally posted by I am your light
I've already heard bad things about Mahatma but not about Mother Teresa. What she has done?
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Member Since: 3/13/2012
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Banned
Member Since: 8/7/2015
Posts: 4,477
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Originally posted by madonnas
Well, for starters she had the whole "suffering is a part of life" outlook. She didn't really care about "helping" that much. She just cared about salvation. Typical catholic/christian nonsense.
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Honestly she wasn't as problematic as him, like she had the normal share of anti-contraception suffering is good for the soul rhetoric but she wasnt racist
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Member Since: 8/7/2015
Posts: 3,564
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I'm not very surprised. A lot of key political/social/scientific figures were racist/misogynist.
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Member Since: 1/1/2014
Posts: 12,370
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Quote:
Originally posted by I am your light
I've already heard bad things about Mahatma but not about Mother Teresa. What she has done?
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Very little of the donations she received went to charity. Most of them went to missionary work.
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