Mk gandhi biography scandals

He believed that supporting the British Empire could help secure equal rights for Indians. However, he later realised that military service went against his principle of nonviolence. Gandhi was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize mk gandhi biography scandals times between and However, he never won. After his assassination inthe Nobel Committee reportedly considered giving him the award posthumously, but did not because the Peace Prize is not usually awarded posthumously.

After studying law in London, Gandhi struggled to practice as a lawyer. In his first case in India, he was so nervous that he couldn't cross-examine a witness. After this failure, he returned the client's fee and left the courtroom. Credit: franpritchett. Mahatma Gandhi, despite being revered globally for his philosophy of nonviolence and leadership in India's struggle for independence, was not without controversies.

Ina statue of Gandhi was removed from the campus of the University of Ghana because of these accusations. In the wake of the Black Lives Matter protests in the United States inthousands signed a petition in London for the demolition of Gandhi's statue there. Gandhi lived in South Africa from toapart from a few visits to India and England. During his time there, he transformed himself into an activist against injustice and discrimination.

However, he initially focused entirely on the sufferings of the Indian diaspora in South Africa and did not stand up for the Black community there. Instead, some of his early writings indicate that he looked down on them. In the passage, Gandhi refers to Black South Africans as "kaffirs," a highly offensive racist slur. Lal, the historian, said: "If somebody asks, 'was Gandhi a racist?

He believed in a hierarchy of civilizations, with Europeans at the top, Indians just below them, and Africans absolutely at the bottom. He spoke of the native inhabitants of Africa in patronizing and even pejorative language," Guha wrote in an article for the Telegraph India daily. However, Guha and others who have studied Gandhi's life say he outgrew his racial prejudices as he got older.

Lal noted that Gandhi received four African Americans at his ashram inand told them he believed the next great phase of nonviolent resistance would be fought by African Americans. Claim: A picture circulating on social media shows Gandhi in London with a child dressed in Tibetan clothes, supposedly the Dalai Lama. In this way, he remains the father of the nation.

It is not surprising, then, that with its worldwide revival, Gandhi is now being accused of racism, of which Indians have now become agents rather than objects. Two charges are levelled against Gandhi. That he never spoke for the liberty of Africans or involved them in his movement. And that he saw Africans as inferior and sought to keep Indians separate from them.

But unless he was invited to do so, the Mahatma never spoke for any community of which he was not a member. For he conceived of non-violence as an exemplary rather than instructive practice, one attracting emulation to maintain an anarchistic social plurality. As a lawyer defending Indian privileges, he was unable to challenge the legal system itself.

And the law ensured he could only defend these privileges by making sure Indians were not identified with Africans, though he might well have approved of this separation. Yet, he also insisted on treating wounded Zulus in the ambulance corps he led during the Bambatha Rebellion, his political sympathies being with them and not with Britain.

Eventually, he would also see African-Americans as the most hopeful agents of non-violence worldwide. Inwhen the Nazis systematically destroyed synagogues in Germany and Austria, Gandhi advised Jews to be voluntarily prepared for massacres. He wrote:. If I were a Jew and were born in Germany … I would claim Germany as my home even as the tallest gentile German may, and challenge him to shoot me or cast me in the dungeon.

Mk gandhi biography scandals

But if the Jewish mind could be prepared for voluntary suffering, even the massacre I have imagined could be turned into a day of thanksgiving and joy that Jehovah had wrought deliverance of the race even at the hands of the tyrant. He appealed to the Indian population in South Africa to join the war through his writings in Indian Opinion :.

If the Government only realised what reserve force is being wasted, they would make use of it and give Indians the opportunity of a thorough training for actual warfare. Gandhi once again proposed to raise an Indian ambulance corps that soon got the approval of the British army.