THE ASIAN INDEPENDENT UK
Bal Ram Sampla
Geopolitics
Core Thesis
The article argues that Gandhi’s globally celebrated image as a moral saint and apostle of non-violence is incomplete. Drawing primarily from Gandhi’s own writings, the author contends that his obsession with “moral purity” frequently crossed from personal discipline into coercive control over people with far less power, what the author calls “moral blackmail.”
Key Arguments:
1. Racism in South Africa
Gandhi’s early political activism aimed to elevate Indians above Black Africans, not to dismantle racial hierarchy. He used slurs like “raw Kaffir,” described Black Africans as “uncivilised” living “like animals,” and petitioned authorities to segregate Indians from Black Africans in prisons. The author frames this as seeking to ensure his people weren’t at the bottom rather than challenging the hierarchy itself.
2. Caste and “Spiritualizing Oppression”
Rather than fighting the caste system that forced Dalits into degrading labor, Gandhi reframed scavenging as a divine calling. In his 1936 essay “The Ideal Bhangi,” he wrote that a scavenger should do the work “not as a profession, but as a calling from God.” The author contrasts this with Ambedkar’s demand for structural emancipation.
3. The Poona Pact as Coercion
When Ambedkar secured separate electorates for the Depressed Classes, Gandhi went on a fast unto death to oppose them. The resulting Poona Pact replaced separate electorates with reserved seats, but neutralized Ambedkar’s push for independent Dalit political power. The author argues this turned Gandhi’s self-suffering into political leverage: “I will hurt my body, but the political cost of my death will fall upon you.”
4. Bodily Control and Medical Hypocrisy
Gandhi imposed extreme dietary and health regimens on ashram residents, monitoring their bowel movements and administering enemas. When his wife Kasturba was dying of bronchial pneumonia at 74, Gandhi objected to penicillin injections, invoking God’s will — despite having himself undergone surgery and taken quinine when his own life was at stake.
5. Sexual Experiments and Power Imbalance
Gandhi’s “brahmacharya experiments” involved teenage girls and young women — including his 18-year-old grandniece Manu — sleeping naked beside him to test his sexual resolve. His physician Sushila Nayar participated in intimate bathing and massage routines. The author emphasizes the problem isn’t proving intercourse occurred, but that younger women’s bodies were used as instruments for Gandhi’s self-testing, with massive power asymmetries making genuine consent impossible.
6. Advice to Rape Victims
During the 1946 riots, Gandhi told women that rape was “physically impossible against her will” if she had sufficient moral strength, advised women to “die before dishonour,” and suggested methods of self-killing including biting one’s tongue, choking, and carrying poison. The author calls this rape-apologist reasoning that shifted responsibility from the rapist to the victim’s spiritual resolve.
Conclusion
The article’s central moral claim is that choosing suffering for oneself does not confer the right to prescribe suffering to others. Gandhi’s personal moral agency made him historically significant, but when imposed on a political rival, a dying wife, a teenage grandniece, or a woman facing a mob, it became “a weapon of profound cruelty.”
Source:
Https://open.substack.com/pub/kavya2k6/p/mahatma-gandhis-moral-blackmail?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=hzmrl
Summary of “Did Gandhi Ask Too Much of His Victims? (Part 2)” By Kavya
Core Thesis
Part 2 examines what happens when Gandhi’s philosophy of moral sacrifice and non-violence moves from the private sphere (covered in Part 1) into politics, communal conflict, and mass violence. The article argues that Gandhi consistently placed the moral burden on those already suffering, demanding they absorb violence, death, and ethnic cleansing without retaliation , while the practical cost of his ideals was paid by victims, not by Gandhi himself.
Key Arguments:
1. The Bihar Earthquake (1934)
When an earthquake killed 10,000–30,000 people in northern Bihar, Gandhi declared it “divine chastisement sent by God for our sins” , specifically linking it to the sin of untouchability. Tagore publicly pushed back, arguing that physical catastrophes have natural causes and that linking them to moral failings undermines rational thinking. Gandhi refused to retract his claim, saying he “instinctively felt” it.
The author’s concern: once suffering is spiritualized rather than understood causally, practical problem-solving becomes secondary to spiritual correction.
2. Asymmetry of Restraint
Gandhi’s moral demands fell disproportionately on Hindus in communal conflicts, argued with support from Ambedkar’s writings and Perry Anderson’s analysis:
(I) Rangila Rasul controversy (1924):
Gandhi condemned a pamphlet offensive to Islam, but had been largely silent when earlier tracts mocked Hindu deities. The publisher Rajpal was eventually murdered by Ilm-ud-Din in 1929.
(II) Murder of Swami Shraddhanand (1926):
A bedridden reformer was assassinated, yet Gandhi called the killer his “brother” and declared him “not guilty,” deflecting Hindu outrage.
(III). “Bully and Coward” logic:
After the Kohat riots, Gandhi wrote that Hindus “come out second best” because they lack courage, and “where there are cowards there are bound to be bullies.”
The author argues this placed the moral burden on victims rather than aggressors.
3. Prescribing Satyagraha to Extermination:
Gandhi applied non-violent resistance to the Holocaust, arguing in 1938 that German Jews should have marched unarmed to their deaths to win the sympathy of the world.
Philosopher Martin Buber wrote an open letter rebutting this, pointing out that Satyagraha requires an opponent who feels shame or answers to democratic institutions , the Nazi state answered to none of these.
In 1946, Gandhi reiterated to biographer Louis Fischer that Jews “should have offered themselves to the butcher’s knife.”
4. Mass Trauma and Practical Rejection
Valmiki Mandir prayers:
While living among Hindu and Sikh refugees who had fled Partition massacres, Gandhi insisted on Quran recitations during interfaith prayers at a Hindu temple. When grieving refugees objected, he scolded them for intolerance or cancelled prayers entirely, a one-sided demand for accommodation.
(I). Direct Action Day, Calcutta (Aug 1946):
4,000–10,000 killed in 72 hours. Gandhi’s non-violence had no effect; the slaughter only stopped when Hindu and Sikh communities organized armed defense, notably by Gopal Chandra Mukhopadhyay (“Gopal Patha”).
(II) Noakhali genocide (Oct–Nov 1946):
Mass forced conversions (estimated 50,000–75,000 Hindus), gang rapes, forced marriages, and desecration of temples. Gandhi walked barefoot through villages for four months, but the author frames his approach as continued insistence on non-resistance amid systematic ethnic violence.
(III) Gopal Patha’s refusal:
When Gandhi demanded armed groups surrender weapons, Gopal Patha refused, saying he would “not be a party to the self-destruction of my community.” The author presents this as the practical answer of ordinary people who felt Gandhi was asking them to accept extermination as a spiritual act.
5. The Uncompromising Stance
Gandhi’s most explicit statement came on April 6, 1947: “Even if Muslims decided to kill every Hindu, they should face death bravely without retaliation.” The author argues this represents the fatal endpoint of Gandhi’s philosophy , prescribing non-resistance to people facing extermination, whose consent was never sought.
Conclusion
The article identifies a consistent structural pattern across both parts: whether demanding ashram women test his celibacy, treating a natural disaster as divine punishment, calling an assassin a brother, advising Jews to walk into gas chambers, or telling refugees to accept slaughter without anger , the moral burden always lands on those already suffering. The author distinguishes between voluntary self-sacrifice for a chosen cause versus imposing that same suffering on people facing extermination who never consented.
Source:
Https://open.substack.com/pub/kavya2k6/p/did-gandhi-ask-too-much-of-his-victims?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=hzmrl
