The Other September 11: Gandhi and 100 Years of the Peace Movement

[WilliamPitt]

http://www.hinduonnet.com/thehindu/mag/2002/10/06/stories/2002100600290500.htm

On September 11, 1906, in Johannesburg, Gandhiji initiated his Satyagraha against the Natal Government, which was trying to pass an Ordinance meant to disenfranchise the Indians and if passed would have made life impossible for the Indians in the country. It was on September 11, 1906, when the Indians gathered to discuss how to meet the challenge of the ordinance that Gandhiji thought of facing violence with non-violence, of fighting for truth and justice with suffering. He warned the meeting that pursuit of Satyagraha might mean prison or even cost them their life. Everyone who attended that meeting took a pledge to resist the ordinance with non-violence whatever the provocation.

In launching his Satyagraha movement in Johannesburg, Gandhiji said: "I had no companion. We were 2,000 men, women and children against a whole nation capable of crushing the existence out of us. I did not know who would listen to me. It all came as if in a flash. Many fell back. But the honour of the nation was saved. New history was written by the South African Satyagrahis."

September 11, 1906, was the beginning of Gandhiji's Satyagraha movement — it started in Johannesburg against the ordinance and was later used in India to fight for its independence. "Satyagraha," explained Gandhiji, "is a relentless search for Truth and a determination to search for Truth. Satyagraha is an attribute of the spirit within. Satyagraha can be described as an effective substitute for violence." An eye for an eye, said Gandhi, only ends up making the whole world blind.

Explaining his philosophy of non-violence to the people, he said, "I saw that nations like individuals could only be made through the agony of the cross and in no other way. Joy comes not out of infliction of pain on others but out of pain voluntarily borne by oneself. Violent means would give violent freedom and that would mean a menace to the world. Real suffering, on the other hand, bravely borne melts even a heart of stone. Such is the potency of suffering. And there lies the key to Satyagraha."

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Nonviolent 9/11

On August 22, 1906, the Transvaal government in South Africa under the British Empire gave notice of a new legislation requiring all Indians, Arabs and Turks to register with the government. Fingerprints and identification marks on the person's body were to be recorded in order to obtain a certificate of registration. Those who failed to register could be fined, sent to prison or deported. Even children had to be brought to the Registrar from their fingerprint impressions. At the time, there were less than 100,000 Indians in South Africa. But in Transvaal, there was an Indian lawyer working with a Muslim company, and his name was Mohandas K. Gandhi.

On September 11, 1906, Gandhi called a mass meeting of some 3,000 Transvaal Indians to find ways to resist the Registration Act. He felt the Act was the embodiment of "hatred of Indians" which if accepted would "spell absolute ruin for the Indians in South Africa", and therefore resisting it is a "question of life and death."

Among these 3,000 people attending the meeting was one Sheth haji Habib, an old Muslim resident of South Africa. Deeply moved after listening to Gandhi's speech, Sheth Habib said to the congregation that the Indians had to pass this resolution with God as witness and could never yield a cowardly submission to such a degrading legislation. Gandhi wrote in his Satyagraha in Africa (1928), that "He then went on solemnly to declare in the name of God that he would never submit to that law and advised all present to do likewise." Though Sheth Habib was known to be a man of temper, his action on September 11 was significant because of his decision to act in defiance of an unjust law and willingness to suffer the consequences in a spiritually-endowed fight for justice in the name of God.

Gandhi was taken aback by the Muslim's suggestion. He wrote, " I did not come to the meeting with a view to getting the resolution passed in that manner, which redounds to the credit of Sheth haji Habib as well as it lays a burden of responsibility upon him. I tender my congratulations to him. I deeply appreciate his suggestion, but if you adopt it you too will share his responsibility.

On that day, September 11, 1906, in South Africa, the Indian nonviolent movement was born. Gandhi later called his Indian movement: "Satyagraha" or " the Force which is born of Truth and Love or non-violence." This movement went on to free 300 million people from the power of the British Empire and gave the twentieth century a most remarkable demonstration of the power of nonviolent struggle.

http://www.transnational.org/pressinf/2005/pi226_Chaiwat_Sept11.html

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Remember, and hope.

[Taxloss]

1. Allende was toppled by the USA on 11 September, as well.

A significant date for all sorts of reasons.

[Spider Jerusalem]

11. And on 11 September 1683...

Polish, Lithuanian, Austrian and Saxon forces under Jan III Sobieski of Poland defeated the Ottoman Turks at Vienna, breaking a months-long siege and marking the end of centuries of Turkish/Muslim efforts at expansion into Europe; from a world-historical perspective, this was arguably as significant an event as Charles Martel's victory at Tours/Poitiers in 732.

[orpupilofnature57]

2. I can see how he graduated from Oxford at 17 ,Notice where the truly

brilliant peoples concerns are, always.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

3. He was a very naughty Anarchist who opposed the establishment.

And, way "too liberal".

"It is alarming and also nauseating to see Mr. Gandhi, a seditious middle temple lawyer, now posing as a fakir of a type well known in the east, striding half-naked up the steps of the viceregal palace, while he is still organizing and conducting a defiant campaign of civil disobedience, to parley on equal terms with the representative of the king-emperor."

- Winston Churchill, 1930

[lapislzi]

4. Interesting quote.

Obviously Churchill and Gandhi had very differnt paths to follow...each great in his own way, and appropriate to his own struggle. Given their different agendas, it's not surprising that they never had a meeting of the minds, nor would they.

Although it makes me look at Churchill in a different light. We would do well to remember that he was charged with propping up the empire.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

5. LOL

I wonder what Bush would have thought of that Gandho-fascist.

[xchrom]

6. k&r

[Name removed]

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[WilliamPitt]

8. .

[malaise]

9. Thanks for reminding me

This is important.

[mwdem]

10. *

:kick:

[Zomby Woof]

12. The Dark Side of Gandhi

I've never been quick to deify Gandhi or hold him up as an example of pure pacifism. Cited below are some sources on this matter...


From Richard Shenkman's Legends, Lies, and Myths of World History:

Gandhi, for starters, had some very strange beliefs. When he was older, he preached that a couple should have sex only three of four times in their lives - although he engaged in a lot of sex when he was younger. He liked to sleep in the nude with naked young women to test his vow of chastity - apparently, sleeping nude with his wife wasn't much of a test. History doesn't record what she thought of this, but I can imagine my wife having a few choice words to say about such a situation.

Speaking of his wife, she died when he refused to allow her to get life saving shot of penicillin after she contracted pneumonia. He was, you see, opposed to modern medicine. But not fanatically opposed, since after her death he allowed himself to be treated with quinine for his malaria and allowed his appendix to be removed by surgeons. Nice guy, huh?

There's a lot more, like the fact that he wasn't always the pacifist that he has been made out to be and his odd fascination for bowel movements - I'll spare you the details of that last one.


Ibid, and culled from The Gandhi Nobody Knows by Richard Grenier:

:bluebox: Gandhi the part-time pacifist:

Although Gandhi became famous for his pacifism, his beliefs here evolved considerably over the years. In fact, until the British massacred hundreds of peaceful Indians at Amritsar, Gandhi was such a faithful British subject that he served in the imperial army.

In the Boer War, Gandhi led the Natal Indian Ambulance Corps and, in one of those weird coincidences, was one of the three future world leaders at the Battle of Spioenkop, along with Winston Churchill and Louis Botha. For his good work, Gandhi eventually won the War Medal and was promoted to sergeant major.

Gandhi also volunteered to serve in World War I, one of the few Indian activists to support England unconditionally. A bad case of pleurisy prevented him from serving, and in fact forced him to leave England and return to India.

:bluebox: Gandhi and World War II:

Gandhi never quite seemed to realize that the non-violence he urged against the British would have failed horribly if applied to the Nazis. He urged the British to surrender, and suggested that the Czechs and even the Jews would have been better off committing heroic mass suicide.

Even as late as June 1946, when the extent of the Holocaust had emerged, Gandhi told biographer Louis Fisher: "The Jews should have offered themselves to the butcher's knife. They should have thrown themselves into the sea from cliffs."

As the Japanese advanced into Burma (now called Myanmar), there was a real possibility of an Axis invasion of India. Gandhi thought it was best to let the Japanese take as much of India as they wanted, and that the best way to resist would be to "make them feel unwanted."

(In fact, the Axis was helping a buddy of Gandhi's to raise an army of Indians that would have seized the country from the Brits, but that's another story.)

:bluebox: Gandhi, family man:

He described his wife as looking like a "meek cow."

He refused to allow his sons to get a formal education, and also tried to force his oddball sexual ideas on them. He so disapproved of the wife of his eldest son that the Mahatma disowned him. This son broke from the family and became an alcoholic. In rebellion against everything his father stood for, Harilal Gandhi even announced at one point that he had converted to Islam.

The Mahatma also had trouble with his second son, Manilal, who had an affair with a married woman. Dad made the matter a public scandal and pushed the woman involved to shave her head. Manilal was also briefly exiled from the family for lending money to fellow black sheep Harilal.

[Name removed]

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