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Old 17th June 2005, 06:48
safar safar is offline
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Join Date: Dec 2004
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salam muna1 & Malik,

Thanks for the feedback. Sorry for the late reply but I have been quite busy at work.

In regards to finding more books on this topic you will not find much, even though lots of documentary evidence is available however you can only find that in academic research papers in Universities and news magazines. The authors of the above book have done the general public a favor by collating all this information.

However it is interesting to note that even if you read a book that was written complimentary to Gandhi you will find many inconsistencies. Both within a single biography and between multiple biographies.

First time I ever read a book on Gandhi, it was supposed to be praising him but I ended up having more questions than I started with. For example, I could not understand why he was called the champion of peace when he never effectively opposed the millions of Indians enlisting and fighting for the British in the two World Wars. If he was such an apostle of peace why didn't he rally his supporters against the two world wars.

Then it was known that he always supported the Hindu caste system, however he seemed to change his mind only when his own son wanted to marry a Hindu woman of a higher caste.

Then his idea of remaining celibate while sleeping with naked women (to test his celibacy) didn't make sense either. To top it all, he even slept with his own grand niece, talk about incest!

The idea of the British leaving India because of his various stunts is also absurd. The British and other colonial powers left India and other colonies because the two World Wars had made the colonial powers immensely weak. In fact at the end of the second world war, there were more than one million Indian soldiers under arms in the British Imperial Army. If these soldiers, after world war II had turned their guns on the small pockets of White British colonials it would have been a massacre for the White British who had been exploiting the locals for generations.

This is where the non-violence of Gandhi really mattered. He was non-violent against the British colonial rulers and he gave them a respectful, peaceful exit after a 100 year of exploitative colonial rule. That is why the British loved him so much, as the British were able to extricate themselves peacefully courtesy of Gandhi who was planted by the British themselves.

India, inherited the mantle of British colonists and exploited this Gandhian image. It gives India an image of peace while it continues to build the worlds largest military. When India exploded its first nuclear device in 1974 it called it a "peaceful nuclear explosion". So this hypocrisy of projecting an image of peace while pursuing hegemonist designs is quite helpful for its global foreign policy. Hence you see the Indian government even financing the movie Gandhi.. it helps to hoodwink the world public with a facade of peace while they build the worlds largest military.

I remember reading a book called "The 100 --A Ranking of the Most Influential Persons in History" by Michael Hart. He ranked our Prophet Muhammad (saw) was the most influential person in history. And he did not even include Gandhi in the top 100. He gave a very sound explanation in the afterward of the book. He concluded that the Independence of India (like other countries) was inevitable. In fact Gandhi had been known to have delayed the Independence by about 10 years by helping the British. Also the ideas about non-violence were themselves not his original ideas and finally there was no peaceful Independence of India as millions of people lost their lives in riots and Gandhi's 'fasts' were never effective to any degree.

Here is another interesting link which deals with Gandhi's incest with his grand niece:

http://eserver.org/history/ghandi-nobody-knows.txt

Just google on 'Gandhi and Incest" and you will find lots of links.

By the way I have put forward these questions to Hindus as well and they can never give me a satisfactory answer either. Though I know that most Hindus know this already and just laugh at the gullibity of the public at large.

For South Asian history there are very few good, honest books out there. Pakistan has not done a good job in producing historians. The only historian I can recommend is Dr. Khurshid Kamal Aziz. Plus you can find some good research papers from Punjab University.

Indian authors are obviously biased as well but you can find good research papers from West Bengal University. Though the authors of this book on Gandhi are Indian Sikhs.

The book that I would like to recommend these days, is not related to this topic. Its called "Following Mohammed: Rethinking Islam in the contemporary world". Don't be misled by its title. This book is actually asking the West to rethink its misconceptions about Islam... I have posted about this book in the Islam forum. It is a good book to pass along to a Non-Muslim friend.

__________________

"One day the Earth will be Changed to a different Earth. And so will be the Heavens, And (man kind) will be marshalled Forth, before Allah, the One, The Irresistible."

The Glorious Quran: Surah Ibrahim, Ayah 48

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