Mighty Britain, tremble!
Let your empire’s standard sway
Let it break entirely—
My Gandhi fasts today
You may think it foolish—
That there’s no truth in what I say—
That all of Asia’s watching
As Gandhi fasts today
All of Asia’s watching
And I am watching, too,
For I am also jim crowed –
As India is jim crowed by you.
You know quite well, Great Britain
That it is not right
To starve and beat and oppress
Those who are not white.
Of course, we do it too.
Here in the U.S.A.
May Gandhi’s prayers help us, as well
As he fasts today.
“Gandhi Is Fasting” by Langston Hughes –
February 20, 1943
Just total bullshyt to claim that the Civil Rights Movement had nothing to do with Gandhi or Christian principles from the Sermon on the Mount.
And Ghandis piece of shyt pedo ass wasn't no ally to South Africans. He purposely came there to help Indians only and made some very disparaging remarks about the natives in his writings. Indians NEVER helped South Africans to fight anything as a group. In fact Ghandi himself begged the whites to join them in fighting the African tribes that resisted white rule.
Gandhi WAS a racist in the 1800s and up until 1906 or so, that was a product of his British education. It was when he saw how bravely and competently the Zulu fought and began to read the groundbreaking new writings of the time on racial equality (especially
Race Prejudice by Finot) that he changed up shyt and became an ally to South African Blacks. And there are a LOT of receipts for that:
"M. Finot has shown by his scientific researches that there is in them no inherent inferiority as is commonly supposed to be the case. All they need is opportunity. I know that if they have caught the spirit of the Indian movement, their progress must be rapid.” (Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, Vol 25, p. 26)"
“If in any respect the British administration is unjust to the Native, civilized or uncivilized, it is a blot and a stain on our administration, and one which I feel personally as an implication of disgrace.” (Indian Opinion, August 12, 1905)
“Their struggles are of different types...as South Africa is their mother country, they have a better right here than we have." (Indian Opinion, July 27, 1907)
“If we look into the future, is it not a heritage we have to leave to posterity, that all the different races commingle and produce a civilization that perhaps the world has not yet seen?” (Gandhi in his Johannesburg Speech, May 18, 1908)
“The election of the Rev. Dr Rubusana as a member of the Cape Provincial Council for Tembuland by a majority of 25 over his two opponents is an event of great importance. The election is really a challenge to the Union Parliament with reference to the colour clause. That Dr Rubusana can sit in the Provincial Council but not in the Union Parliament is a glaring anomaly which must disappear if South Africans are to become a real nation in the near future. We congratulate Dr Rubusana and the Coloured races on his victory and trust that his career in the Council will do credit to him and those he represents.” (Indian Opinion, September 24, 1910).
“I had the pleasure of hearing Dr Du Bois…. He is the gifted author of the Souls of Black Folk …. and everyone will rejoice that the negroes have so able and farseeing a representative; his spirit is co-operation and conciliation....Dr Du Bois is not only a great man amongst negroes, but also a great man amongst the world’s great men”” (Indian Opinion, August 5, 1911).
“In cocoa plantations, Negro workers are subjected to such inhuman treatment that if we witnessed it with our own eyes we would have no desire to drink cocoa. Volumes have been written on the tortures inflicted in these plantations....I also avoid tea and coffee as far as possible, since they are the produce of slave labour.” (Indian Opinion, March 8, 1913)
“The Natives Land Act of the Union Parliament has created consternation among the Natives. Indeed, every other question, not excluding the Indian question, pales into insignificance before the great Native question. This land is theirs by birth and this Act of confiscation – for such it is – is likely to give rise to serious consequences unless the Government take care.” (Indian Opinion, August 30, 1913).
“Indians have too much in common with the Africans to think of isolating themselves from them. They cannot exist in South Africa for any length of time without the active sympathy and friendship of the Africans." (Gandhi in Young India, April 5, 1928)
“As there has been an awakening in India, even so there will be an awakening in South Africa with its vastly richer resources — natural, mineral and human. The mighty English look quite pygmies before the mighty races of Africa. They are noble savages after all, you will say. They are certainly noble, but no savages and in the course of a few years the Western nations may cease to find in Africa a dumping ground for their wares.” (Gandhi, speaking at Oxford, October 24, 1931)
“Our deliverance must mean their deliverance. But, if that cannot come about, I should have no interest in a partnership with Britain, even if it were of benefit to India.” (Young India, November 19, 1931).
“You, on the other hand, are the sons of the soil who are being robbed of your inheritance. You are bound to resist that. Yours is a far bigger issue.” (Gandhi to Rev S.S. Tema, January 1, 1939)
“I witnessed some of the horrors that were perpetrated on the Zulus during the Zulu Rebellion. Because one man, Bambatta, their chief, had refused to pay his tax, the whole race was made to suffer. I was in charge of an ambulance corps. I shall never forget the lacerated backs of Zulus who had received stripes and were brought to us for nursing because no white nurse was prepared to look after them. And yet those who perpetrated all those cruelties called themselves Christians. They were ‘educated’, better dressed than the Zulus, but not their moral superiors.” (January 1, 1939)
Gandhi provided a neat formula for mutual understanding. He declared that if Indian rights conflicted with African “vital interests”, he would “advise the forgoing of those rights” (Harijan, July 1, 1939).
A few months before the All India Congress Committee (AICC) of the Indian National Congress decided in 1942 upon the Quit India movement against British rule, Gandhi wrote an article entitled “To Every Briton”. In it he asked every Briton “to support me in my appeal to the British at this very hour to retire from every Asiatic and African possession and at least from India. That step is necessary for the destruction of Nazism and Fascism. In this I include Japan’s ‘ism’ also. It is a good copy of the two.”
From
The African Element in Gandhi, there is 100 pages of receipts:
African leaders like Nelson Mandela, Kwame Nkrumah, Albert Luthuli, Desmond Tutu, Julius Nyerere, Kenneth Kaunda, among others, have in some form or another, acknowledged Gandhiji as an inspiration. Even a leader like Joshua Nkomo of Zimbabwe, who found Gandhiji’s methods “not appropriate” to the “special national situation” in his country, nevertheless observes that Gandhiji’s movements were “an inspiration to us, showing that independence need not remain a dream”.
As one writer has put it: “Of all the Asian independence movements, the Indian movement has undoubtedly stirred the imagination of African nationalists the most. And it is not difficult to see why. First, there was the personality of Mahatma Gandhi. The message cabled by the National Council of Nigeria and the Cameroons (NCNC) on his death expressed the sentiments of all African nationalists, for whom Gandhi was the ‘bearer of the torch of liberty of oppressed peoples’ and whose life had been ‘an inspiration to colonials everywhere’.”
Gandhiji’s struggle and method inspired and interested African-Americans as well. This became evident as articles relating to him and his activities began to appear in African-American journals at least as early as 1919. Hubert Harrison and Dr W E B DuBois were among the prominent African-American intellectuals who began to write and speak about him at this time. Later Gandhiji’s method became a model for the African-American struggle under the leadership of Martin Luther King, Jr., as is well known.
Dr W E B DuBois, the inspiration behind the Pan-African movement, referred to Gandhi in the context of resolving racial conflict especially in the American South: “If we …. solve our antithesis; great Gandhi lives again. If we cannot civilise the South, or will not even try, we continue in contradiction and riddle.” [W E B DuBois, Will the Great Gandhi Live Again?]
He wrote that it may well be that “real human equality and brotherhood in the United States will come only under the leadership of another Gandhi.” (W E B DuBois, Gandhi and the American Negroes).
Marcus Garvey too was in touch with Gandhi. Garvey, Chairman of the Fourth Annual International Convention of the Negro Peoples of the World, had on behalf of “the Negroes of the world” sent greetings to Gandhi for the “fight for the freedom of your people and country”. Garvey added: “We are with you”. Gandhi, who had been released in early 1924 after spending nearly two years in prison, said “I gladly publish and gratefully acknowledge."
In a 1956 preface to his autobiography, Kwame Nkrumah wrote: “After months of studying Gandhi’s policy, and watching the effect that it had, I began to see that, when backed by a strong political organisation it could be the solution to the colonial problem.”
As late as the end of the sixties, the West African nationalist pioneer, Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe wrote in the light of his own experience: “On Gandhi’s teachings of satyagraha, history has proved Gandhi right.”
Aminu Kano, according to his biographer, “analysed Gandhi’s success in lifting millions of Indians to a high level of dedication and endeavoured to adapt Gandhi’s non-violent techniques to Northern Nigeria”.
Besides his correspondence with W.E.B. DuBois, Gandhi also spoke quite positively of Booker T. Washington, John Tengo Jabavu, Marcus Garvey, Jomo Kenyatta, and Paul Robeson. He admired George Washington Carver and called him a genius, and the feeling was mutual. Langston Hughes followed Gandhi closely and wrote positively of him. Gandhi was also a friend and admirer of John Dube, the first president of the African National Congress as well as S.S. Tema. Mandela writes:
“M.K Gandhi and John Dube, first President of the African National Congress were neighbors in Inanda, and each influenced the other, for both men established, at about the same time, two monuments to human development within a stone’s throw of each other, the Ohlange Institute and the Phoenix Settlement. Both institutions suffer today the trauma of the violence that has overtaken that region; hopefully, both will rise again, phoenix-like, to lead us to undreamed heights.”
The idea that Gandhi didn't respect the Black community or didn't have respect from the Black community is just stupid. It's based on old out-of-context quotes from his younger days that completely ignore the last 40 years of his life and the numerous receipts from damn near every African freedom fighter of the age.
And British government controlled India through the East India Company and it wasn't a direct rule over the sub continent. They came there to trade but soon saw how weak they were and amassed an army comprised of British officers and Indian soldiers and went on conquering any Indian resistance.
Breh, the East India Company lost control after they screwed up the Indian Rebellion of 1857 and the British government came in and took over. The East India Company DIDN'T EVEN EXIST when Gandhi was fighting for Indian independence.
The Government of India Act 1858 was an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom passed on August 2, 1858. Its provisions called for the liquidation of the British East India Company (who had up to this point been ruling British India under the auspices of Parliament) and the transference of its functions to the British Crown....This act provided that India was to be governed directly and in the name of the Crown.
Claiming that the Brits didn't rule India during Gandhi's chapter shows you don't know
nothing about what was going on.
The British government lost interest in India because if you had half a fukking brain you would realize Indias independence in 1947 was also around WWII and the government was broke because of the cost of fighting the Germans so it was infact Hitler who more responsible for the British East Indian Company rule coming to an end then Ghandi. Jesus fukking christ you don't know shyt yet you trying to school somebody?? You nikkaz stay off these hard drugs.
And if you had read half a book you'd realize that the British East Indian Company ceased existing before Hitler was even born.
And India was a HUGE money-maker for the British government, it was its primary international source of revenue, claiming they gave up India cause they were broke is the most ass-backwards logic possible.
India was well on the way to self-rule before World War II even started. Brits were already so shook that they passed The Government of India Act 1935 which gave Indians the right to vote for the first time and gave them basic autonomy at the provincial level. But in 1937 when the first elections were held, the Indians elected Gandhi's party in 70% of provinces, which was running on an explicit campaign of rejection of the compromise and full-on Indian self-rule. Gandhi even had to delay the final push for self-rule in 1940 because he was concerned about how far the Axis attacks would go, but by 1942 they decided to go ahead and make the final push on the Quit India movement. By that point no one legitimately doubted that the Brits had lost control of India and war or no war it was only a matter of when, not if, India would gain independence.
