They also wrote about Gandhi’s role in the Second Boer War (1899-1902) that was fought between British and Dutch settlers in South Africa. At the same time, his attitude towards Africans was almost mirroring that of the British. In The South African Gandhi: Stretcher-Bearer of Empire, they wrote about how Gandhi kept Africans away from the struggle for equality that he carved out for Indians there. In 2015, South African academics Ashwin Desai and Goolam Vahed came out with a book that raked up quite a controversy. Yet, in recent times, some historians have disagreed with the image of Gandhi as a mobiliser of African resistance. That is why, amongst other things, Mahatma Gandhi risked his life by organising for the treatment of Chief Bhambatha’s injured warriors in 1906,” he said in 1998. ![]() “It was here that he taught that the destiny of the Indian community was inseparable from that of the oppressed African majority. Nelson Mandela, for instance, is known to have been hugely inspired by Gandhi and his methodologies. Moreover, black leaders such as Martin Luther King Jr and Rev Desmond Tutu have hailed Gandhi as an inspiration for their own struggles against racist discrimination and injustice. ![]() Several African leaders have, however, hailed the role Gandhi played in mobilising the African movement against the British. ![]() How do we assess Gandhi’s racist attitudes? “Many of the native prisoners are only one degree removed from the animal and often created rows and fought among themselves,” he wrote. In his book, Gandhi: The Man, His People, and the Empire (2007), Gandhi’s biographer and grandson Rajmohan Gandhi writes that on one such occasion, Gandhi had written about his experience of sharing the cell with black people. In his struggle seeking justice and equality for Indians in South Africa, he was put behind the bars on several occasions.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |