Interesting book review in the Wall Street Journal:
Joseph Lelyveld has written a generally admiring book about Mohandas Gandhi, the man credited with leading India to independence from Britain in 1947. Yet “Great Soul” also obligingly gives readers more than enough information to discern that he was a sexual weirdo, a political incompetent and a fanatical faddist—one who was often downright cruel to those around him. Gandhi was therefore the archetypal 20th-century progressive intellectual, professing his love for mankind as a concept while actually despising people as individuals…
Which pretty much anyone could see if they for a moment left off the propaganda about Gandhi. After all, if the independence of India was secured by non-violent protest, then why did the Indians immediately set upon each other when independence was secured? Millions of people were murdered as the Indians woke to the fact that the British would no longer be in charge and the horrible notion of coming under Moslem rule (for Hindus) or Hindu rule (for Moslems) became a reality.
What really happened is that the effects of the two World Wars utterly exhausted Britain’s ability and inclination to hold on. By 1947, it was just a matter of getting out as gracefully as possible…and power was handed off to the most vocal group of British-educated lawyers in both the Moslem and Hindu communities. No thought was given to what the people, themselves, might have wanted…but a clue to that is found in the effort 10 years later of the Indian government to determine how the common folk felt about the end of British rule. The effort was abandoned when it was found that most of them never knew that British rule had started. Very light was the touch of the British imperialist in India…who mostly ruled through locally-staffed agencies and governments.
It is good that myths be brought down to earth. Gandhi, for good or ill, is a figure of genuine historical importance, but we shouldn’t be walking around in awe of the man. He was, after all, just a man and we should just learn what he said and did – all of it, good and bad – and then make our own judgments about it. This book seems a first step in that direction.
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