“You must be the change you wish to see in the world.” Mahatma Gandhi

“You must be the change you wish to see in the world.” Mahatma Gandhi

Ba, his wife looks at Gandhi hostilely. Ba Speaks, “Sora was sent to tell me I – I must rake and
cover the latrine?” to which Gandhi replies, “Everyone takes his turn.” Ba retorts aghast, “but it is the work of untouchables!” Gandhi looking tired and a little scornful says “In this place there are no untouchables – and no work is beneath any of us!” Ba looks up at him a little shocked “I am your wife.” but he replies to her dismissively, “All the more reason.” He holds her gaze angrily as she holds his in disbelief, she finally replies scornfully “As you command Husband.” As she starts to rise he grabs her arm, but she pulls free. Ba, in a show of very rare assertiveness stands up to him and drives the knife home. “The others may follow you – but you forget, I knew you when you were a boy!”

Gandhi was a hypocrite.

Gandhi was not fit to lead his home and family let alone his countrymen into freedom. As Plato describes his idealized ruling class of the wise and educated slaves which had sought out the light of education, to seek out a better and truer life devoted to equality and freedom we must ask ourselves realistically does this description fit the Gandhi of reality?

The British may not have been right to rule over a foreign people, but Gandhi’s idea of a “pure India” would have been similarly as unhealthy, dangerous and corrupt. Far from the paragon popularity would make us believe him to be, this spiritual and political leader that we have all grown up idolizing, a man known for his impact on Martin Luther King Jr. and the civil rights movement due to his example of nonviolent protest that changed an entire nation lived a life far removed from what this Hollywood production would have us believe of him.

Far from the image of Plato’s wise man Gandhi lived a life as suspicious and narrow minded as any slave in the cave praising himself for his ability to correctly identify shadows. Gandhi the man behind the pop cultural divinity lived a life dictated by a supreme force of will a stubborn egocentric personality and created a society dedicated to his warped sense of guilt, repression and inhumanity towards his fellow man and woman.

He demanded of others in the Phoenix community he created, and latterly via his own twisted example to live in a manner that kept them in the allegorical cave of ignorance, suffering in his name and the common cause of freedom. A cause for freedom from a large and militaristic western power, excusing terrorism and jihadist self-sacrifice while he enjoyed the lifestyle known only to us today in the realm of cult leaders and polygamists like Jim Jones and David Koresh.

He was a volunteer British soldier in a war of oppression of native peoples, was a racist, supported the Indian caste system, took part in censorship of other religions and desecrations of their Holy sites, took part in lascivious and improper relations with children and family members, and was a sexist who’s heartless egocentric path to glory left his children broken and estranged and due to his own steadfast and blind ignorant refusal of modern medicine caused the death of his wife.

While this Film was an artistic work of fiction, dialogue being created, characters being glossed over by the Gaussian Marilyn Monroe filter of Hollywood, the meaning of the film and eventually the sole purpose of the Allegory of the cave was a simple one; Freedom of the people to rule themselves wisely, to be free to dictate their own destiny in equality.

I will not dwell too much on quotes from this stylized and sugar coated rendering of the man but will bring to you his own personal quotes from his Autobiography, open source letters written by himself and others that knew him, and factual accounts of his followers as well as those poetic lines enacted by the feminists feminist Candice Bergen, and the sloe eyed Ben Kingsley.

In one scene in which Candice Bergen who portrayed Margaret Burke-White a journalist and photographer is talking to Gandhi while repeatedly taking his picture as he moves throughout his home. Gandhi addresses Margaret “You're a temptress.” Margaret responds enthusiastically “Just an admirer!” to this Gandhi retorts “Nothing is more dangerous, especially for an old man.”

Gandhi shows here, just as he does in the scene between himself and his wife over the raking of latrines his views on women. Indeed many of the novels written about Gandhi and even his own autobiography dwell on Gandhi’s strange and strained struggle with sexuality and his treatment of women.

Married at 13 to the Mayors daughter, his next door neighbor, Gandhi described himself as a young teenager and husband as being overcome with jealousy, wondering what his wife was getting up to at home while he was at school. While marriage at such a young age was normal during that time and place in history I feel it might have been a part of the psychological fracturing that occurred in Gandhi’s mind when associated with sex. Indeed a severe trauma occurred to a seventeen year old Gandhi which would extremely shift and radicalize the idea of sex in Gandhi’s mind.

As his father lay dying Gandhi left his father’s bedside to go have sex with his then pregnant wife Ba, during the heat of his passion Gandhi’s father died, for this he never forgave himself. However to make matters worse, the child that Ba was carrying at the time died in infancy only a few short months after birth.

As any sane and rational human being knows its next to impossible to be there for an exact moment of death, more often than not those suffering from a great illness die unattended, infant mortality was not an abnormal thing, however to Gandhi’s superstitious and still forming young mind decided this was a sign from God, divine retribution for leaving his father to die alone while he sought out the sins of the flesh. He not only brooded in his guilt over this, but blamed his wife for tempting him to such actions; and so rooted deep in his mind the abusers mantra of “she made me do it.”

Indeed he goes on to blame Katsurba for his own personal failings to do good or thoughtful things for her always complaining that they had such an active sex life that there was never any time for what he would have much preferred to do - which was to educate the illiterate Katsurba. ‘I am sure that, had my love for her been absolutely untainted by lust, she would be a learned lady today,'

As Plato so wisely observes that if a prisoner were made to look directly into the light of the fire, after the wool had been taken from his eyes and he freed of his bondage, the prisoner would “turn back to the things which he could see distinctly” Gandhi instead of reasoning logically and forgiving himself for this all too natural need for a boy of seventeen, he instead reverts back to a more primitive and oddly a Christian mindset, that women after all use sex to guide men away from the path of righteousness. In Hinduism sex and sexuality is prized and praised as a part of health, philosophical and religious understand. The act of sex and being sexual is a tool of enlightenment, and not the work of a devil.

It is also important to note that shortly after his father’s death Gandhi went to England to study law, during this time in English history we have Victorian values which treated the human sex drive as a source of weakness, illness, and was inherently evil. The human body was something to be ashamed of and women were beginning to restart the suffragette movement which was generally frowned upon and likened to perversion of the mind and spirit.

Gandhi during his time in England was greatly influenced by Christianity and the vegetarian movement which was also popular at the time. Before this Gandhi despite being raised Hindu was a meat eater who was convinced that the only way the Indian people could rise up and toss off the British colonial rulers was to gain strength from the ingestion of meat. However I believe that Gandhi’s time in England influenced his politics and spiritual education far more than just his knowledge of the law, for after he returned home he became a strict vegetarian who believed that violence in man comes from the consumption and passions for flesh.

Instead during the creation of the Phoenix settlement in Durban South Africa, an Ashram created by Gandhi, he decided to declare his chastity, declaring he saw sex and family as a emotional distraction and they were downgraded to the role of mere followers to the growing cult of Gandhi.. Indeed during this same period in the movie and continuing on until the end of the film, we do not see much of Ba or her children, they take on a role as just a part of the crowd which Gandhi surrounded himself with. We see more touching and emotive scenes between Gandhi and his other male friends than we ever get the notion of Gandhi “the family man”.

Yet when Saraladevi Choudhurani, a Bengali nationalist activist, came into his life his attraction to her was so great that he even confessed that he was playing with the idea of breaking his own rules. Saraladevi provided the intellectual companionship his wife never could and never was allowed to be in his strict Victorian masculine totalitarian world. When he wrote to a friend calling her 'my spiritual wife' she would not be the last.

In fact Gandhi surrounded himself almost entirely by slavishly devoted women, including two beautiful young women to act as his “walking sticks” wherever he went. He slept beside both the teenage girls, one his niece and one named Sushilla who was gifted to him like a slave by her own mother when Gandhi asked to have her. He talked at length about keeping men and women separate and yet would sleep naked beside both of these young and impressionable women, discarding them once they grew too old, watching them bathe, or having them press their naked bodies against him all in the guise of “learning to control and master his lust”  

The movie however decides to gloss over completely Gandhi’s unfaithful extramarital relationships, by instead of touching on these “spiritual marriages” he had with other women, the director decided that in one of the last and few scenes containing Ba, they would show one of these spiritual marriages in an interview like quality taking place by the sea, none of which ever happened. Gandhi’s abandonment of his wife was so complete and his nature so unfeeling that later on in his life after his wife Ba died in his arms he even began sleeping in the arms of his friend’s wives.

To go one step further, his wife Ba served several of his prison terms for him, so he could remain free to work on his various campaigns and political rallies, often serving out this time in hard labor camps. What’s more Ba was born with respiratory condition which often left her breathless, and fatigued. She was always getting pneumonia and bronchitis and in her old age Gandhi only allowed her to be treated with traditional Indian medicine as he distrusted modern medical practices and she died in his arms after Gandhi himself denied her the simple treatment of penicillin.

Gandhi himself says over and over again “an eye for an eye makes the whole world blind” and yet he owned a slave, subjugating women, endangering their health and welfare of his family members, active sexual misconduct with minors, and his abandonment and elder abuse of his wife. How can he not have been just as blind, if this was the world in which he built for himself, a man as Plato describes who “covets those prizes...exalted to honor and power in the cave” and yet as Gandhi says in the film “No Indian must be treated as the English treat us. We must remove untouchability from our hearts and from our lives.” Yet is this not what he does to the women in his life? Uses them as tools and servants, playthings and devotees in awe of his splendor, subjects, admirers and temptresses that he can denounce, deny and vilify as he so desires?

Gandhi was so sexually repressed, that in the 1930’s he along with Jawaharla Nehru attempted to deface and erase all mention or depiction of Indian homoerotic tradition from temples throughout India in a bid for “sexual cleansing”. Does this not also show his homophobia as well as his religious insensitivity to his fellow Indians? As well as clearly placing Gandhi himself in the role of the chained slave that tells the wise man that “he had gone up only to come back with his sight ruined;” He thought himself so wise and yet maintained these backward ideals which is perhaps even a direct result of his Victorian English Christian indoctrination?

Indeed the impact of the Christian agenda upon Gandhi and then Gandhi as a tool used by the Christians for their own ends is an enduring legacy. We have been kept in the dark about the darker sides of a man, fed propaganda and lies in order to easily swallow another form of shadow puppetry.  In short we have been hoodwinked into glorifying a mortal man through the means of Christian pressure.

Gandhi’s deeds were glorified by Christian mercenaries that wanted to convert the Hindu’s, his real life was glossed over in favor of a grandiose myth; John Holms a pastor from New York described Gandhi as “The modern Christ” and he was even announced to be the seventh reincarnation of Vishnu.

The example of Gandhi created by the Christian church however was as acceptable at that time as it was for Gandhi to be a socially acceptable racist and murder of native Africans. In an open letter to the legislature of South Africa's Natal province, Gandhi wrote of how his fellow Indians after being imprisoned for their involvement in the civil disobedience which he lead saying quite clearly and reusing the word several times; "the Indian is being dragged down to the position of the raw Kaffir" Kaffir is the Indian equivalent of the N-word and just as hateful and bigoted.

During the pan-African war of the British Authority during the Boer War, Gandhi served as a company leader on the side of the British in 1899 and served again in 1906 during the Zulu rebellion. Gunning down the Native Africans and Zulus with WWI era military grade weaponry versus the hide shields and stone tipped spears of those attempting to free their homeland from the colonial rule of the British. During this time Gandhi even said he believed "that the white race of South Africa should be the predominating race."

Gandhi also maintained throughout his life to be a classist denying his support to the untouchable class in 1925 when all they asked was to be able to pray in the same temples as all other Hindus, and then using them for his own ends in the 1930’s much like he used women and untouchables during the Salt March. To further prove Gandhi was like many lawyers, someone with pretty words and actions which speak to the contrary; Gandhi during his time in Africa began his social injustice struggle by creating a merchant group, for merchants by merchants that was not inclusive to all classes of Indians and certainly not to the Native Africans.

Gandhi wrote his Satyagraha, literally meaning “Truth Force” which is influenced by Islam and the Islamic concept of jihad, for during the time of Gandhi’s exploration of his key concepts and ideals for Indian freedom he was surrounded by and learning about Islam. The core idea of Satyagraha and Jihad is asking the reader (and eventually what Gandhi asked of his followers) what they would not do for a cause they believe in, what they would not suffer to create change; asking his followers to withstand beatings, jail time, or even death in pursuit of their ideals.

Yet when Gandhi and 2,000 people were thrown in jail, he caved under the pressure in Johannesburg fort prison when an emissary negotiated a deal with Gandhi to repeal the black act (cards of identification with fingerprints) if only the Indians would voluntarily register. Feeling betrayed by their leader for such cowardice and spineless behavior when victory was at hand Gandhi was attacked by one of his own followers nearly killing him, but a friend of his through himself in front of Gandhi, taking the beating.

Do we see a theme here; An upper middle class/caste boy, shifting the blame for his own misdeeds, convincing others lower on the totem pole than himself to fight his battles for him. Standing up when it’s the most convenient, a lawyer of pretty words and shifting loyalties, an egotist basking in a community designed to worship him as a born again god. When he does choose to make a stand he lets others pay the price or starves himself and throws a temper tantrum until the world does what he wants.

While Gandhi took his own lumps and served his own jail time it is not until the Jallianwala Bagh Massacre in 1919 that killed over a thousand people, that Gandhi seemed truly to be touched by the ramifications of his actions, what terrible power his Satyagraha could lead to. I believe that this scene made such a harrowing impact in the movie as well as the world over, that we see only this terrible act and others like it carried out by the British in a scope that eclipses over the other hateful realities of the time in contrast.

That like Plato describes the freeing of the prisoner and dragging him out into the sunlight, that the massacre with its sudden brilliant illumination of inhumanity, death and suffering would burn his vision, and the worlds vision eclipsing the acts of violence which Gandhi’s own words had encouraged in the Indian people which put the horrible General Dyer on such a paranoid guard, that only now as the world’s eyes adjust are we able to “make out the shadows” of this upper world.

In the Allegory of the Cave Plato concludes that it is the journey “of the soul into the region of the intelligible” and that in the real world, a world of reason without sentiment, or popular belief of social indoctrination. We take off the blinders of sentiment and instead peel back the layers of common thought and find “the last thing to be perceived and only with great difficulty is the essential form of goodness.”

Gandhi’s essential goodness was that in the end of his life he peacefully enacted change, though more truly a product of his times than we would care to admit the man was still extraordinary in what he accomplished, even on the backs of others and what his example, real or otherwise meant to the freedom fighters that came after him. He spoke with the voice of the people and led them to freedom.

It begs me to question if the world can forgive those that took part in opposing the civil rights movements because it was normal behavior for their time, if we can forget the banality of evil during the Holocaust which chose to look away and stand aside for the Nazi’s to commit genocide (even Gandhi himself wrote a letter to the British people urging that they stand aside for Hitler to take over Europe) for surely it has been ok to revere in ignorance a man so flawed as Gandhi obviously was.