On Gandhi

Chathan sent me this:  "I read your post on Gandhi. As someone of Indian background, my own position on Gandhi has been a very ambivalent one, even though my great-grandfather was a devoted Gandhian of sorts in his own personal life and ethics. While I respect his shifting the focus of the independence movement from the bourgeois English-speaking elite to the masses and his astute observations about Indian political choices under the British, his spiritualistic outlook on political action always struck me as somewhat reactionary, especially when it came to the untouchables. Relating to the western hypocrisy in the Middle East however, I've always found it fascinating that Shimon Peres has this admiration for Gandhian values and that Israeli liberals lecture Palestinians on the use of nonviolence and to follow "Gandhi's example". Not only does this ignore a.) the long history of nonviolent resistence on the part of the Palestinian Arabs (look at the First Intifada) but b.) Gandhi's own intriguing opposition to the Zionist political-colonial project in Palestine, in spite of protests from Jewish admirers of his. Indeed, his comments have been the target of polemic from Zionist-friendly Hindu nationalists and even Zionist critics who continue to chastize him for his having written to Hitler and feeling Holocaust victims should sacrifice themselves readily to prove their morality."