[Dravidian]

When, a human such as Gandhi is worshipped especially in an era when factual history is plausible; his shortcomings would definitely be contended with.

There is no doubt that he's a tactician & along with great thinkers of that period paved way for the united republic of India; an unition of several civilizations made plausible by the common anger towards colonial British.

But is his shortcomings a worthy argument to defame him? One does for sure - 'Casteism'; when a certain group of people are subjugated to carry human feaces in their head & you call it a noble duty defined by your religion; that man - The Gandhi & anyone who endorses the inhuman activity deserves to be shamed.

[pm90]

He didn’t call it a noble duty. He said they were gods own people, to try to de-stigmatize them and legitimize them in the eyes of a very religious country.

[saiya-jin]

Well you either make them equal to the rest or keep them at the bottom.

I read an article about him recently, basically he was racist towards africans, and also refused antibiotics for his wife which died because of that. Argument was that no foreign agent should be inside her body or something similar. When he got seriously sick, he happily accepted medicine though.

I guess any influential/powerful figure has their dark side. Perfectly fine, balanced and nice people don't end up in the spotlight, they just live their ordinary lives and die their ordinary deaths. And sometimes, the dark side can be pretty deep one, especially after some time passes and societal norms change (ie Churchill discussed here recently too).

I presume we all have some darker side which we are aware of, that's why maybe the very strong desire to idolize somebody who is so high above the rest.

[intended]

I find the bad history post on Gandhi to be the shortest path to get up to speed with the current iteration of Gandhi criticism - https://www.reddit.com/r/badhistory/comments/3iiwxr/the_sexu...

The upshot being that as a barrister in South Africa he was privileged and racist as was the norm, but his exposure as a stretcher bearer during an uprising helped him awaken and discard that aspect of his thought.

But its always interesting to see how Gandhi gets discussed, the more people learn about him. In essence Gandhi is constantly being torn down, and constantly being rediscovered and built back up

[24gttghh]

I read that she suffered a number of heart attacks the year prior, and nothing about a bacterial infection that antibiotics would have helped with anyways...

[badminton1]

I do not agree with using the term "united" here, India split into 2 countries.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Partition_of_India

[gcb0]

agree. but also wonder what is the difference if religious or economic.