Hi, I just joined lemmygrad! I’ve been lurking here for a while. About me uhhhh… I really like music, anime, and talking to people in general.
Also, the big reason I wanted to make an account today is because I wanted to recommend some books by Suniti Kumar Ghosh that I’ve been reading and really enjoying recently. I highly recommend “Naxalbari: Before and After” and “The Tragic Partition of Bengal”, where you can learn things like how Gandhi was actually fascist and Gandhi’s “non-violence” movement was actually a tool used by the British imperialists (and India’s comprador bourgeoisie) to quell the rising anti-imperialist forces. (Suspiciously, Gandhi always seemed to be fine with violence whenever it was the imperialists doing it…)
One of my favorite parts about Ghosh is that they use so many quotes by members of the ruling class where the ruling class admits to their plans. It’s literally evil villain reveals evil plan so it’s basically irrefutable. Like Ghosh includes a quote by A. O. Hume literally explaining that the founding of the Indian National Congress was designed to “inoculate them [“the great lower middle classes”] with a mild and harmless form of political fever”… and there’s so many quotes like this in the book from British officials and their puppets that make it blatantly clear how Indian “independence” in 1947 didn’t liberate India at all.)
Anyways, my fangirling about Ghosh’s works aside, I’m excited to be here and to get to know you all!! :)
Welcome! I didn’t know that about Gandhi. I remember hearing vaguely in the past that his “nonviolence” stuff wasn’t all it was cracked up to be, but I didn’t know it was as insidious as all that. Can’t say it surprises me though with how brutal colonialism and imperialism tends to be. It’s amazing sometimes the stuff out there that is a plainly stated quote you can find, that they aren’t even hiding it, and people don’t know cause they aren’t exposed to the information. Like it makes me think of in the US context, the guy who was known as the “father of suburbs” who has a quote along the lines of that a person can’t be a communist if they are a homeowner because they don’t have enough time to be one while maintaining it (like he thought this was a good thing).
Yeah it’s actually really crazy! I think the propaganda is also so strong because we have both people from the West AND India pro-Gandhi (or at least, I haven’t heard anything like this about Gandhi from any of my relatives and stuff) so there’s not many voices accurately painting India’s history. But yeah, it’s definitely crazy how the bourgeois admits to their intentions so often (like the example you mention), but the quotes never get the attention