At 3:17 AM -0700 12/17/98, Brown, R Ken wrote:
I'm sorry but this is nonsense. Ghandi may have been a great man and an inspiration to us all but he *lost*. His first big political involvment was trying to stop the British from allowing the Boers to take away political rights from the "coloured" and Asian population of Cape Colony. The Brits caved into the white South Africans and we all know what happened next. Then he tried to get them (well us I suppose, since I'm British) to "quit India" in the 1920s & 30s - failed again, we got out 2 decades later, after WW2, when a British government was elected that was anti-colonialist. You wouldn't have been able to persuade the 1945-1951 government to stay *in* India. In fact they were so eager to get out they probably caused more problems by the speed of the withdrawal. Ghandi wanted a secular federation of all India - but instead there was partition, the secession of an inherently unviable Muslim state that was bound to end up with either civil war or fundamentalism (and in the end got both, at least for some of the time), and at least hundreds of thousands, and possibly many millions of deaths that could have been avoided. And then of course he himself was killed. And now India has the BJP. Ghandi was perhaps *right* but he certainly didn't "win the race".
If you take the long view, Ghandi has won 2 out of 3. South Africa is a lot better than in Ghandi's day. Britain is out of India. He has so far lost on the separation of India and Pakistan, with no unification is sight. It is clear that Ghandi has inspired the people more directly involved with the final victory in the first two cases. I think Ghandi took the long view. YMMV. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Bill Frantz | Macintosh: Didn't do every-| Periwinkle -- Consulting (408)356-8506 | thing right, but did know | 16345 Englewood Ave. frantz@netcom.com | the century would end. | Los Gatos, CA 95032, USA