The actions of those people are romanticised and from those actions is constructed a metaphorical figure that resembles, but does not equal the actual man. You need the man in order to have a story and you need the story in order to convey the message. The idealised romantic Gandhi is a tool with which to illustrate the moral, and an ideal for which to strive. Of course you shouldn't mirror Gandhi in all matters, but his idealised version is still a good example to follow.

Were Gandhi's actions so abhorrent as to make it good to tear down the morals of social justice his activism taught us? Is he such a monster that you would destroy your own culture and society by denying them the good examples he set with the other part of his life? In a way you're cutting off your nose to spite someone else's face. What Gandhi did is done and whoever can claim damages that should be repaid can claim them via court. But the man is dead now and putting him on trial is a disservice to his memory and to our culture.

"Were Gandhi's actions so abhorrent as to make it good to tear down the moral"

Yes.

Gandhi - during the height of his 'moral claims' - was a 70 year old man sleeping with a harem of young girls, urging them not to sleep with their husbands, got erections, possibly had intercourse, and then talked about it, and oppressed / moved aside anyone who didn't agree.

The logic he would use to validate his sexual predation is byzantine, i.e. based on a 'spiritual experiment', and exactly the same as the insane logic that cult leaders use:

"If I don't let Manu sleep with me, though I regard it as essential that she should," he announced, "wouldn't that be a sign of weakness in me?" [1]

He's also on the record with hyper racist, xenophobic and Hindu nationalist rhetoric.

Gandhi was a Hindu nationalist, of the same vein as most other nationalists - but he used 'non violent' populist rhetoric because he was an intellect and 'non violence' was going to be the only reproach that would work. Were Indians to be able to organize in terms of hard power during the Raj, they certainly would have i.e. Momar Gaddafi, Fidel Castro, even George Washington! India has a different culture and so their 'George Washington' was going to look a little different.

But the issue is not Gandhi of course : the issue is the perception of Gandhi.

Consider how much hagiography there is out there about Gandhi - even his Wikipedia page is not only bereft of his questionable behaviour, but it's turned upside down!

Have a look [2]

His Wiki entry states that 'his time in South Africa' was formative, and enabled him to develop his views on racism, Imperialism etc. etc. - when in fact, at the very same time, we have him on record with his most racist ideology: "Gandhi described black Africans as “savage,” “raw” and living a life of “indolence and nakedness,” and he campaigned relentlessly to prove to the British rulers that the Indian community in South Africa was superior to native black Africans." [3]

So the 'common public record' is distorted to the point that it's totally upside down!

This is because the 'common public record' is guarded by groups in the East who want to maintain his idol status, and groups in the West who want to embrace particularly his anti-Imperial (read: anti Western?) views.

Gandhi did some very good things for Hindu India surely, and had some very positive and powerful things to day, but he was hugely flawed.

Hey, George Washington fought for a war of 'independence' where 'all men should be free' ... and he had slaves!

It is what it is.

[1] https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/featu...

[2]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahatma_Gandhi

[3] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2015/09/03...

This is calumny, to the point that there is a 3 year old badhistory post specifically dealing with these insinuations.

https://www.reddit.com/r/badhistory/comments/3iiwxr/the_sexu...

> he interesting thing about Gandhi, though, was that his views did evolve and change. What he saw and experienced in South Africa changed his views on racial supremacy, particularly in Africa. By 1906, he wrote about the Bambatha Rebellion, saying:

>>"The Zulu 'rebellion' was full of new experiences and gave me much food for thought. The Boer War had not brought home to me the horrors of war with anything like the vividness that the 'rebellion' did. This was no war but a man-hunt. To hear every morning reports of the soldiers' rifles exploding like crackers in innocent Hamlets, and to live in the midst of them was a trial. But I swallowed the bitter draught, especially as the work of my Corps consisted only in nursing the wounded Zulus. I could see that but for us the Zulus would have been uncared for. This work, therefore, eased my conscience.""

>Working in and among Africans humanised them for him, and made it so that his ideas of them changed. Much like any other human being, Gandhi grew and learned from his experiences. Would it have been great from the outset if he'd known that Africans were equal people? Sure, but in the early 20th century, I'm not going to fault him for being racist and then changing.

Ok but when someone says his worst action it doesn't actually have to be a singular action it is an argument that what he did bad was mitigated by what he did good, at least where our consideration of him should be. I mean really you list all these awful things about him and I sarcastically think well there you go, the Brits should have kept India then.

I guess I'm just continually amazed by all these good people wandering around, not reading particular books because the people who wrote them were lapsed in their moral graces, despising Gandi and MLK and so forth and I can't help but wonder why I've only met at best half a dozen good people in my life and the rest have been like me. It almost makes me think these paragons aren't all they themselves imply with their preaching.

> I mean really you list all these awful things about him and I sarcastically think well there you go, the Brits should have kept India then.

How exactly does that follow? That implication makes like zero sense. That implication is a problem, real world problem in both politics and history interpretation. That implication forces people to lie and to construct false history. It also seems like you are more interested in dividing world into goodly good and evily bad instead of being interested in historical truth. Why should it implies it is ok for Brits to continue with brutal regime that affects way more people then just Gandhi? It is not like colonial powers would kept power by being nice.

There are other consequences of hero worship. For example, I have seen multiple times people to use Gandhi as authority. Gandhi said it, therefore it should be truth and trustworthy. Now of course, in addition to good and nice thinks he said and did crazy stuff. That implies you cant just blindly trust his judgement, you need to think for yourself. And there, ugly stuff suddenly matters.

In addition, without ugly stuff you end up with history that makes little sense, that paints people who crossed Gandhi (or Churchill or Columbus) looking like complete incomprehensible idiots. How could they oppose such a great man? Well they could, because his flaws and dangers were as real as his achievements and affected lives of other people the same.

Lastly, refusal to deal with uglier aspects of larger personalies honestly amounts to ideology where once you are powerful enough or successful enough in one thing, it is whatever goes. Once you succeeded, the expectations we place on other people don't apply to you. For example, once you are good writer, it is ok to lie or mistreat other people, nobody can criticize for that. Such ideologies lead to massive power abuses in real world.

Well the original post was that Gandhi did great things and that maybe they were worthy of praise despite his bad things. You then go into his problems were really big problems and all the time not just intermittent (although focusing mainly on sex related stuff when he was really old and probably somewhat corrupted by power) and the implication seemed to be that his problems somehow colored or soiled the great things he achieved. So the great things he achieved are generally regarded as being in some way related to Indian independence. It seems to me that your argument is basically throw the baby out because I saw some really dirty bathwater in a nearby basin, and hence my facetious implication that colonialism should have been kept by that measure.

Am I interested in historical truth, sure am. Especially relevant historical truth.

For example if I am discussing Chuck Berry's effect on Rock n' Roll music - which is basically the way Chuck Berry was historically important - the information that he liked to video tape people in the toilets of his restaurant and was a fecal freak towards the end of his life at least doesn't have any relevance to the subject. In the same way if someone says Gandhi did good things and those good things are worth valuing then if you say Yes but Gandhi supported Nazi Germany against Britain that is something that detracts from the good actions because it relates historically to the good things under discussion but saying hey he was a pervert and basically a rapist doesn't really have a relevance to the great things he helped to achieve (unless our narrative is one of those 'but these victories came at a terrible cost!' ones)

As far as people who crossed Gandhi looking like complete incomprehensible idiots - I seriously doubt that any significant number of people who crossed Gandhi in relation to his great achievements did so because of his sexual habits. In his private life sure, but nobody was arguing that it was his private conduct that was admirable.

on edit: sorry about the run on sentences.

I was not talking about sex at all. I talked about hero worship and about the idea of "if Ghandi did that bad suff then Brits should have stayed" being wrong.

And of course, Chuck Berry's fecal hobbies might have relationship to culture of rock and roll (I have no idea about factual basis of either).

Ghadis sexual habits and cruelty (cause there was not just sex but quite simply abuse) are wery relevant toward how much I should take seriously his quotes anywhere near that topic.

It also opens topic of how much the non-violent thing was practical strategy and how moral issue and how victims become abusers sometimes.

The was rape, abuse or bullying become conflated with "sexual habit" in this debate is interesting too - and is nice examplease why hero worship is wrong and makes perfect situation for abuse to occure.

I believe I acknowledged that he was a rapist, so that I took all the different behaviors described and put them into the set 'sexual habits' is not actually that interesting.

I didn't know anyone actually cares what Gandhi's quotes are regarding anything but non-violence and perhaps its use as a political strategy - but it is a big world, so sure if someone were going to care about his quotes about sex this info here might cause them to reconsider.

I think it may also open topic of power corrupts.