Myths+about+Gandhi,+C+Mathey,+Sunday+Times

Sunday Times, Johannesburg, Letters, 08 October 2006
=Myths about Gandhi=

JONATHAN Hyslop’s article “How Joburg inspired Gandhi” (October 1), makes one wonder if we are talking about the same man: Gandhi the god or Gandhi the man?

I would like to quote from Mahatma Gandhi: “We have nothing against the Kaffirs, but we cannot ignore the fact that we have nothing in common with them in the daily things of our life.”

Commenting on the Natal Municipal Corporation Bill, Gandhi wrote in his newspaper, the Indian Opinion, on March 18 1905: “One can understand the necessity of registration of Kaffirs who will not work, but why should registration be required for indentured Indians who have become free, and for their descendants about whom the general complaint is that they work too much?”

The Indian Opinion published an editorial on September 9 1905, “The relative value of the Natives and Indians in Natal.” In it Gandhi referred to a speech by the Rev Dube, an African nationalist, who said that an African had the capacity for improvement, if only the whites would give him the opportunity. In his response Gandhi suggested that “a little judicious extra taxation would do no harm; in the majority of cases it compels the Native to work for at least a few days a year”.

In the famous train incident, the liberal myth is that Gandhi was protesting at the exclusion of non-whites from the train coach; in fact he was trying to persuade the authorities to let only upper caste Indians share the white compartments. “Thanks to the court’s decision, only clean Indians or Coloured people other than Kaffirs, can now travel in the trams,” Gandhi said (Indian Opinion 1906). And yet, the liberal delusion over Gandhi lives on.


 * C Mathey,**
 * Eversdal**

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