The South African Gandhi: Stretcher-Bearer of Empire

South Asia in Motion

by Ashwin Desai, Goolam Vahed

In the pantheon of global liberation heroes, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi has pride of place. Leaders like Mandela have lauded him as being part of the epic battle to defeat the white regime and prepare the way for a non-racial country. A popular sentiment in South Africa goes: ‘India gave us Mohandas, and we returned him to you as Mahatma’.

Against this background, The South African Gandhi: Stretcher-Bearer of Empire unravels the complex story of a man who, throughout his stay on African soil (1893–1914), remained true to Empire while expressing disdain for Africans. For Gandhi, whites and Indians were bound by an Aryan bloodline that had no place for the African. His racism was matched by his class (and caste) prejudice towards the Indian indentured. He persistently claimed that they were ignorant and needed his leadership, and wrote their struggles out of history—struggles this book documents.

The authors show that Gandhi never missed an opportunity to demonstrate his loyalty to Empire, with a particular penchant for war. He served as stretcher-bearer in the war between Brit and Boer, demanded that Indians be allowed to carry fire-arms, and recruited volunteers for the imperial army in both England and India during the First World War.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Biography, Africa, India, South Africa, World History

344 pages, Hardcover

First published September 1, 2015

About the author

Prolific sociologist and activist Ashwin Desai, holds a Master’s degree from Rhodes University and a doctorate from Michigan State University. He is professor of sociology at the University of Johannesburg.

(from http://www.cca.ukzn.ac.za/index.php/t...)

Reviews

[Brad Jenkins · Rating 5 out of 5]

Many people will take this book as a scathing review of Ghandi's whitewashed past (pun intended), but it's so much more than that. What this book shows is that NOBODY is perfect, no matter how infallible they appear. Once we can actually grasp that concept, we will stop holding certain people to such a high degree...above everybody else. Ghandi did a lot of good for the Indian people throughout his entire life...there's no argument there. The problem is when you go back to his time in South Africa when he had a chance to throw his support behind the native people & help pull them out of the depths of English persecution...he refused. Ghandi actually went out of his way to distance Indians from Africans, using the argument that only Indian & English should be on equal standing. With this stance, Ghandi was shoehorned into supporting the whitewashing of South Africa. At times, he was forced into this thinking, but most of the time, he was a willing participant. Does this make Ghandi a bad person? Does this diminish the accomplishments he made later in life? Does this mean we must rethink Mahatma Ghandi, the person? After reading this book, I can give you an unequivocal vote of confidence in the negative to all of those questions. Ghandi was a great man & I will never take that away from him....but he wasn't perfect. Nobody is.

[Asad Qureshi · Rating 5 out of 5]

this book has been an eye opener. All the lies that we had been taught at school. Also the blatant racist and casteist mindset of the "Mahatma" has been exposed (with verifiable references).
To summarize he was not a saint by any stretch of imagination. Just a British subject who thought that Indians and Europeans have common ancestry and hence supreme than others. At most he was just an ordinary politician.
Our era should be known as the era of lies. He was such a hyprocrite that his writing in Gujarati would be totally tuned for the so called higher castes in India. And his english work was just to show him as a saint to the western world. What a shame. And we call him the FOTN! No wonder we are so corrupt

[Abid Alrahman · Rating 5 out of 5]

The book discusses Gandhi's life mainly in South Africa. It overturns the false narrative of his saintly character. They trace him through the thick and thin. Through the war and genocide of the Boer "war", the ill fated Bambatha Revolution and many other important episodes which Gandhi witnessed, commented upon and in some cases took part. It navigates through Gandhi's books and the newspaper which Gandhi founded.

An incisive book which I highly recommend the book though what you'll read will sadden you.

[Ajay Thakur · Rating 4 out of 5]

Eyeopener book. Indian authors will not have guts to show these kind of reality.

[Rohit Kumar · Rating 5 out of 5]

Gandhi once said Indians believe in the purity of races almost as much as whites do. And he never spoke for better treatment of Africans. Gandhi is the pill from matrix. If you research him, you see a whole another world. And if you don't, you live in your Disneyland where the world had a "Mahatma" and a saint

[Parth · Rating 4 out of 5]

Eye opener.