Women suffer from Gandhi's legacy

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ਦਾਦਰ ਤੂ ਕਬਹਿ ਨ ਜਾਨਸਿ ਰੇ ॥
dhaadhar thoo kabehi n jaanas rae ||
You frog, you will never understand.


ਭਖਸਿ ਸਿਬਾਲੁ ਬਸਸਿ ਨਿਰਮਲ ਜਲ ਅੰਮ੍ਰਿਤੁ ਨ ਲਖਸਿ ਰੇ ॥੧॥ ਰਹਾਉ ॥
bhakhas sibaal basas niramal jal anmrith n lakhas rae ||1|| rehaao ||
You eat the dirt, while you dwell in the immaculate waters. You know nothing of the ambrosial nectar there. ||1||Pause||

Guru Nanak Dev ji Sri Guru Granth Sahib Ji Ang 990


WHY TRY TO FIT IN? YOU WERE BORN TO STAND OUT!

Simply put,Gandhi was a misogynistic bigot. There is nothing non-violent in that.

Sorry to say this, but I am a Gandhian. The two articles presented here are so biased (just like the picture used to illustrate the point made), that it would be a total loss of time and energy to try to get the facts straight in detail. I will not quote but for example his wife agreed to giving up sex. And he was against child marriages which was a positive thing for women. He slept with young girls when he was old and his wife was dead long before. One of his neices (his walking sticks) was a physician, Gandhi had send her to London to study medecine, so that doesn't seem too misogynic to me. He also regreted having left his wife uneducated and prefering having sex with her instead of teaching her things. His wife had a strong personality and he admired her. He was also against the caste system, especially in regards to the Untouchables. As for racism, to this day not one African has stood up to accuse Gandhi of being a racist and many African leaders praise him. Gandhi was an inspiration for Mandella, Martin Luther King and he is an inspiration for Obama who is neither a sexist nor a racist but a progressist. Gandhi is the most insulted man in human history, he heard it all during his lifetime and though he would laugh at what is written about him in those two articles, I don't find it funny at all. This is down right mean. How can we accuse him of not being a femenist at that time. So good-bye people and thank you for making things clear for me. I would like to unsuscribe from this honorable site but I don't know how to do it, so if you could kindly ban me, I would appreciate.

Polpol ji

Gandhi's Biggest problem was he always wanted to impose his idea on others.
Gandhi told the people That there will be no partition and any type of partition will be on his dead body.So indirectly he assured millions of people that India will remain united.But partition did happen and Gandhi did not keep his words.The people mainly Hindu's and sikhs of pakistan that did accept his words suffered most because they trusted him.
Reference:: Sikh Philosophy Network http://www.sikhphilosophy.net/people-and-opinion/29060-women-suffer-from-gandhis-legacy.html
Reference:: Sikh Philosophy Network http://www.sikhphilosophy.net/showthread.php?t=29060

No doubt some of Gandhi's idea of non voilence and simple living inspired many but he had his short comings

Polpol ji,

You may never read this, but I feel the need to write it. In this forum, each of us is an individual with individual ideas and beliefs. SPN has no official opinion about Gandhi; some of its members, including me, do not like him for various reasons. If you do, I think it makes more sense to stay and make your case than running away, but again. that is an individual decision. If you think this thread is character assassination, you are most welcome to post your views. You might even want to post an article praising him.

Even if we cannot have a meeting of the minds on one topic, you might consider that there are many, many topics in this forum and this world. Judging on one topic is limiting. For example, I am opposed to abortion on demand and that is public knowledge. Still, I have feminists among my friends who simply accept this oddity (to them) about me, although they consider me to be, in their eyes, immorally trying to control other womens' bodies. Likewise, I am a staunch supporter of Khalistan (which, BTW, is the real root of my dislike of Gandhi), but I have very dear friends who believe I ought to be confined to a mental institution for holding such an outrageous belief. In fact, I consider one of these to be my little brother.

Personally, I like you and wish you would remain. I think you have much to add to our discussions. If you still want the administrators to close your account, though, I am sure they will do that. I cannot speak for them, but you surely have committed nothing to make you worthy of banning.

polpol ji

I regret your decision. I too am in the camp that believes that Gandhi was a message more than anything else and that policy makers worldwide helped promote what he "appeared to be" and not what he actually was. Part of that message was independence for India. He more than anyone else established a model for civil disobedience that has been copied many times for decades and that has served the downtrodden well. But in the minds of somehe was no a champion of women, and his record in word and deed on the caste system leaves much to be desired. As people have become more aware of that darker side of his message they have felt the need to talk about it.
Reference:: Sikh Philosophy Network http://www.sikhphilosophy.net/showthread.php?t=29060
Reference:: Sikh Philosophy Network http://www.sikhphilosophy.net/showthread.php?t=29060

We are free to debate our points of view here. As Mai ji says that is what SPN encourages. You may want to reconsider and I hope you do.

Is it not enough that Gandhi was shot to death, must his memory be violated too? This site does not allow personal attacks nor hate speech, these 2 articles are just that. I met G.B. Singh in another site. It would be easy for me to do the same thing with him. As a retired US Army colonel, I could show that this not so heroic man with blood stained hands is a racist and a sexist and a coward because only cowards shoot on dead bodies, real warriors don't do that, so to me he is a very bad embassador of Sikhism. Aren't we suppose to have some respect for the dead? Should I also insinuate that G.B. Singh beat his wife, or that he cheated on her and that he has several illegimate children in various countries,etc. No, I won't do that but that's just what he is doing with Gandhi. And what exactly did G.B. Singh do for India or for humanity? Why fuel hatred on such a man? Some did the same with Jesus, depicting him as a homeless drunkard that liked to hang around prostitutes.

Gandhi did not want partition. This was his greatest sorrow. Why is he blamed for this when he had no real power. After Independance he was put aside and had no official position in the government. Later in his life he complained that everybody wanted to take a picture of him but nobody listened to what he said. Today his name is used to sell just about anything, Mont Blanc luxury pens, non-veg food and alcohol in restaurants, telecommunication (Italia Telecom), should he be blamed for that too?
Reference:: Sikh Philosophy Network http://www.sikhphilosophy.net/showthread.php?t=29060

One thing for sure is that he would have been delighted to see a Sikh as prime minister of India, that's the kind of country he wanted, a model of multiculturalism and religeous tolerance. Of course he made lots of mistakes, it could not have been otherwise since he never planned for the career he had, he merely got caught up in history. It all started with a personal racist insult and he brought it on a political level and one thing led to another. But today not many people remember him and as Shakespear had Brutus say, "The evil that men do lives after them, the good is oft enterred with their bones", though "evil" would be excessive in Gandhi's case. And sex was not his second best subject, it was God and truth his only subject whether in politics or in his personal life. After all he accomplished how can we blame him for not doing more. He taught fearlessness to uneducated, half naked, half starved people who would crawl when ordered to (remeber when the British made all Hindus and muslims crawl from one end of a street to another because a British woman complained she was molested by one of "those"?). And he was not at all for the atomic bomb. About the rusted sword, he meant that the use of violence and weapons can only lead to more and more destruction. There are many things that Gandhi had in common with Sikh philosophy, fearlessness and the search for truth, for example. Although he opposed the armed warrior to the non-violent warrior as he considered himself, he placed those two types of warriors on opposite ends of the same continium and in total contrast with the coward, "the one who runs away from danger and does not know how to die".