A Quote by Arthur L. Herman
I guess the most surprising discovery was how long Gandhi remained loyal to the ideal of the British Empire, even in India.
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The British seizure of Hongkong was an aspect of one of the most ugly crimes of the British Empire: the takeover and destruction of India, and the use of India to flood China with opium.
One would have thought that if there was one cause in the world which the Conservative party would have hastened to defend, it would be the cause of the British Empire in India ... Our fight is hard. It will also be long ... But win or lose, we must do our duty. If the British people are to lose their Indian Empire, they shall do so with their eyes open.
In India, as we saw, the Sepoy Mutiny led to a vast reorganization of British colonialism in the area, sending out a viceroy from London and before too long, Queen Victoria was proclaimed “Empress of India,” with this great empire, ruling over maharajahs and other local potentates.
The plan to carve up British India was never approved of or accepted by Gandhi...who realised too late that his closest comrades and disciples were more interested in power than principle, and that his own vision had long been clouded by the illusion that the struggle he led for India's freedom was a nonviolent one.
Gandhi has asked that the British Government should walk out of India and leave the Indian people to settle differences among themselves, even if it means chaos and confusion.
I wish I could say to all those people who consider themselves anarchists or radicals: Please join the nonviolent movement. This is how Gandhi freed India. If Gandhi freed India, we can certainly free the United States from our racism, misogyny, and bigotry.
Ben Kingsley was my ideal choice for Gandhi, and he really lived up to the expectations of an international audience. I did not find any Indian actor worthy to perform the role of Gandhi in the early Eighties, though there were brilliant performers like Naseeruddin Shah in India.
The best, most solid place to stand as you look at our present situation is on a foundation of history. The Roman Empire, the British Empire, and the Nazi empire all have things in common.
Gandhi was important for another reason as well: his country was suffering under the British Empire, and yet he was leading a very singular kind of resistance to it. At the time he was speaking about the violence in Europe, his followers were in jail as prisoners of the British government.
Indira Gandhi had been this very powerful, dominating, ambiguous mother figure. Ambiguous because she was tyrannical, she had imposed...she had suspended Indian democracy for a few years but she also was the woman who had defeated Pakistan in war at a time when most male politicians in India had secretly feared fighting that war, so that here in India even today Indira Gandhi is called by Indian nationalists the only man ever to have governed India.
Gandhi wanted to meet with Churchill, his most bitter foe, when he visited London in 1931- but it didn't happen. Churchill wanted to go to India personally as prime minister in 1942 to negotiate a final settlement on India with Gandhi and the other nationalist leaders - but the fall of Singapore prevented it from happening.
Savagery was a word that Westerners used to, again, to consciously differentiate them from non-Westerners, to assert that superiority, that cultural superiority. It goes back to the British Empire, and again, you know, what was the purpose of the British Empire? To bring civilization to the savage no matter where they were, whether it was India or Asia or Australia or whatever. It's that civilizing mission that characterizes so much of the history of Western colonialism.
My main aim in 'Gandhi' was to project him as the vanguard of non-violence. Nowhere in the world has a movement of non-cooperation sans violence received so much support from masses as Gandhi's movement in India did. He was, to a great extent, responsible for freeing his nation from the British Raj.
I would like to see the Punjab, North-West Frontier Province, Sind and Baluchistan amalgamated into a single State. Self-government within the British Empire, or without the British Empire, the formation of a consolidated North-West Indian Muslim State appears to me to be the final destiny of the Muslims, at least of North-West India.
I grew up in India. From my childhood, I remember the great reverence that people held for our national hero, Mahatma Gandhi. He galvanized millions to march as one, disarmed the empire that had ruled his country for nearly a century, and enabled India to become a free and independent nation.
Okay, so here's my question: When did civility become incompatible with protest? Why do some people consider civility an antonym - anathema, even - to political action and dissent? Because, and I'm raising my voice, it's not. Have we forgotten how Mahatma Gandhi used nonviolent civil disobedience to free India from British rule and inspire civil rights movements worldwide?
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