07-30-2007, 09:53 PM
X-Post of AnandK in BRF
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->I have had it with this argument "Ooh Mohandas Gandhi was soo totally stupid, naa? His Gandootva wouldn't have worked in Nazi Germany or Stalin's Russia...."Â <!--emo&:roll--><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/ROTFL.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='ROTFL.gif' /><!--endemo-->:
Satyagraha was MASS movement. A national movement. You need numbers and a distributed organizational structure, heavy doses of training and institutionalized indoctrination to get it off successfully. What could a 8% Jewish Population do against the 90-92% Jerry's high on the heady draught of National Socialism.... and in a state of perpetual high after the Nuremberg Rallies. A state of mass euphoria that subsided only after a (much maligned) Arthur Harris decided to bomb Germany back to the age of Arminius.
Were the Jews organized politically, did the Zionist movement have an INC like loose-org structure or even a JS type Cadre structure.... at least in respective countries if not spreading across Europe? Was there any Jewish leader who had followers cutting across boundaries? Can you name ONE Jewish leader of the stature of M.L.King or Mandela if not the Mahatma? All you had was relatively minor operatives like Ben Gurion or shady cloak-and-dagger type folks who would later found the Irgun and Hagnah. Heck, did any of the Rosenthals of America organise a sustained political movement during the Pre-Holocaust/Final Solution phase? Their best moment was when Golda Meir came shopping AFTER the war.
Satyagraha worked where the satyagrahis were in a minority, facing a rabid govt too.... in South Africa. Fcuk... that's were the story began! It worked against a Govt that was willing to trample down whole processions with cavalry. A perverse racist Govt that was second only to the Fascist horrors on the Axis..... and an apparatus that surrendered ONLY AFTER THE COLD WAR when the West didn't need it any more. It took Gandhiji many years to turn the illiterate, feral Indians there to a political force capable of bravely facing police hit-squads. He was nearly killed by his own people in the early stages (1894-1906) and subjected to much ridicule. Still, he built up an organization that even defeated someone like General Smuts, a racist who always wanted to hang Gandhiji. {PS: After Gandhiji presented him with a pair of Sandals he made himself (after the emancipation) Smuts publicly remarked remarked he finds himself not worthy to wear the footwear made by a Saint.}
Forget a Jewish leadership, if there were at least a dozen more Sophie Scholls among the German populace, brave folks who would have stood up when the Nazi bullies ascended, the Holocaust would not have happened. It was the gradual development of the Satyagraha method by the Black Civil Rights movements (and not the tactics of immature Black Panthers or the NOI) that won the emancipation proclamation. It was the iconic picture of the passive face of an unknown black man in Tennesse attacked by Police Dogs that set Kennedy (and hence Johnson) against the Jim Crow state. Satyagraha is simply, THE POWER OF THE UNDENIABLE TRUTH. When millions are shouting the truth, nobody can stop them.
Satyagraha, manifested in mass-scale Non-Cooperation and Civil Disobedience by the populace throws a Mach 14 missile at the tyrant. You can't shoot them all (the South Africans tried), you can't jail them all (the Brits tried) and you can't distract/buy them all (the white Americans tried).... you have no option but to surrender. And to launch such a large movement is no simple task.... it is no rush job. The NCM was launched after 3 years of careful planning and consideration.... the CDM took off after half a decade of simmering discontent... and we all know what India was like before the QIM. Without a political structure, seething AND united masses, politicalised masses you can't launch the Gandhian method.
Now someone pleej tell us how the heck can one argue "Oh, it ain't gonna work in the World of Warcraft or the Wizarding War of 1997" or something.... it doesn't make any friggin sense! The very issue of a Satyagraha happening in a Nazified Germany or a traditionally undemocratic/cloistered/genuine-leaderless Russia or China out of the blue doesn't arise. And if there was ever a real Satyagraha there, no NKVD/Gestapo would be able to stop it.Â
(PS: I am waiting for someone to compare the INM with Tiananmen or Hungarian Uprising <!--emo&
--><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/smile.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile.gif' /><!--endemo--> )
Brave new Ch@ddiwaalas please keep this in mind before p1ssing on Gandhiji's grave and ridiculing him.... at least Godse bowed to Gandhiji (for all the good things Gandhi had done so far, he claimed) before murdering him. Criticizing him is ok, I have major problems with him too.... but this j@cking-off (I can't find any other term for whats being said by some people in this regard) is immature and downright stupid!
<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->I have had it with this argument "Ooh Mohandas Gandhi was soo totally stupid, naa? His Gandootva wouldn't have worked in Nazi Germany or Stalin's Russia...."Â <!--emo&:roll--><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/ROTFL.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='ROTFL.gif' /><!--endemo-->:
Satyagraha was MASS movement. A national movement. You need numbers and a distributed organizational structure, heavy doses of training and institutionalized indoctrination to get it off successfully. What could a 8% Jewish Population do against the 90-92% Jerry's high on the heady draught of National Socialism.... and in a state of perpetual high after the Nuremberg Rallies. A state of mass euphoria that subsided only after a (much maligned) Arthur Harris decided to bomb Germany back to the age of Arminius.
Were the Jews organized politically, did the Zionist movement have an INC like loose-org structure or even a JS type Cadre structure.... at least in respective countries if not spreading across Europe? Was there any Jewish leader who had followers cutting across boundaries? Can you name ONE Jewish leader of the stature of M.L.King or Mandela if not the Mahatma? All you had was relatively minor operatives like Ben Gurion or shady cloak-and-dagger type folks who would later found the Irgun and Hagnah. Heck, did any of the Rosenthals of America organise a sustained political movement during the Pre-Holocaust/Final Solution phase? Their best moment was when Golda Meir came shopping AFTER the war.
Satyagraha worked where the satyagrahis were in a minority, facing a rabid govt too.... in South Africa. Fcuk... that's were the story began! It worked against a Govt that was willing to trample down whole processions with cavalry. A perverse racist Govt that was second only to the Fascist horrors on the Axis..... and an apparatus that surrendered ONLY AFTER THE COLD WAR when the West didn't need it any more. It took Gandhiji many years to turn the illiterate, feral Indians there to a political force capable of bravely facing police hit-squads. He was nearly killed by his own people in the early stages (1894-1906) and subjected to much ridicule. Still, he built up an organization that even defeated someone like General Smuts, a racist who always wanted to hang Gandhiji. {PS: After Gandhiji presented him with a pair of Sandals he made himself (after the emancipation) Smuts publicly remarked remarked he finds himself not worthy to wear the footwear made by a Saint.}
Forget a Jewish leadership, if there were at least a dozen more Sophie Scholls among the German populace, brave folks who would have stood up when the Nazi bullies ascended, the Holocaust would not have happened. It was the gradual development of the Satyagraha method by the Black Civil Rights movements (and not the tactics of immature Black Panthers or the NOI) that won the emancipation proclamation. It was the iconic picture of the passive face of an unknown black man in Tennesse attacked by Police Dogs that set Kennedy (and hence Johnson) against the Jim Crow state. Satyagraha is simply, THE POWER OF THE UNDENIABLE TRUTH. When millions are shouting the truth, nobody can stop them.
Satyagraha, manifested in mass-scale Non-Cooperation and Civil Disobedience by the populace throws a Mach 14 missile at the tyrant. You can't shoot them all (the South Africans tried), you can't jail them all (the Brits tried) and you can't distract/buy them all (the white Americans tried).... you have no option but to surrender. And to launch such a large movement is no simple task.... it is no rush job. The NCM was launched after 3 years of careful planning and consideration.... the CDM took off after half a decade of simmering discontent... and we all know what India was like before the QIM. Without a political structure, seething AND united masses, politicalised masses you can't launch the Gandhian method.
Now someone pleej tell us how the heck can one argue "Oh, it ain't gonna work in the World of Warcraft or the Wizarding War of 1997" or something.... it doesn't make any friggin sense! The very issue of a Satyagraha happening in a Nazified Germany or a traditionally undemocratic/cloistered/genuine-leaderless Russia or China out of the blue doesn't arise. And if there was ever a real Satyagraha there, no NKVD/Gestapo would be able to stop it.Â
(PS: I am waiting for someone to compare the INM with Tiananmen or Hungarian Uprising <!--emo&
--><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/smile.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile.gif' /><!--endemo--> )Brave new Ch@ddiwaalas please keep this in mind before p1ssing on Gandhiji's grave and ridiculing him.... at least Godse bowed to Gandhiji (for all the good things Gandhi had done so far, he claimed) before murdering him. Criticizing him is ok, I have major problems with him too.... but this j@cking-off (I can't find any other term for whats being said by some people in this regard) is immature and downright stupid!
<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->