http://localhost:8080/gandhi Senior Fellow, Hillsdale College Churchill Project, Writer and Historian Fri, 07 Apr 2023 17:16:21 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.9 http://localhost:8080/gandhi#comment-52393 Tue, 11 Jan 2022 02:36:14 +0000 http://richardlangworth.com/?p=2863#comment-52393 “But that is not all. To abandon India to the rule of the Brahmins would be an act of cruel and wicked negligence. It would shame for ever those who bore its guilt. These Brahmins who mouth and patter the principles of Western Liberalism, and pose as philosophic and democratic politicians, are the same Brahmins who deny the primary rights of existence to nearly sixty millions of their own fellow countrymen whom they call ‘untouchable’, and whom they have by thousands of years of oppression actually taught to accept this sad position. They will not eat with these sixty millions, nor drink with them, nor treat them as human beings. They consider themselves contaminated even by their approach. And then in a moment they turn round and begin chopping logic with John Stuart Mill, or pleading the rights of man with Jean Jacques Rousseau.” —Churchill, “Our Duty in India,” 1931
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You are quite right to recall this statement as a valid example of his thinking during the India debate. The Indian historian Tirthankar Roy writes: “As a society that had invented the idea that the touch of another person could cause pollution, India did not need the British to know how to oppress and degrade other people.” Your quotation supports Dr. Roy’s thesis that the worst things Churchill said about Indians were directed at the ruling Brahmins, whom he regarded as hypocrites for demanding independence but not equal rights for all. —RML

]]> http://localhost:8080/gandhi#comment-3202 Sun, 13 Jul 2014 23:36:51 +0000 http://richardlangworth.com/?p=2863#comment-3202 “Churchill was ruthlessly dismissive of Indian political aspirations. He could scarcely be expected to forget that the Mahatma had offered to mediate Britain’s surrender to Hitler, whom the standard-bearer of non-violence and Indian freedom described as ‘not a bad man.'” Gandhi in 1940 wrote an open letter to the British people, urging them to “lay down arms and accept whatever fate Hitler decided.You will invite Herr Hitler and Signor Mussolini to take what they want of the countries you call your possessions. Let them take possession of your beautiful island with your many beautiful buildings. You will give all of these, but neither your souls nor your minds.” (Max Hastings, Finest Years: Churchill as Warlord (2009) 255; Gandhi’s remark is quoted from D G Tendulkar, Mahatma (New Delhi 1969) V.291.)
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Mr. Gandhi was a clever man and it’s possible to believe he said that tongue-in-cheek. But what about this? “I do not consider Hitler to be as bad as he is depicted. He is showing an ability that is amazing and seems to be gaining his victories without much bloodshed.” —May 1940, the month Churchill became prime minister. Neither man was without faults. But their relations have been misrepresented by ignorant media and headline seekers. —RML

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