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WHUP-ASS TIME Ten Years of Truthspeak 1996-2006 DAY ONE MPHUTHUMI NTABENI, South Africa G21 ASIA KEN KAMOCHE, Hong Kong G21 ASIA KIM CARTER, Thailand JOIN OUR MAILING LIST. It contains more jokes than not. G21 FICTION ROD AMIS, United States G21 MIDEAST H. SCOTT PROSTERMAN, United States HOT LINKS RADIO RAHEEM, United States RECOMMENDED DAILY REQUIREMENT DANIEL PATRICK WELCH, United States SMOKE & MIRRORS ROD AMIS, G21 World HQ THE PREVIOUS EDITION MEET THE G-CREW! These are the people behind this jam-band every week. HOME TABLE OF CONTENTS & BACK ISSUES BECOME A SPONSOR OF THE WORLD'S MAGAZINE. WHY should you advertise here? We'll tell you. Send Page To a Friend We know you're lazy. Here's a button for a quick translation of this page. Just click on the flag for your country. You're welcome! OR TRY THIS GOOGLE TRANSLATION SERVICE. |
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DAY ONE - THE MAHATMA IN MY LIFE: South African writer MPHUTHUMI NTABENI moves to the prestigious DAY ONE chair to offer a reflection on the meaning and power of the teachings of Mohandas Gandhi.
East London, SOUTH AFRICA - South Africa and India are jointly celebrating the legacy of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, alias, Gandhi or Gandhji this year. Since Gandhi was one of the first popular leaders to hold influence on my life during my formative years I thought I'd apply my mind to see where the Mahatma and I stand now.
Mphuthumi Ntabeni To me the life of Gandhi was a tutorial in self-discipline, which in his view, assists the individual in spiritual and moral growth. Gandhi is still very much relevant in our times since it's obviously clear that now more than ever there's an obvious need for greater self-discipline, unselfishness and self-control to curb greed, indulgence, cruelty and carelessness over other's human rights.?
I met up with Gandhi's teaching in a period of my life when I was more agnostic than Christian, though I was brought up as a Christian. What attracted me the most about Gandhi's teachings is the way he stressed the individual's struggle with the weaker self in relation to a personal and political freedom. Gandhi worked from the basic premise that the prime goal in an individual's life was self-realisation, which comes from the search for truth (satya) in specific instances, and Absolute Truth (satya) as an ultimate reality.
To reach the Absolute Truth, or God, as Gandhi perceived it, an individual must determine what truth meant for him and practice it with single-mindedness. Another way he expressed this concept was with what he called the "soul-force," the power of good residing in an individual. This, Gandhi taught, could be cultivated to realise its full potential, hence to him the "prolonged training of the individual soul" was necessary. This he wrote in an article just before his departure from South Africa. His quest was for a person to become a "perfect" adult, the satyagrahi.
He was of the opinion that certain moral principles needed to be observed by the satyagrahis to realise their soul-force. In 1916, he laid down certain principles that the Sabarmati ashramites had to observe to realise satya. These were ahimsa (nonviolence), asteya (non-stealing, non-covetousness), aparigraha (non-possession, non-acquisitiveness), and brahmacharya (celibacy); principles which had for ages been stressed in Hindu religious writing as being necessary for an individual's moral growth.
While there is no evidence to suggest that Gandhi formally laid down a code of conduct at the Tolstoy Farm he established at Phoenix (South Africa), he directed the activities in the settlement so as to instill into the residents these principles. Gandhi believed that the principles would encourage among the satyagrahis the kind of discipline that would make them missionaries of change, the standard-bearers of a new order he valued and hoped to propagate.
Gandhi certainly had tremendous respect for Western civilization and its dominant religion, Christianity. He was, like myself, of the notion though that they've not yet been practiced yet, hence his contemptuous regard of hypocritical tendencies in most people of Western culture. He listed seven blunders in warning against following the Western norms:
- Wealth without ethics of communal goodwill.
- Pleasure without conscience.
- Knowledge without character.
- Business without morality.
- Science without humanity.
- Worship without sacrifice.
?It is perhaps testimony of our failure to heed his warnings that the global world is today largely conducted in the worst way that Gandhi feared.
When Gandhi saw the direction the world was taking he sought to influence it in the other direction by taking to a rural setting, which became obviously more important in his life and teachings. His own beliefs about the virtues of a simple life made him suspicious of the trappings of a modern industrialised civilization. Gandhi was of the opinion that when man lived in close proximity to nature he might realise his full potential by labouring for his fruit. The emphasis was upon simple communal living where individual self-interests had to be curbed for the good of all; where asteya and aparigraha might be cultivated.
Gandhi's teachings were attractive to me for these virtues of a simple life, of love,? peace, labour, and human dignity they propagated. Of course, as a Black person, I had to endure many distasteful things in his tone and language, like the use of the word kaffirs. It is not sufficient to excuse the Mahatma with the canard that this was a common usage of his time. He was well positioned to know better.
The truth is that Gandhi confined his efforts to his own Indian community. In South Africa, he refused to form a common front with Black political leaders, or Black men of the same moral and intellectual caliber with himself, like Solomon Plaatje, John Tengo Jabavu, Walter Rubusana and Abdul Abdurrahman, to name but a few.
Speaking in Bombay after three years in Africa, Gandhi told his audience:
Ours is one continual struggle against a degradation sought to be inflicted upon us by the?Europeans, who desire to degrade us to the level of the raw Kaffir whose occupation is hunting, and whose sole ambition is to collect a certain number of cattle to buy a wife with and, then, pass his life in indolence and nakedness.Indeed, Indians then generally sought separation between themselves and Blacks, frequently complaining whenever? mixed with "Natives," whether on railway cars, lavatories, pass laws or other regulations. In fact, even as close ago as the seventies and eighties of the 20th century, when I was growing up, most Indians didn't want anything to do with us, fearing our kaffirhood would rub off and infect them, I suppose.
On the same breath, there were great Indian freedom fighters, like Marc Maharaj, who became the commander in Umkhonto Wesizwe (the African National Congress' armed wing), so we must caution against generalisation. My point, though, is that one would have expected Gandhi to rise above such racial stereotyping and racism, but he didn't.
The one African leader with whom Gandhi and his associates are known to have had some close contact was his neighbor at Phoenix, John L. Dube, the first President of the South African Native National Congress (ANC). Dube, educated at Oberlin College in Ohio, was, like Gandhi, an admirer of the industrial school of Booker T. Washington at Tuskegee Institute. Dube established his own school in 1901, the Ohlange Institute. It was the first African-controlled industrial school in South Africa.
We can say Dube inspired Gandhi to established his own rural settlement at Phoenix two years later, only a mile or two from Ohlange. Dube founded a Zulu newspaper, Ilanga Lase Natal (Light of Natal) in 1903, which was reestablished a few years ago and is now the leading selling paper in the South African province of KwaZulu/Natal. Dube printed the first copies of his paper at the International Printing Press, which was eventually controlled by Gandhi when he launched Indian Opinion a year later.
When Gandhi's active "passive resistance" began in Johannesburg, Dube praised it in Ilanga, and when Gandhi brought to South Africa his political mentor Gopal Krishna Gokhale, a member of the Viceroy's Council, he was taken to Ohlange Institute to meet Dube, where they "spent some time discussing the Native question". Dube reported on the meeting in Ilanga, which might mean there was mutual respect between the two leaders even if Gandhi kept introducing Dube as "an educated Negro" to his readers.?
The truth of the matter is that it'd be unfair to judge Gandhi entirely by his South African works and attitude. Gandhi was still a very conventional Victorian Indian then, seeking accommodation and personal success within the British Empire. He shared the prejudices of his class concerning Black people, hence I say, in this respect, he was segregationist, albeit a liberal one; arguing for a special status for his own people while neglecting to see to it that the same treatment was given to the Black majority of the country.
None of all of this should matter much, except perhaps for those who have a tendency of wishing that our heroes be consistently heroic throughout their lives. Gandhi had a tremendous ability to learn and adjust his views. The fact that he somehow infected the then leaders of the ANC with ideas of satyagraha - to the extent that one of them (Albert Luthuli) won a Nobel Peace Prize years later - must be the greatest legacy Gandhi left the struggle of Black people for freedom in South Africa.
II
Gandhi and I shared another? attraction, the love of Jesus Christ's Beatitudes, otherwise known as the "Sermon on the Mount," (cf; Mt:5, 3-11). The Beatitudes strongly appealed to Gandhi because of its passive-activist philosophy. It was, however, the Bhagavad Gita that supplied him with the basis of his religious beliefs. Gandhi was very disappointed that few, if any, Christians took Christ's Beatitudes seriously.
In the Bhagavad Gita, the message from Krishna that had the most profound meaning for Gandhi was: a man must not be diverted by distractions however great from seeking the truth about his position in relation to the scheme of things, and thereby realise God.
Gandhi was of the opinion that the Bhagavad Gita offered one salvation through selfless action. Gandhi's personal philosophy about duty and service combined with social justice coincides with this aspect of Hinduism. This must have been what made him an ardent social activist with religious overtones.
The force of Gandhi's satyagraha philosophy compelled me. I'm told most people didn't fully understand all its revolutionary dimensions, but they realised that it was a new and potent force, so they were ready to go to prison, even to the gallows, for Gandhi. I can't say I blame them, especially when you look at his teachings with the glaring prism of his faults as a man. It makes him more compelling in the realisation that he took himself to be on the same struggling foot with you, trying to realise the satyagrahi within him.
One thing that comes out of studying Gandhi's life is how much of a functional reader he was. He generally selected from the works of the likes of Tolstoy and Thoreau aspects that reinforced his own concepts and beliefs without neglecting his rich Indian cultural heritage. I liked that and aimed at imitating it, albeit with my African and Christian heritage.
Among things Gandhi's life has taught me is that it is easy to postulate principles, but very difficult to put them into practice. Believing in peace and a good life for all is very well, but the challenge is in putting it into practice. In our times we're besotted with people and governments that have opted for satanic means in attempting to realise the good they believe in.
Death for one's belief is what eventually determines the quality of one's life, but there's a vast difference between a martyr and a terrorist. A martyr decides to forgo one's life for beliefs and protection of the innocent. A terrorist wishes to compel, by the force of one's death, everyone to their own beliefs and treats the innocent as a collateral damage. Perhaps the worst still is discovering a democratically elected state turn a legalised terrorist in the name of its beliefs.
Violence, approved by society and supported by religion, has proved a commonplace in our times, as it was during the time of the Crusades. The Crusades were wars justified by faith and conducted against real or imagined enemies defined by religious and political elites as perceived threats to the faithful. Gandhi, like most people of goodwill, was disgusted by a social mentality grounded in war as a central force of protection, arbitration, social discipline, political expression and material gain.
The world is undergoing a cultural Calvary, which has come with a paradigmatic shift of consciousness, especially in young people of spiritual and ethical awakenings. In his speech at Johannesburg in 1908 Gandhi said:
"If we look into the future, is it not a heritage we have to leave to posterity, that all the different races commingle and produce a civilization that perhaps the world has not yet seen?"That's the future of the world, a global civilization that's made up of what's best in all our cultures. It is now still undergoing it's birth pangs. Halava!
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