47. "RE: That does not exactly counter these quotes about Black Africans dir..." In response to In response to 46 Sun Dec-06-15 08:15 PM by denny
One thing I've come to learn....alot of Gandhi's reluctance to unite with other oppressed groups is because they were Christians. So some of the quotes (like the last one you provided) about race-mixing were based on his new-found Hindu pride and anti-christian stance. Also...the protests and quotes he made about not wanting to be imprisoned with native SA's had a legitimate/non-racist motivation. Native SAs didn't exactly greet Indians into society as brothers-in-arms either. There was lots of inter-sectional racism going around on all sides. So the British would punish Indian protesters by putting them in cells with native SAs...knowing full well that they would get beaten up.
But the most indicting quotes provided....specifically the one about 'the europeans should rule SA' and the 'kaffirs are lazy' were made when he first got to SA. At which time there is no doubt that he held racist/prejudiced views. But there's ample evidence that he changed his mind and eventually sympathized with native SAs....as well as supporting their cause. Now....he's been overly-credited by some western historians in CONTRIBUTING to the plight of native SAs....credit that rightfully belonged to Native SA leaders. But he certainly wasn't AGAINST them during the majority of his time there. And he did have correspondence with and provide moral support in his writings for leaders of Native SAs. For example...the zulu anti-apartheid newspaper 'Light of Natal' was printed by Gandhi's organization.
I went down the rabbit-hole last night reading about this. This article from 1990 is the best one I found. It provides more evidence of Gandhi's racism than is even in this thread (for example, he actually tried to THWART a native SA protest at one time for strategic reasons benefiting the indian movement) but also contextualizes it within the complexities of what was going on in SA at that time:
It's not an apologist paper and it's not necessarily pro-Gandhi neither. In fact, it states clearly that Gandhi is wrongly attributed with credit for fighting for civil rights in SA. But it also paints a more nuanced picture than simply 'Gandhi hated black people'.