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[1]. Defending Afrika from Bandit Gandhists! By Nhlanhla Hlongwane

took History at school but what I recently learnt about Mahatma Gandhi, fourteen years after matric makes me feel like asking for all my school fees. I am so angry! At any rate, I am glad that I now know what I know because wisdom remains better than all the silver and all the gold.

For long and many decades Mahatma Gandhi has been wrongly heralded as a champion of human rights, racial harmony and justice. His name is often mentioned in the same breath as Rev Martin Luther King and Dr. Nelson Mandela, as though he shared these mens' values. Although Gandhi received international praise for his much publicised fasts and passive resistance campaigns, the world seems to have missed the true Gandhi. The South African liberation movements, White Liberals, Hollywood, the US Left along with their respective intellectuals were not only unable to expose the real Gandhi, but are also largely to blame for the posthumous bravado that he now enjoys. He himself a great deceiver, deceiving many Black Civil Rights Movement leaders who continue to honour him. Althought the two never met, Dr King and his wife Coretta went to India on a Gandhi bandwagon and neither they and nor their astute delegation came away nonne the wiser about the real Mahatma. Had they, imagine the shock, the shame of realising that the man and banner you took to the mountain tops had long betrayed you! But Gandhi, even in death continues to disarm and charm them all.

The truth that has has been hidden for so long is that Gandhi never saw the dignity and capacity to suffer of the Indian as being the same as that of the African under the apartheid regime. He failed to see African people as human beings. He said in effect when he was arrested once and placed in the same cell as Africans; humiliated by the error of his jailers he noted in his writings how "many of the Native prisoners are only one degree removed from the animal and often created rows and fought among themselves in their cells". Mr G.B. Singh author of the forthcoming book, 'Behind the Mask of Divinity' wrote in a separate article entitled 'Would the Real Gandhi Stand Up' that, of the 21 years that Ganghi lived in South Africa, "one cannot help but discern that there is not a single Black person anywhere in any of the photos of Gandhi during that time. With Black people in the great majority, there is no way that Gandhi had missed noticing them". Certainly Gandhi noticed us, the problem is that we were beneath him. For him, we Blacks were the "untouchables" of this land. Gandhi came to Africa already having organised in his shinny head and the reality he was poised to create, a place and life-station for dark skinned people. Mr GB Singh points to the sad fact that "only a few scholars are aware of this background". It is certainly sad that those who have known have not told. Someone who could have said something should have said something. Why has this truth been hidden behind a veil of deceptive secrecy? What was the motive in hiding the fact that Mahatma Gandhi really hated the people of this land. He even fought against us, enlisting many Indians to help him in 1906 as Sergeant -Major Ganghi. Howzat for Gandhi; I beg the question; what is to be done now about this history?

Face Off : Mahatma Gandhi supported the separatist and racist policies on the apartheid government. He said in a public meeting in Bombay in 1896 that theirs (Indians) was "one continued struggle against degredation sought to be inflicted upon us (Indians) by 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."

Seduced and blinded by an apparant adopted British-Indian arrogance and a superiority complex fueled by a sinister support and justification of the Indian Hindu caste system. The caste or Varna system as it is also sometimes referd to relegates the darkest skinned Indians to a life of forced humiliating service to their lighter skinned country women and men. The "untouchables" or Dalits as they like to call themselves endure unspeakable discrimination and oppresion. They number some 200 million and "official government statistics show that Dalits suffer more than 100,000 murders, arsons, and rapes annually" wrote Larry Glassco of his trip to India last October in an article called 'Castism Racism'. Drawing further paralles between the (plight) of the Dalits and struggle of Africans in America, Glassco pointed out that the plight of the Dalits in India was "remarkably close to that of black Americans".

Because the Dalits are not racially different from their upper-caste neighbors, casteism may not be racism by formal definition, but caste-based discrimination bears enough similarities in practice, in outcome, and in struggles to end it that it could well be considered a close cousin". Informed by religion and not race, the Shudras, of which the Dalits are a part of, bear the closest resemblence to Africans and are also therefore forced to do the type of work that used to be reserved for us darkies. "Dalits, like blacks, are given jobs that others shun. Blacks formerly dominated among garbage haulers, Dalits today clean the nation's latrines". Further, "like Blacks, Dalits cannot be served in many restaurants; if they are served, it is in separate glasses and cups. Upper caste men have access to Dalit women, by force if necessary; but Dalit men dare not date or try to marry an upper-caste girl under pain of death and mutilitation by a lynch mob, like the sexual-based lynchings of US history, noted (Glassco). Gandhi tried to recreate and duplicate a sort of caste racism here in South Africa, with Indians naturally at the top with Whites and us Africans grovelling at the bottom as usual. As such, Gandhi lunged himself head first into the souridge that was South African politics. Unwilling to transcend the trappings and shortcomings of the caste system, which are inherently divisive and "racist". Unwilling also to stand in solidarity with oppressed Africans in the land of their birth, Gandhi, as a widely respected and influencial Indian leader set the stage and tone for Indian/African relations on the continent and African diaspora for decades to come. Indian/African relations over the decades have been parasitical and abusive exploding most dramatically in Idi Amins' Uganda when he expelled 50,000 Indians and Pakistanis in 1972. Tensions have also on more than one occasion come to a head in our own Durban where Indian families were sent fleeing en mass leaving homes burning behind them. You can cross any country and swim across any sea, you will find the attitude of the Indian towards the Africa as being the same; one of disdain.

Losing Face : Mahatma expressed his views on the caste system at length in a journal called Nava-Jivan in 1921. It was originally written in Gujrati and now recently translated into English. He minsed no words when he said "I believe that if Hindu Society has been able to stand it is because it is founded on the caste system". He further reiterated that; "these being my views I am opposed to all those who are out to destroy the caste system".

Gandhi's legacy is a paradox. While it is true that he helped bring independence to India, it is highly contested especially in India that he brought freedom to his people. The view is that while he brought his country out of British colonial occupation, he himself then roped it into a more subtle and paralising bondage; Hindu Castism. What is happening to the Dalits is illigal by government decree even as it is wide spread forcing many Dalits to emplore armed defence. At the Dalit Liberation Headquarters is Madras, Larry Glassco saw "two large portraits"; one was of Dr. B.R. Ambedkar, a legend and past leader of the Dalits, the other portrait was of Black Civil Rights leader Martin Luther King. Dalit resistance leader Henry Thiagaraj explained the affinity with the Black American Liberation struggle. "Martin Luther King and his civil rights movement inspired us to press forward ever more aggressively in our own struggle. Our people identify very much with Black Americans; our youth even bill themselves as Dalit Panthers, after your Black Panther Party". There is no portrait of Mahatma Gandi however at the Dalit Libearation Headquarters. Journalist, novelist, and musician Beverley Nichols recalled how when he met Dr. Ambedkar during a visit to Britsh India, the doctor told him that "Gandhi is the greatest enemy the untouchables have ever had in India."

Facing Facts : Gandhi was a traditionalist, while seemingly opposed to the harshness of the Caste System, he at the end of the day advocated for a kinder Caste system, in as much as he advocated for a kinder apartheid system; one that was partial to Indians and simulteneous detrimental to the "untouchables" in South Africans as well as in India. Standing on the side of history Mr GB Singh also cautions that "the Gandhi's racism will incite a whole lot of controversy. Be that as it may, I am of the view that the facts speak for themselves. I have exhausted the last 18 years of my life critically analyzing these hidden documents, and I have no doubt that Gandhi harbored anti-Black views and forced his racial views on his fellow Indian countrymen while living in South Africa".

The irony of the Gandhi conspiracy is that while it may have been propagated by well meaning Indians from all persusions and intent, surposedly in an effort to safeguard the futures of their children in a foreign continent; the consequence however of that conspiracy is being brought down as judge and yard-stick for the same children that they were trying to protect. Indian youth stand to be most affected by this revelation. Further, the collective innocence of those who believed in the righteousness and integrity of Gandhi; even the divine in him, they too will be (altered). What Indian youth now have to reckon with is the fact that the Indian has no future in Africa that is separate from that of the Africans. The Gandhist tendency of attempting to create a satelite India in Africa with castes and all has no future in Africa. The Indian is having to become an African in Africa. Gandhits and others who believed otherwise are now suffering a cultural shock. Gandhi himself is turning in his grave as you read this. Could his legacy, by the same token, be regarded as the greatest enemy of the Indian living in outside India? Is this the irony of history?
Nhlanhla Hlongwane [(BA) Political Science & Communications, (MA) Media Studies] is a Freelance Filmmaker (Director, Camera person) and Writer. He is www.kush.co.za editor and a founding member of Kush Kollective.