The great mahatma gandhi a hero of india a man who through a campaign of non-violence freed his country from the clutches of british imperialists he was not just a father of his nation but for some he was considered almost saintly he also liked to sleep alone in beds with his grand nieces and other young women and held some shockingly racist views toward other races today we'll shock some of you we might even offend some of you but we also think by the time we got to the end of this show you will have also changed your mind as how you think about mr gandhi before we get to that here's an abridged introduction to the man born mohandas karamchad gandhi on october 2nd 1869. he grew up in fairly comfortable surroundings seeing that his father held the position of chief minister of the indian state of purbandar his mother was said to be a very pious woman which is where the young gandhi discovered the beliefs of cherishing the simple things in life the religious devotion he saw by his mother would foster him a sense of ethics that he later became famous for on a global scale things such as non-violence tolerance of others beliefs vegetarianism and acts of self-purification were his badge they were also steeped in hypocrisy at times his beliefs were put to the test when he went over to london to study before he left india he swore to his mom to not fall for the enticements of modern life to stay clear of women and meat and generally to uphold the beliefs she taught him but while studying law in london he witnessed late 19th century industry and all the horrors that could come with it the streets of london were certainly not paved with gold far from it many londoners with their ragged clothes and dirty faces didn't seem to be enjoying britain's industrial wealth gandhi witnessed poverty but he also witnessed activism there it was the same when he went over to south africa where he saw much of the population living in abject poverty gandhi might have been an educated lawyer by this time but that didn't mean he wasn't told like other indians that because of his skin color he wasn't allowed to walk on certain footpaths or enter certain buildings there's more to this story but let's just tell you the good gandhi story first he was disgusted there he was an educated man who considered himself as much english as he was indian but treated as a second class citizen by the europeans one time he was kicked out of a train coach because of his race like many other people of color his rights were taken away from him on other occasions he was beaten up for not making room for a white passenger that wasn't bad enough he was barred for staying at certain hotels even though he had the money to pay for them the story goes that gandhi understood the many wrongs committed by the imperialists and so was at this juncture in his life when he decided he was going to bring about change but his resistance in line with his religious beliefs had to be peaceful one of the most famous lines is every revolution begins with a single act of defiance and this is how he began fighting for the rights of indians this is how he got a name for himself as an activist which on one dark day in durban south africa almost got him lynched by a mob of angry white folks he spent several years in south africa but he knew that india needed him when he announced his departure from africa a statesman wrote the saint has left our shores this statesman was a white south african he finished the sentence i hope forever back in india gandhi carried on fighting for people's rights he'd been beaten up he'd been jailed he'd been harangued and oppressed and he still preached peace he might have supported the british war effort but he also never shied away from criticizing the british imperialist we apologize to our gandhi enthusiasts for skipping over many years of his life but we think most of you know that this man became one of the most powerful people in india his form of indian nationalism was embraced by much of the country most of the country in fact and they started to believe that with the right will the indian people could be free of the british his activism got him arrested on march 10 1922 and he spent the next two years behind bars but he wasn't done by any means in the years to follow he would leave many of the indian people to peacefully revolt against many facets of the british rule his followers and there were many went to prison for their acts of civil disobedience in 1932 while in prison again he undertook a now famous fast over the disenfranchisement of those at the bottom of india's caste system people called the untouchables when indians saw how willing gandhi was to die for his people for the rights of the country's poorest it spread hope through the hearts of the nation then the second world war happened and again the indians were expected to fight for the british but this time the indian national congress wanted a form of self-government if it were to throw indian nationals onto the battlefield close to 90 000 of them would eventually die not to mention the perhaps two and a half million total indian casualties of war before the war ended gandhi had already started the quit india movement and then on august 15 1947 india finally got its independence okay so what you've just heard is the condensed story of a man who saw cruelty and unfairness in the world and wanted to do something about it he then took considerable risks in fighting the perpetrators of those wrongs and he made it his life's work it's now time we got into costume and became the devil's advocate here's a quote for you hitler killed 5 million jews it's the greatest crime of our time but the jews should have offered themselves to the butcher's knife they should have thrown themselves into the sea from cliffs it would have aroused the world and the people of germany as it is they succumbed anyway in their millions yes those were the thoughts of gandhi he was taking non-violence to another level and he was not surprisingly condemned for saying such things while his belief might not exactly fall into an ugly truth category his moral absolutism made no sense at all to some people especially those under attack from germany when the nazis were bombing england gandhi seemed to think the brit should not bother fighting back this is what he said about that i would like you to lay down the arms you have as being useless for saving you or humanity you will invite hair hitler and senor mussolini to take what they want of the countries you call your possessions if these gentlemen choose to occupy your homes you will vacate them if they do not give you free passage out you will allow yourselves man woman and child to be slaughtered but you will refuse to owe allegiance to them in hindsight we all now know the many added horrors that would have occurred had governments followed gandhi's instructions and just allowed nazi germany to do what it wanted his assertion also sounds much worse when you consider some people now say that gandhi was a racist in 2019 in the african nation of malawi people were saying just that in ghana that same year a gandhi statue was taken down at a university you might think that's strange given what we told you about gandhi fighting for people's rights when he was in south africa well in ghana many people right now don't have much love for gandhi which can be seen on twitter when folks use the hashtag gandhi must fall maybe you think it's a bit severe but it sounds righteous enough when you know some of the racist things gandhi wrote back when he was in africa for instance he once wrote that white folks despite their flaws should be the predominating race in south africa you see the young gandhi as you know went over to england to get himself an education it seems it was his dealings with the ruling british that convinced him that europeans were just more civilized than the black people in africa we should say that he changed his entire stance in time and became an anti-racist but it wasn't always like that he also wrote in a letter summing up the beliefs to the british that the general belief seems to prevail in the colony that the indians are a little better if at all than the savages or the natives of africa he absolutely thought that many africans were savages and used derogatory language too when referring to black people such as the term kaffir in 1904 he wrote another letter stating that he was upset about these people living amongst indians saying about the mixing of the fears with the indians i must confess i feel most strongly he wrote that as long as blacks were mixed with indians then diseases such as the plague would further spread you can now understand why some people are now calling gandhi out they also accuse him of being a hypocrite saying that he didn't believe in the rights of africans at all while also working with the british government in segregating whites from blacks a stunning example of this is when gandhi petitioned the colonial government in south africa to ensure the indian people didn't have to share the same queue as black people when they went to the post office in durban he didn't think it was fair that indians couldn't queue with the whites some people now tried to cover for gandhi saying he was just product of his times although one would think that a person of high intelligence would still have known right from wrong even if they didn't always fight for what was right others now say that gandhi was a card-carrying member of the aryan brotherhood and no we don't mean that bunch of violent angry neo-nazis whose pastime is smoking amphetamines and sharpening shivs we mean the brotherhood that wore suits and smoked pipes and dingy board rooms for example when asked just how racist gandhi was one of his new critics wrote gandhi believed in the aryan brotherhood this involved whites and indians higher up than africans on the civilized scale to that extent he was a racist to the extent that he wrote africans out of history or was keen to join with whites in their subjugation he was a racist as we say gandhi shifted his stance but how much he shifted we can't say question is when he was telling people to lie down for the germans did any part of him still believe in superior races you have to remember when gandhi was in south africa it wasn't as if black people hadn't already for years been fighting for their rights you can't just say gandhi was a product of the times because he knew very well that a race of people rightly felt they were violently oppressed when gandhi was in england he spent most of his time hanging out with intellectuals and the odd vegetarian and then once he was in south africa he found himself having to share the same train carriages and join the same cues of a people he referred to as coolies he hated this that much was evident in 1906 when during the zulu rebellion gandhi supported the british in what he termed the revolt of the kafirs these people who he pretty much believed were barbarians he said deserved british rule because they spent most of their days in indolence and nakedness again people say you have to forgive him for his foibles they say he had his road to damascus moment and he changed his views nonetheless as his critics still point out even if he did hold some racist views on racial hierarchies why could he not ever refer to african people as africans and not coolies or kaffirs his utter lack of respect for africans was evident when he attended a dinner party held by the british imperialist hugh wyndham fourth baron lincoln field gandhi was overjoyed to be seated next to some of the empire's toffs and he quite enjoyed his aubergine cutlets in plum tart he gave a speech about his leaving africa saying he hoped the europeans of south africa would take a humanitarian and imperial view of the indian question but one of his biographers pointed something else out that was the fact that gandhi never said any farewells to any africans even though he'd been in africa that biographer said gotti didn't think africans deserved a goodbye message we hammered this point home just a little bit only because you have to admit that it's quite a huge deal when a human rights advocate fighting to end discrimination went along with discrimination and human rights abuses if he was flawed in public what about his personal life will things get even more strange now gandhi once wrote to his son that a person who marries in order to satisfy his carnal desire is lower than even the beast he had no time for casual sex and human relations and he himself became celibate at age 38. he'd gotten married when he was 13 but turned away from sex later so then why did the guardian newspaper write that gandhi was prone to having weird manipulative flirtations with young unmarried women why also in 2021 did some people in california knock down a statue of the great man the answer is that some people think gandhi wasn't just hypocritical when it came to racial equality but also in relation to his thoughts on sexual purity when it was decided that the statue in california should be re-erected a group called the organization for minorities of india was dead set against it when asked why a spokesperson for the group explained gandhi was instrumental in influencing national treatment of women in india he said my life is my message and the life he modeled for the nation was one of sexually exploiting his grand nieces and many other teenage girls under the guise of performing celibacy experiments gandhi stands accused of being sexist racist and also committing creepy acts with young women like other spiritual leaders that have tainted the earth with their footsteps gandhi has been called a predator which we don't have to tell you is a really bad look for someone touted as being a man of peace with a pure soul nonetheless when people are accused of such things we should hope there's a lot of evidence or even some evidence to back it up well he was against birth control unless it was the kind of control that involved a man or woman taming their animal passions once he said if people have too much sex they will become soft-brained unhinged in fact mental and moral wrecks then when he was an aging man in the 30s he asked his young grandniece to get into bed with him he told her that it was an experiment to see if he could control his own animal passions as bad as it looked he didn't hide what he was doing which was to test or further test his conquest of sexual desire it was written that he didn't care what people thought about it one author said when a close disciple heard of gandhi's experiments with celibacy he had threatened to leave the ashram unless gandhi rectified his predatory behavior his choices were clearly never acceptable these experiments not only involved his grand niece but other young women and girls at the ashram he never did have intercourse with him but let's just say he really tested himself as for how his wife felt about all this gandhi never seemed to show her much love he once said he couldn't bear to look at her in the face and is famously known for denying her life-saving drugs he certainly took a lot of criticism for the two-week celibacy experiments and he still does now just as he does for many of his more conservative beliefs regarding sex and gender to give you an idea about those beliefs his answer to two women being attacked by men in the street was for them to shave off their hair so they were no longer attractive to men yeah he blamed the women for a male problem even once went as far as to say that a woman's menstruation cycle was actually a manifestation of the distortion of a woman's soul by her sexuality for many people gandhi was a racist with a predilection for sexually focused predatory behavior others say leave him alone the man did good on the whole and can be said to have done something not many people can attest to and actually changing the world today we've just played the devil's advocate and will let you decide what to make of gandhi the darker parts of his life don't figure much when it comes to his legacy but hey mythologies are rarely interested in nuance now you need to watch another myth-busting extravaganza the ugly truth about mother teresa or have a look at this