Originally posted by: EXOL
Gandhi also said " When someone slaps you on one cheek, offer them the other cheek as well"...
here one thing to notice is he is not asking the person who is slapping to not slap rather he is asking the person who is at the receiving end of the aggression to not react..coz he believed in non violent resistance when faced with aggression...coz the other person who is already on path of violence wont stop at this point or care...
Gandhiji extended this thought process to communal tensions when he made that hindu muslim quote not realising the sensitivity around religion perhaps.. ..which can easily be and is always misinterpreted , and can be used to show he doesnt care about hindus...but compare both the quotes and you will get why he said it...yes it is not an easy quote to digest ..I mean non violence when someone is attacking you is not easy but if u genuinely give it a thought why it was said u will see the intention was not wrong ...
and why to reduce Gandhi to that one quote when he has many other quotes for us to guide us
but ngl this quote is easy tool to attack Gandhi every single time...overlooking every other teachings of him
"Turning the other cheek" is a well known Christian doctrine, and it's used as a general teaching of non-violence, the quote I posted is not some general principle of non-violence, he is specifically asking Hindus to let Muslims kill them if they wish to and to usher in a new India, notice that he doesn't expect the same from Muslims, he doesn't tell Muslims that if Hindus want to kill you all, then allow yourselves to be killed, he is quite happy for them to kill Hindus, the expectation is squarely upon the Hindus to die.
It's not like Gandhi was unaware of communal violence, his response to the Moplah genocide of Hindus, where thousands of Hindus were killed and raped by Muslims, was quite apathatic, even blaming the victims, it was so bad that even Ambedkar blasted him for his lack of concern.
It's not about reducing him to one quote, there's also a bunch of other crazy things he said, but this is a deal breaker for me, I can't respect someone who said something as ludicrous as that, then there are his so-called "celibacy experiments" where he slept naked with his grand daughters and other women.
Udne Ki Aasha
4