Camp Gagnon - Mahatma Gandhi And His DARK True Story

Episode Date: August 13, 2025

Who was Mahatma Gandhi, and why was he so influential? Today, we take a closer look at the DARK history of one of the most famous lawyers. We’ll talk about Gandhi’s childhood, his early racial ideology, Gandhi’s attempt to connect cultures, his controversial celibacy, Gandhi's influence today, and other interesting topics, WELCOME TO History CAMP! 🏕️Shoutout to our sponsor: OdooTry Odoo with a 14-day free trial at: http://Odoo.com/CAMP👕🧢 GET YOUR CAMP DRIP HERE: http://camp-rd.com🏕️ Get Today In History Email Here (Free): https://camp.beehiiv.com/🎟️ 🎫 Comedy Tour Tickets Here: https://markgagnonlive.comTimestamps:0:00 Who Is Gandhi?3:08 Gandhi’s Childhood5:14 Early Racial Ideology 8:06 Satyagraha 14:00 Gandhi’s Attempt To Connect Cultures20:13 Gandhi's Celibacy + Caste System Controversy23:53 The Fast For Untouchables30:39 The Death of Gandhi33:12 Gandhi's Influence Today38:20 What Are Your Thoughts On Gandhi?

I regard myself as a soldier, though a soldier of peace. Mahatma Gandhi, a perpetual sign of a man dedicated to liberation and justice for his people. He was curious, self-doubting, but always questioning his place in the world. Through each struggle and every experiment with truth, Gandhi shaped a way of life that fused discipline, but also empathy. He asked hard questions. How about fear, hatred, what it means to be good? In the early years, Gandhi had some racial biases. He argued that Indians deserve better treatment than...

Africans because they had a civility to them. One of the most controversial parts of Gandhi's life was his vow of celibacy and the unusual methods that he used to test it. So, did a deep dive and learned as much as I can all the beautiful and amazing things that Gandhi did in his lifetime as a peacekeeper and an advocate, but additionally, the flaws, some of the character deficits that we all carry around. So let's dive in. What's up, people, and welcome back to history camp. My name is Mark Gagdon. And thank you for joining me in my tent where every single week we explore the most interesting, fascinating, controversial stories from around the world from all time throughout all of history. As always, I'm joined by one of my dear friends today. We got the good old

Gabriel. How are you, sir? Not enough time for that. People in the comments are pissed off. That every time there's a producer in here, they think the show's all about them. You know what I mean? There's chit chat and just yap the whole time. It's not about you. It's not about me. Today, this show is actually about a guy named Mahatma Gandhi. Now, to be honest with you, I didn't know much about Gandhi. You know, growing up, I heard about this guy who was a peaceful man that moved the hearts of people not only in India and in the South Asian subcontinent, you know, the dacies around the world, but also just in the hearts of all mankind. They saw his walking and his fasting as, you know, a perpetual sign of a man dedicated to liberation and justice for his people. And as a result,

everyone was moved the end. That's kind of all in it until today. I did a deep dive and learned as much as I can, obviously all the beautiful and amazing things that Gandhi did in his lifetime as a peacekeeper and an advocate. But additionally, some of the things that, you know, make him, you know, a human being. Some of the things, like all people, the flaws, some of the character deficits that we all carry around. Even the great people of all time do some things that are not ideal. So let me just say, you know, this is trying to paint a holistic and truthful view of all people in history. And Gandhi is no different. So for anyone that's listening that is not Hindu like myself, is not Indian like myself,

is not a part of the Dasey diaspora, I hope you learned something today. And for anyone that is listening, that is a part of those groups that I mentioned, I'm sorry if I get anything wrong. So if I do, please don't hesitate to drop a comment and please correct me. Or if there's anything that I missed, drop that in there too. But please be nice. I read all the comments, YouTube, Spotify, etc. So let's dive in to the story of Mahatma Gandhi.

Let's actually go all the way back to before he was Mahatma when he was just Wahandas Gandhi, a young boy from the Pornbender region of India. He was curious, you know, at times, self-doubting, but always questioning his place in the world. You know, he made mistakes like all of us, wrestled with contradictions and rarely saw himself as extraordinary, which is a good lesson. He walked with humility in all things. Yet, through each struggle and every experiment with truth, Gandhi shaped a way of love. life that fused discipline, but also empathy. He had a rigidity and a sort of a fervent resistance

to, you know, the things of this world. But at the same time, it was extremely emotional and empathetic and drew people in in a miraculous way. You know, he asked hard questions, you know, about fear, hatred, what it means to be good, what it means to pursue truth, like capital T, like the absolute truth. And not just in public, but in the quiet corners of, you know, his own mind and in his own his own journal entries. Gandhi's greatness lay not in sainthood, but in his willingness to, you know, grow and become a better person. So let's get into it. Like I said, this young man that becomes known as the great Gandhi began just as Mohan, you know, a shy child from poor bounder, uh, Gujarat. He was a, you know, sort of a shy kid who was terrified of the dark, slept with

the lights on. His mother put Li Bai influenced him greatly. I mean, her fasting, her vows, her deep, religiosity became templates that he would ponder and return to throughout his life. But even these early influences carried some contradictions that would define his character. The home that sort of nurtured his compassion was also rigid and, you know, sort of adhered to cast rules, values that Gandhi would instinctively question yet wrestle with throughout his entire life. And just before his 19th birthday, Gandhi sailed to London to study law, leaving behind a, you know, young bride and an infant son. And the journey itself violated cast rules, requiring elaborate purification ceremonies upon his return. And in London, he tried desperately to become an English

gentleman, right, like taking dancing and violin lessons, uh, being deliberate and obsessive about his appearance at times. And he letter wrote with, you know, this sort of characteristic self-deprecation about this period describing his attempts to fit in as foolish vanity. Yet, this experience of being an outsider, of trying to fit in in this sort of foreign world that would never really fully accept him, never truly fully see him as English, would prove to be formative in ways that he couldn't have imagined. And this discomfort of being between these two worlds, kind of being an insider outsider, he is neither fully Indian because of these caste and purifying rules, or he's not fully British either because, you know, he has maybe a funny accent

or he doesn't look like a proper Englishman. These things would become central to his identity and his ability to bridge these sort of irreconcilable differences. And his time in London planted these seeds of this inclusive worldview that would later bloom into a full-on philosophy of universal truth. So in 1893, a young Gandhi arrived in South Africa as this young, sort of optimistic lawyer, uncertain and sort of struggling professionally at times. And this train journey from Durban to Pretoria was interrupted at Peter Moritzburg.

And this was where he was thrown off for refusing to move from first class to third class, despite holding a valid ticket. This became sort of an origin story of sorts. But the story behind this moment is a lot more complex than the story itself can suggest. So let's explain. In the early years, Gandhi had some racial biases that were explicit it and documented. He argued that Indians deserve better treatment than Africans because, you know, they had a civility to them. And he sometimes used derogatory terms for black Africans in his

writings and his speeches early on. And this wasn't merely, you know, a strategic position to get like white sympathy or try to like associate with the people that were controlling India at the time, though that was certainly, you know, a part of it. Gandhi kind of believed in this sort of racial caste idea, you know, placing Indians above Africans but below whites. And he sort of had this racial philosophy early on. And his early activism wasn't about equality for all necessarily, but about securing sort of a middle position for Indians in South Africa's racial order. And what made Gandhi's story remarkable is not that he was free of prejudice, right? He wasn't necessarily a perfect person early on, but that he slowly moved beyond these biases, shaped by, you know, the time that

he lived in and the place that he grew up. And I think it's just an important note that, you know, people throughout all history at certain times her life can believe awful, terrible things that are demeaning to what it actually means to be a citizen on earth and being like a good human being. But that doesn't mean that that defines you forever and that you can change. You can actually make a step to be a better person, a more inclusive person, a more open-minded person, see people for who they are rather than the nation they're from or the color of their skin. And this change for Gandhi took many years. And, you know, in some ways, it was never fully complete, but it was real, right?

It was an actual progress in his life. And his views began to shift through experiences like, you know, meeting African leaders such as John Doob and recognizing the shared struggle of all oppressed people around the world. And while his attitude towards, you know, Africans really improved throughout his life, you know, there were still some, you know, patronizing views, which African thinkers like, you know,

Peeksley Qa Sam criticized even while, you know, working alongside him. And this growth, I think, again, shows something really important about his character. he's open to becoming a better person, to learning and willing to change his views throughout, you know, having experiences of people. And it was this ability to grow, not with, you know, perfection, but it was this idea that helped him, you know, become a powerful leader and a moral example. So during his 21 years in South Africa, Gandhi developed the techniques that would define his approach and influence, you know, his philosophy and his movement worldwide. The idea around this movement

of this philosophy known as Satya Graha and or you know this the truth force as it would be translated into English was built around non-violent resistance and moral pressure but even Satya Graha sprang from some type of contradiction right Gandhi felt both the duty to serve in imperial wars and you know deep discomfort with the violence that came from them you know he organized ambulance corps during the Boer wars and the Zulu rebellion arguing that Indians needed to prove their loyalty through service yet he was kind of troubled by the violence that he witnessed and i think that's a interesting thing for just people to ponder right like if you live in america for example on the one hand you're like this is a country of you know laws and rules and you know it's a place where everyone can

be equal and become the best version of themselves but at the same time you know there's some bad stuff there's a history of racism or you know you know economic uh oppression or anything like that or you know i like where america's at the world and we're the leader and you know global freedoms but at the same time, you know, we do some wars and some stuff overseas that's, you know, not ideal, but I benefit from it. Is that good? You know, I think at times we all deal with these contradictions, you know, even today. And Gandhi was no different. And the development of this idea, the Satiagraha, at the Phoenix settlement and later at Tolstoy Farm, represented his attempt to resolve these contradictions through community experiments. And these effectively,

you know, are ashrums. And it became laboratories for his, you know, ideas about simple living, manual labor, spiritual discipline. They were these ambitious experiments, like a real effort to build small-scale models of the just society that he believed could happen on Earth, where people of all different backgrounds and religions and nations could live together in equal and mutual respect. And these communities also revealed Gandhi's control

and his desire to sort of architect ideas, and sometimes his struggles with relationships, particularly his complex dynamic with his wife, Gasturbah. But they demonstrated something more important, his commitment to testing his ideas in practice rather than simply just preaching them. And this willingness to experiment, to fail, and to try again would become central to his method

and kind of his credibility as a leader. So Gandhi's philosophical development during his South African years represented a remarkable kind of synthesis of eastern and Western thought that drew in people from all over. You know, he tapped into the Bhagwan Gita and this concept of selfless action, the Jain principle of Ahimsa or nonviolence, and the Christian ideal of turning the other cheek. But he also absorbed Thoreau's idea of civil disobedience or Tolstoy's Christian anarchism or Ruskin's technique of industrial society.

He was, you know, taking all of these different ideas and philosophies and sort of fusing them, you know, using his law work but also his religious work growing up. And this fusion is not just intellectual. It's also personal and lived and tested every single day. So Gandhi took the abstract concept of truth or satya and made it the foundation of political action. Gandhi saw truth and nonviolence, not merely as these ideals that are noble, but as like tools. These are like precise instruments for social transformation. And by refusing to participate in systems that he considered unjust, by willingly accepting suffering rather than inflicting or causing on people, he could expose the sort of ethical or moral contradictions of his opponents and appeal to, you know, their better nature, you know, by coming at it in really good faith and openness.

And the genius of Satiagraha lay in its recognition that, you know, if you want change to last for a long time, it requires not just defeating your opponents, but converting them to actually change their hearts, not just to, you know, stop their thought. And this wasn't naive idealism. You know, Gandhi knew that conversion often required pressure and sometimes confrontation in some ways, just never hatred. But his method offered a way to fight injustice without being consumed by that hatred, to resist oppression without just creating more cycles of violence that, you know, perpetuate and beget each other. What's up, guys? We're going to take a break really quick because you own a small business or maybe you work for a small business and I am about to make your life so much easier. Let's say hypothetically, you own a little furniture business, right? And you're struggling to keep track of the raw materials, the production schedule,

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Odu.com, use the promo code camp, and you will get 14 days for free. Just to try it out. See if you like it. If it's not for you, you don't need it. But O-Doo is going to make your life so much easier, everything you need all in one place, save time, make more money. Now let's get back to the show. So when Gandhi returned to India in 1915, he was still largely unknown beyond sort of like the kind of academic or intellectual political circles of the time.

And his transformation into Mahatma, the Great Soul, translated, was gradual and not without some resistance. Even Gandhi himself was kind of uneasy with the title, often expressing like a discomfort with the reverence it commanded and sometimes the expectation that, you know, it carried. He preferred to be seen not as like a spiritual authority, but as a seeker in the path for truth. You know, someone that's just along the journey with everyone else, all of his followers and Hackerlites. And his early years in India were, you know, marked by these careful observations and like this patience. You know, his political mentor had advised him to spend a year watching and

learning just to kind of absorb what's happening in the society. What is the feeling of the people? But Gandhi's innate urgency to do something pulled him towards local struggles where he felt people needed support. So he began involving himself in some local disputes. And Champarin with indigo farmers, in Keda, with cotton farmers, in Ahmedabad, with textile workers. He was just putting himself into these local issues. And these campaigns revealed both Gandhi's extraordinary strength and his occasional limitations. He had this almost uncanny ability to connect with just regular common people, making these complex political ideas and sort of philosophies about how government should run, democracy accessible through symbols and stories.

And his decision to wear only India and Indian made cloth to spin his own thread to live a simple life. These weren't just gestures, but like real genuine attempts to bridge the gap between political leaders and the masses that, you know, they claim that they're representing. So Gandhi's daily routines became kind of legendary, but they were more than just these personal quirks. They were integral to the philosophy and his effectiveness as a leader. He did these things every single day. He would rise before dawn for prayer, meditation, and he spent long hours, you know, spinning cotton and maintaining these extensive correspondences with supporters and also skeptics and followed strict dietary practices. And, you know, he continually adjusted through self-experimentation just throughout his life. And this discipline served a bunch of different purposes. And I think there's a lot that

everyone can take away from this. It demonstrated that he lived by the principles that he preached, which obviously gives a ton of authenticity to the message. And through spinning, Gandhi forged a link with India's rural masses. You know, the charka emerging as a potent emblem of self-reliance and defiance against the British and their economic control of the region. And it proved a kind of like a form of like meditation or like self-control that he believed was also essential for leading a good life and being a good leader. And so the spinning wheel in particularly represented Gandhi's genius for kind of transforming these mundane activities into powerful symbols for change. So by spinning his own cloth, he was rejecting British textiles

that had destroyed the Indian cottage industries altogether. He was demonstrating the dignity of manual labor. He embodied this sort of like economic nationalism. that everyone could get behind, you know, inviting each person to partake in the act of resistance. And he was also meditating and engaging in these meditative practices that connected him to these traditional Indian values, still challenging the British rule. But even this seemingly, you know, straightforward practice was layered with some contradictions, right? Gandhi's idealization of pre-industrial villages often conflicted with the aspirations of Indians that wanted, you know, to modernize, to educate and more technology and economic advancement.

He had this romantic vision of, you know, village India that sometimes seemed to ignore the poverty and the occasion, you know, the ignorance or the oppression that characterized a lot of rural life. So you can see how there's a balancing act, right? Just, hey, let's just like really connect with the people and, you know, think about what the rural Indian is going through, but also recognizing that some of the things that rural people all over the world, not only India, but, you know, in India also. that day also have, you know, some things that might need to be changed in, you know, sort of non-advasive ways. So, the non-cooperation movement of, you know, 1920 to like roughly 1922 established Gandhi as the preeminent leader of Indian nationalism. But it also revealed both the power and the limitations of his approach. So Gandhi urged, like, total boycotts of all British institutions, schools, courts, British honors, even as he quietly negotiated with officials behind the scenes. So he preached absolute nonviolence, while his movement would

occasionally turn violent as at Chirai Chirah in 1922, where protesters burned alive over 20 policemen. So Ghani's response to Chirai Chirah calling off the entire movement at its peak shocked a lot of supporters, but also reflected his genuine horror at the violence that was done with his philosophy and sort of in his name, right? It demonstrated his consistency, but it also kind of again shows the tension that exists between, you know, the ideal, you know, the platonic form of what your philosophy should do, but then also the real politic and the effectiveness of actually trying to make these things into reality. So to many, it felt like a betrayal of, you know, a ton of hard, one momentum and a lot of people's sacrifice. And it was a

difficult thing, I think, for a lot of his followers to wrestle with. So this tension between moral purity and political pragmatism would really haunt. Gandhi throughout his career, as it haunts, you know, many advocates and, you know, ideologues throughout history. So his insistence on nonviolence was admirable and ultimately effective, but it's sometimes really frustrated people that wanted faster change. So he had a commitment to truth, but his understanding of truth was often personal and idiosyncratic in ways that, you know, would make collective action difficult. So one of the most controversial parts of Gandhi's life was his vow of celibacy and the unusual methods that he used to test it. So in 1906, while in South Africa,

he committed to Brahmacharya, not just a sexual abstinence, but total control over desire and the senses as a path towards spiritual growth and sort of moral ownership. But in later years, Gandhi began to experiment to test his self-control, which sometimes included sleeping naked beside, you know, women. He insisted that these were spiritual tests and described them openly in his writings. Believing truth required transparency. However, the experiments for some people caused a lot of discomfort. So leaders like Nehru and Rajagopalachari criticized him and, you know, some Ashram members left.

And critics then and now question whether the women, you know, truly wanted this test or this experiment to happen or even if they were ethically acceptable. And though Gandhi saw them as a part of this spiritual discipline, they remain still a massive part of, you know, his legacy and, you know, something that is still debated or contested to this day. So no better relationship, I think, illustrates Gandhi's, you know, noble intentions and some of his limitations than his conflict with B.R. Ambikar over caste and untouchability. So both these men were brilliant to in their own ways, and they were both committed to justice, yet they reached fundamental, you know, sort of baseline different conclusions about how to achieve it. So Gandhi opposed untouchability,

basically just as a perversion of Hinduism, this idea that, you know, some people are Dalits, so they can't be, you know, touched or spoken with, they're sort of, you know, fraternized with in society, that there's just a class of people that are untouchable. And he argued passionately that true Hinduism taught the equality of all souls. And he renamed the untouchables, the Harijuns, the children of God, and made their uplift a central part of his mission. He opened temples for them and lived among them and made their inclusion a real test to this moral progress.

His commitment was genuine and in some ways costly. He faced tons of opposition from Orthodox Hindus and sometimes from his own political allies, people that he trusted. But God refused to abandon the, you know, Varna system itself. He argued that the four-fold division of society could be natural and beneficial when freed from hierarchical thinking in sort of the hereditary restrictions. So correct me, you know, if my pronunciation here is not perfect, I'm sorry, I don't speak Hindi. But these four

full divisions would be the Brahmins, the Kistrias, the Vesias, and the Shudras. And he basically believed that people could follow their traditional occupations while being treated with equal dignity. So he saw it almost as a working class, but not a, you know, a moral class or a, you know, a different tier system for people that have different rights. And, you know, this gentleman we mentioned before, Ambenker saw this as naive and, you know, hypocritical at worst. As someone born into untouchability, he experienced the daily humiliations and restrictions that Gandhi only really observed from the outside. So Ambedker argued brilliantly that Hindu is. was inherently hierarchical, that caste was integral to the structure of the religion of that. Real equality required either complete fundamental reform or ultimately conversion to another religion.

And this conflict came to a head during negotiations over separate electorates for untouchables in the 1930s. So when the British government granted separate political representation to untouchables, Gandhi went on a fast until death to oppose it, arguing that separate electric's, electorates would fragment Hindu society and ultimately harm the untouchables, this lower caste just fundamentally. And Gandhi's fast created enormous pressure on Ambendker and other untouchable leaders. Across India, people began fasting in sympathy with Gandhi. Ambendker faced this difficult choice, right? Either let Gandhi die and face the consequences of this guy that becomes a martyr or abandoned what he saw as crucial political rights, you know,

within his community. So he chose compromise to prevent Gandhi's death. But he spoke bluntly of the pact as a product of sort of like ethical blackmail. And this is a wound that would, you know, affect their relationship basically

forever. So by 1947, there is a partition in India, which you know, for Gandhi was not just a political defeat, but a shattering personal law. So for decades, he had preached Hindu-Muslim unity as fundamental to Indian civilization. The creation of Pakistan based on religious division kind of violated everything that he believed about, you know, Indian identity and nonviolence and mutual cohabitation. And God's resistance

to partition stayed true to his ideals in a lot of ways. Even as the world around him moved in the opposite direction, Hindu-Muslim tensions had been building for years, you know, mainly fueled by colonial policies and economic competition in the rise of religious nationalism on both sides. You know, leaders like Jinnah argued that Muslims need their own state to protect their own interests. Even Hindu leaders, while opposing partition and principle, were often privately kind of relieved to see the problem kind of just pushed away or simplified. So Gandhi found himself isolated from his closest political allies. The Congress Party leadership, including Nehru and Patel, concluded that partition was inevitable,

and perhaps preferable to this continued sort of communal violence. They were tired of Gandhi's moral absolutism and this idea of wanting to have everyone live in harmony and maybe we can all get enlightened. They felt it was too idealistic and they wanted to get on with governing an independent India, even if it was divided into two different countries. And this isolation took a tremendous personal toll on Gandhi.

He spent his life building these bridges between different communities and religions, only to see them destroyed in the final hour. And the violence and human displacement that followed, I mean, the bloodiest in India's modern history felt to Gandhi like just a rejection of everything that he had preached. And Gandhi's response was characteristically uncompromising. He refused to participate in independent celebrations,

spending August 15th in 1947, just fasting and praying in Kolkata instead of joining the festivities in Delhi. He threw himself into stopping communal violence, moving between riot-torn areas, meeting with not only Hindu, but also Muslim leaders, and trying to sort of rebuild trust through this example that he set in his own life. His final fast in January 1948 aimed to force both the Indian government and Hindu extremists to treat Pakistan and Indian Muslims fairly.

He demanded that India pay Pakistan the money owed to them from these partition settlements, and this was extremely unpopular, as you can imagine. And he insisted that Moss and Delhi be reopened and that Muslim refugees can be protected. But by the time of his final fast, Gandhi had become something he never intended to be, a living saint in some ways, who had this moral authority that exceeded his political influence. And the transferation from Mohan to Mahatma carried costs that he didn't really anticipate or ever want. People expected perfection from him in ways that they didn't expect from ordinary political leaders. His every word was scrutinized for some type of deeper, you know, cosmic meaning. And his every

action basically was interpreted as carrying some type of major, you know, heavenly or divine significance. And it's difficult to live as a saint. Like there's a reason in Catholicism, saints only become saints once they die. Their whole life has to be evaluated and they don't have to deal with the burden of being a saint on earth. But Gandhi, based off of his bravery and his leadership and his unity, became a saint in his life. And this created impossible expectations. Gandhi was tasked with solving problems that no one could solve that maybe there is no

solution for while being blamed for the outcomes that he couldn't control to maintain consistency in positions that needed to evolve with the changing world. And to be simultaneously unworldly, but also a savvy political. operator, it was just impossible. The man who had spent his life insisting on his humanity found himself trapped by others and their need to see him as, you know, like a superhero. And ironically, his greatest gift, the power to make politics a moral calling, became a limitation in some ways when, you know, these same idealistic principles collided with pragmatism, which is ultimately the, probably the biggest issue that Gandhi would face in his time. His insistence on being guided by

inner voice and spiritual truth while personally authentic, sometimes seemed, you know, self-indulgent to these actual pragmatic, you know, real politic politicians dealing with communal riots and mass displacement, right? But yet, even this burden revealed something really interesting about Gandhi's character. So he never fully embraced the role of Matma, right? Like this divine being. He never stopped insisting on his, you know, fallibility. He never claimed, this divine authority for his positions. He remained to the end, someone struggling publicly with questions that most leaders would prefer to never think about or resolve in private. Yet, even as he sought this unity, the country around him was fracturing in a lot of ways.

I mean, the partition was disastrous for many people, and the trauma of this, you know, the refugee crisis and this growing tension left many disillusioned and just angry. and among some Gandhi's message apiece was no longer seen as this noble cause but in the face of all the division it was seen almost as like betrayal it was in this volatile atmosphere that his life would be cut short

not by a foreign enemy but by one of his own countrymen so on the evening of January 30th 1948 as Gandhi walked to his daily prayer meeting in the garden of Borla House and in Delhi he was approached by a man from the crowd. Nathurum Gatsi bowed before him and pulled out a pistol and fired three shots at point-blank range.

Gandhi collapsed, reportedly uttering the words, He-Ram, as chaos erupted around him and he died moments later. Nathurum Gatsi, Gandhi's assassin, was not a madman or a fanatic in the conventional sense. He was an educated, articulate member of a Hindu nationalist. organization who saw Gandhi's policies as destructive to the Hindu interest. And at his trial, God's say gave a lengthy speech explaining his motivations, arguing that Gandhi's nonviolence was just weakness and his inclusive nationalism was betrayal to what it really meant to be a Hindu, you know, Indian person. And his influence was preventing India from becoming this modernized,

strong Hindu state that it needed to be. And his reasoning revealed both, you know, a misunderstanding of who Gandhi was and how Gandhi's message had been distorted by the political climate. So Gandhi's nonviolence was never passive. It required enormous courage and discipline. And it wasn't just throwing your hands up being like, oh, whatever happens, happens. You know, he had an inclusive nationalism that wasn't weakness, but just a different vision of what strength actually is, one that seeks to build unity through, you know, moral authority and all people of a country, you know, joining forces by what is truth rather than force. And Gandhi's assassination really shocked the world.

And not only India, but around, you know, every country. And in sort of a weird, morbid way, it kind of united India in grief. But the unity was, you know, temporary. Like, you know, these things may be. And debates about his legacy began immediately. And different groups claim different versions of Gandhi. You know, there's a spiritual teacher Gandhi. And then there's the political leader Gandhi.

and then there's the social reformer guy, and then there's the opponent of the untouchability and a defender for the untouchables, and then there's the defender of the rural traditionalists and the cotton spinners. And, of course, everyone wanted a piece of what they saw as Gandhi's legacy. And long after his death,

Gandhi's influence continues to exist worldwide. Martin Luther King Jr. adopted his methods in the struggle against racial segregation. Nelson Mandela credited Gandhi, South African campaigns as foundational to nonviolent resistance, and the Dalai Lama praised his blend of ethical discipline, but also courage. And across Asia and Africa, independence movement's true strength from the image of a lean man in, you know, not much, but like a, almost like a loincloth or like a toga, standing peacefully against this, you know,

sort of ideological, immoral empire. But, like I said, his global image, has not gone unchallenged. You know, critics have highlighted, you know, some of his, you know, early racial remarks in South Africa and his, you know, moral absolutism in politics and, you know, some of his, you know, sexual tests that he would put himself through and, you know, how much, you know, how consensual and, you know, how ethical these were. And feminists have, you know, questioned his reluctance to confront, you know, the patriarchy. Well, you know, Dalit's activists, influenced by Ambitkar have challenged whether Gandhi's efforts advanced or delayed the abolition of the caste system.

Some African scholars claim that, you know, Gandhi's legacy was, you know, basically that he eclipsed the, you know, anti-colonial leaders. And, you know, in my opinion, this reexamination, even when it's harsh in some ways, I think serves a vital purpose. It brings Gandhi down from the clouds, you know, a place that he never wanted to be in the first place and asked us to engage with him as the human being that he was, as he, saw himself, not as this, you know, untouchable ideal. And the contradictions people, you know, once used to sanctify or attack him now offer, I think, the moral lesson, right, that the struggle

within all people is the essence of leadership. So again, Gandhi's legacy is split, depending on who you may ask. You know, some Hindu nationalists have reinterpreted Gandhi through, you know, a selective lens, you know, some claiming him as a defender of Dharma, others rejecting him completely. in a digital age, marked by, you know, instant judgment on YouTube or Instagram, Gandhi is more critiqued than at any time, basically, ever. His celibacy, his spiritual sort of, you know, uh, you know, like, uh, fervor, his failures, you know, they've been spotlighted by critics who argued that, you know, a flawed man can't be a moral hero or, you know, this amazing saint on earth can't have any flaws. But the reality is that the reality.

is, you know, all people are contradictions. And that's exactly why Gandhi remains so important. His greatness is not in the perfection, but in, you know, this public wrestling with imperfection. He's a man who changes his mind, admits mistakes, grows, learns, and allows other people to challenge him, you know, approaches problems with humility. He treated ethical growth as a real lifelong experiment, not just like this finished thing that you just get to, right? And which I think is really rooted in the Hindu idea of, you know, trying to get to Moksha or Mokti, right, that you are, you know, existing in this life, this cycle of samsara, you know, you were trying to do your Dharma, your purpose, and you never fully achieve it until, you know, you enter into the afterlife if you, you know,

attain Nirvana, if you escape from the cycle. And, you know, he obviously had a massive commitment to nonviolence that wasn't convenient or successful in every case, but it was sustained when, you know, violence seemed like the easier option. His inclusion, his inclusion, his inclusion Nationalism wasn't naive, you know. It was built on the belief that differences could be bridged, that people ultimately want the same things, and that, you know, patience, courage, and sort of exemplary moral work can bring people together despite having different beliefs throughout the world. And in my opinion, Gandhi's contradictions don't weaken the authority. They ground him, because, again, he grappled with failure just like all people. And today, when leaders act

like they have nothing to learn or, you know, everything to prove Gandhi, I think, reminds us and them that integrity is not about having the answers. It's about asking the right questions and, you know, doing so even if it comes at some type of cost. You know, he died with God's name being the last things that he said, right? Hey, Rahm, not because he was, you know, saintly or, you know, God himself, but because he died trying to live up to this higher calling. And that effort, I think visible, vulnerable and, you know, never being completed is what keeps him relevant to this day. You know, his story offers no easy moral, only a challenge for all people, myself, mostly, to engage seriously with what it means to live ethically in a fractured, oftentimes hateful world,

not through purity and not through becoming a saint or becoming the perfect person, but just through daily persistence. And that, my friends, is a story of Mott Magandhi. I truly think of really fascinating and remarkable person. I always think about, there's a clip I saw years ago about Daryl Davis. He's a fascinating guy. This is a guy that would go to, you know, clan rallies. And he was a black dude living in the South in the United States and would go to clan rallies throughout like the 70s.

He was a jazz musician, really talented guy. And he would go out to these clan rallies and he would talk to these KKK. members. These are people that are committed to, you know, a white, you know, Christian nationalist world. You know, they don't like black people, you know, Jews, anyone non-white Catholics. They just want their world in their own way. And he just saw them and was like, how can you hate me if you don't know me? So literally he would just meet these guys who were outwardly racist. They belong to racist hate groups like the KKK and would befriend them. And he would talk to them about music. were sports, and they would commiserate on shared interests. And over time, these guys became less racist until they were, I know, fully transformed in some way. And for a lot of them, they actually gave him their clan robes.

And so now in his house, he has dozens of these clan robes that he got through ultimately converting people away from their hatred. And there's a really interesting clip. I got to see if I can find it. But he's talking to Daryl Davis, this is, is talking to, he's talking to, members of a local BLM chapter. And this isn't like 2020-ish. And he's talking to these guys and he's saying, why not approach this with nonviolence?

Just through talking, through connecting with people and trying to bridge gaps and, you know, seeing where we're more similar than we are different. And these guys are pissed and they're annoyed and they're like, bro, we are out here fighting. We're putting ourselves into riots. We're stirring shit up and causing problems for the establishment because we ultimately want to make life better for black people in America. And from their perspective, it makes all the sense.

It's like, hey, we've been doing this nice thing forever. We've been, you know, playing nice with the white man. And still, you know, we're getting killed by cops. We're getting frisked at higher rates than, you know, everyone else. And we're still living in this sort of fractured racial system in America that. We're going to cause problems. You know, we're going to make it uncomfortable. We're going to be in their face.

And you really have kind of an exact thing that Gandhi is living through, just in our modern time. where you have, you know, the sort of idealist, this person that's like, we can all live in a better world if we can just talk and connect with each other. And then you have sort of this almost more, you know, angry, pragmatic, you know, real politic approach. It's like, no, we're going to cause problems until we get what we want. And I think both in some ways have validity. I can understand the emotion behind both. I, just my personal approach is I kind of side with Gandhi's version of nonviolence and, you know, trying to. make change through what you can control and through by bridging gaps.

And I think Gandhi's effects, you know, not only in his own life and the people that followed him, but, you know, through Martin Luther King Jr. and Nelson Mandela, I think he's really a testament to the life that he lived and the people that he inspired and the change that he made, you know, not only in his country, but around the world. And I think there's a lot to learn from that. So shout out to Gandhi. Gabe, what did you think? You learned anything in this episode? I don't know if this is embarrassing to admit, but...

I don't think it's embarrassing. I don't think we learn much about it. I mean, in America, we, you know, you learn some American history. That's a little bit, you know, sort of, you know, painted in a nice way. You know, Thanksgiving, we've got some natives here. And you learn some European history. And it's like, yeah, there's an industrial revolution. And you got some medieval ages.

But then you don't really learn anything about Asia. You learn nothing about India. You learn a little bit about, like, Central America, maybe, the Aztecs. And that's basically it. You know, so I don't think, you know, as a lot of, you know, as a lot of, you know, American that you're in the minority for, you know, not knowing much about Gandhi. But hopefully you, like many of the people watching at home, will have learned a little bit more about the great, you know, occasionally sort of conflicted man that Gandhi was.

Let me know what you think. I mean, was this analysis too harsh on, you know, some of Gandhi's imperfections? Was it too shallow in analyzing his philosophy or what he thought about the world? Was it, you know, too generous in his achievements? and was I, you know, too gracious when, you know, examining all the good that he had done? Let me know what you think. Drive a comment. I would love to know your perspective if you are, you know, obviously an Indian citizen.

If you're someone that grew up in India, if you're a Hindu, if you're an, you know, foreign living, daisy that is, you know, a part of the diaspora that's around the world. Or if you're just like a regular white boy like me. I love to know what you think. Please drop a comment, like I said. I will go through all of them. As always, there's been another episode of History Camp. Thank you guys so much for being a part of it, and I'll see you next time. Peace.