The Down Range Forum
Member Section => Down Range Cafe => Topic started by: PegLeg45 on January 30, 2010, 05:25:52 PM
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Even after being dead for 60 years, ol' Gandhi still gets around......for a man who searched for 'peace', they surely ain't letting him 'rest' in it.....
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Gandhi's ashes scattered off South Africa coast
DURBAN, South Africa – Six decades after his death, some of Mohandas K. Gandhi's ashes have been scattered off the coast of South Africa, where he was confronted by racial discrimination and developed some of his philosophies of peaceful resistance.
An early morning service Saturday in a harbor in the eastern city of Durban on the 62nd anniversary of Gandhi's death included the laying of flowers and candles on the water's surface.
Gandhi, known as the Mahatma or "great soul," was shot and killed by a Hindu hard-liner in 1948 in New Delhi. His ashes were divided, stored in steel urns and sent across India and beyond for memorial services. It was not unusual for some of the ashes to have been preserved instead of scattered as intended.
South Africa's state broadcaster, SABC, reported the portion of Gandhi's ashes in South Africa was brought to the country by a family friend. SABC quoted Gandhi's great grandson Kidar Ramgobin as saying Saturday's ceremony included the playing of the national anthems of South Africa and India.
Gandhi first came to South Africa to work as a lawyer in the Indian community.
Soon after arriving in 1893, Gandhi was ejected from a train for refusing to leave the "whites only" compartment. As a result, he joined the fight for human rights in South Africa.
Gandhi lived in homes and farms across South Africa for two decades, before returning to India at age 46 to push for independence from Britain.
Many South Africans are descended from indentured workers brought from India in the 19th century to work on sugar plantations in the Durban area.
In 2007, some of Gandhi's ashes were sent to a Gandhi museum in Mumbai by an Indian businessman whose father, a friend of Gandhi, had saved them. Those ashes were scattered in the sea off Mumbai in 2008. In 1997, ashes that had been stored in a bank vault in northern India were immersed at the holy spot where India's Ganges and Yamuna rivers meet.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100130/ap_on_re_af/af_south_africa_gandhi_s_ashes;_ylt=At2BGCdyTnbFMn5UcbvGaw5Ar7sF;_ylu=X3oDMTM0MnE5MDh2BGFzc2V0A2FwLzIwMTAwMTMwL2FmX3NvdXRoX2FmcmljYV9nYW5kaGlfc19hc2hlcwRwb3MDNwRzZWMDeW5fcGFnaW5hdGVfc3VtbWFyeV9saXN0BHNsawNnYW5kaGlzYXNoZXM-
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"Among the many misdeeds of the British rule in India, history will look upon the act of depriving a whole nation of arms, as the blackest."
Gandhi's Autobiography page 446
"I do believe that where there is a choice only between cowardice and violence I would advise violence."
Mohandas Gandhi
I think Gandhi, still surprises people. Especially the ill-informed or un-informed. He had a temper, was not a pacifist, and realized, (as the British finally did):
That 50,000 British troops, cannot stop 800,000,000 Indian citizens if they have had enough of you.
Try to RIP Gandhi.
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He also served in the British Army as a stretcher bearer during the 2nd Boer war .
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He also liked to sleep with teenage girls, one on each side.
"Gandhi's later use of his vow to sleep naked with teenage girls is dealt with more skeptically-and with more embellishment of various concerns raised (pp. 186, 227-230)-but a truly critical analysis of the practice never is ventured."
http://www.politicalreviewnet.com/polrev/reviews/PECH/R_0149_0508_159_1004330.asp (http://www.politicalreviewnet.com/polrev/reviews/PECH/R_0149_0508_159_1004330.asp)