Book Reviews
Gandhi and Churchill: parallel lives, divergent world views
How two very different world leaders were shaped.
By M.M. Bennetts | May 17, 2008 edition
Bantam Books 704 pps., $30.00
Compare-and-contrast biographies of great leaders which weigh the similarities and differences of each have long proved a popular and informative subgenre. Now, historian Arthur Herman (author of “How the Scots Invented the Modern World”) brings us his version of the parallel biography in Gandhi & Churchill: The Epic Rivalry that Destroyed an Empire and Forged Our Age.
Mohandas Gandhi was born in rural India in 1869; he studied law at London’s Inner Temple. He subsequently found work in South Africa, serving with the Ambulance Corps during the Boer War, working for Indian rights, founding communes, and writing philosophical treatises on nonviolent civil protest. Returning to India, he founded more communes, became a key member of the Indian National Congress, and a leader in the movement for Indian independence. He was assassinated in 1947.
Winston Churchill was born in England in 1874; he served with the British Army in India; he saw action in what is now the Pakistan/Afghanistan border region, also in the Boer War in South Africa. He was a member of Parliament and served in several cabinet posts including that of chancellor of the exchequer. Throughout the 1930s, he warned of Hitler’s rearmament of Germany. As prime minister during World War II, he was, with Roosevelt, the driving force behind the Allies’ ultimate victory over Nazism, the Axis powers, and Japan. He was also a prolific author and historian, winning the 1953 Nobel Prize for Literature for his five-volume work on World War II.
Yet a side-by-side biography this is not, for it is remarkably short on the facts of either man’s life. Instead, its 704 pages are frequently filled with Herman’s soliloquizing on Gandhi’s political-cum-spiritual theories.
Certainly, this describes the first half. Here, Herman treats us to lengthy discussions of Gandhi’s first encounters with vegetarianism, various theosophists, and spiritualists, as well as Gandhi’s evolving ideas which fused elements of Hindu spiritualism, a rejection of Western modernity and industrialization (with an emphasis on the universal use of the spinning wheel), with his nascent political aims and his ideas for nonviolent civil disobedience. The latter he tried to implement on behalf of his fellow Indians in South Africa, but with limited success. Actually he failed to achieve any of his objectives.
Gandhi returned to India in 1915 and channeled all his energies into the causes of Indian nationalism and independence. Yet his plans for independence were based upon his own utopian dream of Indian history, unrelated to the facts of religious, political, or tribal history. For a brief spell, this dream captivated his fellow countrymen, unifying them.
Initially, Churchill emerges as engaging, energetic, and intellectually vibrant, although Herman understands little of the nuances of British education, class and political divides, or the subtleties of British patriotism as engendered by a public school education, which was central to Churchill’s character.
Churchill, wholly alive to the discrepancies between Gandhi’s beliefs and reality, vigorously opposed Indian independence, seeing it as a blueprint for bloodshed and chaos on an unimagined scale. Churchill is vilified as a hateful, bombastic, belligerent, reactionary racist, prone to pursuing disastrous political and military policies and deranged on Indian matters. Rarely missing an opportunity to quote from a Churchill detractor, Herman lays the blame for whatever went wrong in two World Wars squarely on his shoulders. He views the attempted British evacuations of Malaysia and Burma in 1941-42 as cowardice.
Herman depicts Gandhi as a 20th-century Francis of Assisi, yet as the fight for independence advanced, and especially during World War II, he appears increasingly willful and manipulative. Though constantly stressing the difference between Gandhi’s “spirituality” and Churchill’s faith in the betterment of humanity through civilization, Herman writes of the bloodbath that preceded full independence: “[Gandhi’s] decade and a half of defiance of the law through civil disobedience had bred an atmosphere of contempt for social order, a celebration of recklessness and militancy … by encouraging others to see themselves in his exalted image, Gandhi helped to spread the dangerous fiction that all street action was soul force and vice versa.”
Finally, in no sense were Churchill and Gandhi rivals, despite Herman’s suggestive title. But their legacies are plain to see. Churchill’s is a stable, prosperous, Europe, while Gandhi’s dream of a primitive utopia has given way to an Indian subcontinent whose quest for international technological status and democratic principles would make Churchill beam from ear to ear.
M.M. Bennetts is a freelance writer in Hampshire, England.
Comments
2. abu el banat | 05.19.08
Sorry, american man - that’s a simplistic, not simple, difference. It doesn’t even have the merit of accuracy. And your view of Churchill is deeply offensive to those of us whose families lost two generations of young men to defeat totalitarianism, when throughout the 1930s and until 1941 Churchill was the only leader in the world with the guts to stand up against Hitler.
Incidentally, Churchill’s opposition to Indian independence was a warning about its consequences - a warning which has proved frighteningly accurate in light of 60 years of sectarian bloodshed along the Indian/Pakistani border. Like his warnings about Nazi aggression in the 30s, this one went unheeded - yet he was the only one with both the intellectual grasp to see the problem, and the courage to state the politically inexpedient truth.
3. Orienalist | 05.20.08
>>Churchill is vilified as a hateful, bombastic, belligerent, reactionary racist, prone to pursuing disastrous political and military policies and deranged on Indian matters.
Sounds about right, especially that last point. Roosevelt would agree with that. (He’d also point out that the greed of imperialists stimulated the ambitions of the Japanese–who had often worked hand and hand with the Brits in China.) Fortunately, there are plenty of Indian, Pakistani, Chinese, Malaysian and Burmese historians nowadays–and yet more who write from the point of view of the experience of the colonized.
It’s really not a new notion but Shameful Flight by Stanley Wolpert, a recent history of the Brits’ last days in India, shows well enough that the agony of Partition could have been prevented. Also, shows that many Indian nationalists, Nehru included, had many differences of opinion with Gandhi.
From the Asian point of view, what if the Master Racist had listened to Roosevelt, George Orwell, etc. in beginning or even the middle of WW2 and seen the light that imperialism was at a dead end? Announced that all European colonies would have self-determination, the choice of a gradual road to independence, perhaps overseen by an international trust? You wouldn’t have had the Indian National Army and the Burmese Independence Army killing their compatriots. You wouldn’t have had Indians, Gurkhas, West Indians in the pro-British forces killing Burmese and INA and on and on. Then you’ve got the Karens and Kachins that were promised independence by the Brits … still fighting today. It could have turned out differently. Then there’s Vietnam .. where Churchill always blocked Roosevelt’s earnest efforts to prevent a French return.
So many unnecessary deaths, millions easily. Not even counting all the suffering involved in British conquests of colonies (look at Thant Myint-U’s The River of Lost Footsteps, for example) and the subsequent massive spy systems. Maybe there would even been a free(r) press in India so 2-3 million people wouldn’t have starved to death in Bengal in 1942 and 1943.
What’s especially repugnant is that, like Churchill, present-day imperialists still insist know what’s better for those dark little people. No matter how much they’ve suffered …Vietnamese, Indonesians, Pakistanis, Indians, Burmese ..*nobody* wants to go back to apartheid times (yes, that’s the word that usually comes up). Education, health, livelihoods, self-government, self-respect … everybody knows they’re better off than in colonial times.
India, 1945 … let’s see, literacy around 15% (African-Americans in 1865: 20%), 800,000 people a year dying of malaria. What would the lifespan be? 30? 35 at the most? The British had been there, more or less, for 200 years and the GNP had remained the same. Indian historians figure that 20 million people starved to death during that period–much due to colonial policies. Think of the course of development, starting from behind, in North America during the same period …
4. PV Chary | 05.20.08
Both of this great men lived in historical times for world and subcontinent.
Unfortunately Churchill proved to be prophetic in his cinicism on Indian freedom.
Whereas Gandhi’s dream is still unfulfilled even in near future. But what he said is freedom bad rule is more desirable than good rule in slavery.Truely Churchill fought against the Nazi’s but after allowing him to become a monster.
5. Shahida | 05.20.08
Some Raj legacies
Indian life expectancy during the Raj was reduced to 23, yes 23 years!
India, (including Pakistan), handled 25% of the world’s trade before British colonization. When the British were forced to leave, India was handling a quarter of 1% and was bankrupt.
Indian grown food was routinely taken to Europe and the borders of whichever country the British were fighting to dominate and acquire.
Their biggest planned legacy: the deliberate partition of India to cripple both sides. Most Muslims opted to stay behind and continue to live in India.
The borders wars go on, taking money away from education, infrastructure, health on both sides.
The contractor system: where every business action had to be sanctioned by a British contractor, who made money. That created massive corruption for which natives were blamed. People like Elihu Yale were so corrupt that the Smithsonian archives calls it remarkable even by the standards of Raj looting.
Today, we still have plenty of people in India and Pakistan essentially educated to be Macaulay’s clerks, still mouthing incorrect, ignorant statements about the Raj as taught in their English schools. A big theft was that of local languages and ancient history. Another was describing local rulers as incompetent and fighting amongst themselves.
Describing colonization as beneficial in any way is like describing Americn slavery the same way. Yes, that too has been done. It used to be described as sanctioned by the Bible. Just like colonization and Indian indentured (slave) labor in Fiji, the Caribbean, S Africa was described as beneficial to all involved.
Some notes:
Dowry Murder: The Imperial Origins of a Cultural Crime
By Veena Talwar Oldenburg, Oxford University Press USA. Dr Oldenburg is Associate Professor of History of India at the City University of New York.
‘The Hindu custom of dowry has long been blamed for the murder of wives and female infants in India. Dr. Oldenburg argues that these killings are neither about dowry nor reflective of an Indian culture or caste system that encourages violence against women. Rather, such killings can be traced directly to the influences of the British colonial era. In the precolonial period, dowry was an institution managed by women, for women, to enable them to establish their status and have recourse in an emergency. As a consequence of the massive economic and societal upheaval brought on by British rule, women’s entitlements to the precious resources obtained from land were erased and their control of the system diminished, ultimately resulting in a devaluing of their very lives. Taking us on a journey into the colonial Punjab, Veena Oldenburg skillfully follows the paper trail left by British bureaucrats to indict them for interpreting these crimes against women as the inherent defects of Hindu caste culture. The British publicized their “civilizing mission” and blamed the caste system in order to cover up the devastation their own agrarian policies had wrought on the Indian countryside….’ Quoted from Amazon.com
———————————————————
Late Victorian Holocausts: El Nino Famines and the Making of the Third World (Hardcover) by Mike Davis
Hard to over rate the importance of this book, August 29, 2002
Reviewer: Ken McCarthy (New York)
‘There have been droughts and other major agricultural failures in China, India, and Africa for millennium, but the accompanying mass starvations and ecological catastrophes that we tend to associate with these regions did not start occurring in earnest until the British Empire imposed its ‘free’ market discipline on these societies using the end of the barrel of a gun as their means of persuasion.
Who shaped the glass through which most of us unconsciously consider India, China, and Africa? 19th century Brits. Their strategy was simple: paint the citizens of these places as ignorant, progress-resisting savages, then rob them blind and, when they starve by the millions, as they also did in conquered Ireland, tell the world it can’t be helped.
The episodes Davis writes about are in many ways still ongoing because the pattern of ecological mismanagement and social disintegration set off by the British in these regions has become the ‘modern’ norm. We’re just one shift in the weather from even larger catastrophes.’Quoted from Amazon.com
6. Muhammad Usman | 05.21.08
From the Pakistani point of view, what Gandhi did to lower castes and Muslim, nobody wants to talk about it. He was never a great leader, If Gandhi was a great leader and visionary, he must have seen the light that the whole population would like to have self-determination, not the majority only. Why other leaders except Jinnah were not clear about the choice? Otherwise, we wouldn’t have had the division of sub continent and still fighting today, you wouldn’t have had division of Punjab,Bengal and Kashmir,they would have promised independence by the Brits It could have turned out differently if Gandhi was brave enough to prevent Nehru & Patel. But Gandhi was in league with them to take revenge of 700 years of Muslim rule by making them slaves to live a apartheid lives.
Agony of Partition could have been prevented if Nehru did not have ambition to become Prime Minister of India instead of Jinnah. His biggest planned legacy: that a crippled and divided Pakistan will fail in days never materialized. Indian Muslims had no desire to stay behind and continue to live in India, and changed their name to avoid discrimination.
Usman
7. Shahida | 05.21.08
Dear Muhammad Usman
I am from India and know that while terrible events happen in all societies, we Indian Muslims have done pretty well. Do you rely on govt school texts in Pakistan? That Jinnah was good, that every Hindu is bad? If so, another painful example of the results of British colonization. No one in India thinks of Gandhi as God. However we do admire his ability to go beyond, to bring peace to many. Re lower castes and Muslims, please do read what he has done for them, not texts deliberately biased to provoke you. his actions and growing thoughts are repeatedly discussed not just in India but worldwide. Everytime I attempted to make friends I was rebuffed by ordinary Pakistanis. Their schooling may explain why!
8. Shahida | 05.21.08
his may explain why:
I read this about schooling and the resulting hatred in ordinary, decent, young Pakistanis:
A school student Mohammed Qasim participated in a contest held to celebrate Pakistan’s Independence Day in August 2005. The topic he was given to speak on was: ‘Why Islam and Pakistan are integral to each other’. Deviating from the main theme, this Class XI student of Lahore’s Government Central Model School lashed out against all Hindus, giving vent to his inexplicable anger and hatred. This was particularly shocking because the Hindu community, constituting an infinitesimally small percentage of Pakistan’s population, has never been an aspect of Qasim’s life. Asked to explain his outpouring, the 14-year-old said, ‘We hate Hindus because they are Hindustanis and the number one enemies of both Islam and Pakistan. We know it all through our history text books on Pakistan Studies. We learn what happened years ago all the time at school’.
These are extracts from government-sponsored textbooks approved by the National Curriculum Wing (NCW) of the Federal Ministry of Education:
‘Who is a Hindu? A Hindu is an enemy of Islam’
‘Before the Arab conquest, people were fed up with the teachings of Buddhists & Hindus. Before the arrival of Islam in India, people lived in untold misery’.
‘European nations have been working during the past three centuries to subjugate countries of the Muslim world’.
Class IV Text Book:
* The Muslims of Pakistan provided all facilities to the Hindus and the Sikhs who left for India in 1947. But the Hindus and the Sikhs looted the Muslims in India with both hands and they attacked their caravans, buses and railway trains. Therefore, about one million Muslims were martyred on their way to Pakistan.
* The Hindus treated the ancient population of the Indus Valley very badly. They set fire to their houses and butchered them.
* The religion of Hindus did not teach them good things, Hindus did not respect women.
Class V Text Book:
* After the war of 1965, India with the help of Hindus living in East Pakistan, incited the people of East Pakistan against West Pakistanis. In December 1971, the Indians themselves also attacked East Pakistan. As a result East Pakistan separated from us. We should all receive military training so that we can foil the designs of the enemy in the future. (By implication, not even a single Muslim in East Pakistan, including Mujibur Rehman, fought against West Pakistanis in 1971. No mention that W Pakistan treated E Pakistan/Bangladesh as a colony to be exploited.)
* The Hindu has always been an enemy of Islam.
Class VI Text Book:
* In the middle of the city of Deebal (Sindh), there was a Hindu temple. There was a flag hoisted on top of it. The Hindus believed that as long as the flag kept flying, nobody could harm them. Mohd bin Qasim found out about this. The Muslims began to catapult stones at the temple and at the flag, ultimately making it fall to the ground. The whole city became tumultuous and the Hindus lost heart. Some Muslims clambered up the walls of the temple and forced open the door. Qasim’s army entered the city and after conquering it, announced peace. The Muslims treated the vanquished so well, many Hindus converted to Islam.
* Before the Arab conquest the people were fed up with the teachings of Buddhists and Hindus.
* The foundation of the Hindu setup was based on injustice and cruelty.
* The Hindus who had always been opportunists cooperated with the British.
* The Hindus used to please the goddess Kali by slaughtering people of other religions.
Class VII Text Book:
* Some Jewish tribes also lived in Arabia. They lent money to workers and peasants on high rates of interest and usurped their earnings. They held the whole society in their tight grip because of the ever-increasing compound interest.
* History has no parallel to the extremely kind treatment of the Christians by the Muslims. Still the Christian kingdoms of Europe were constantly trying to gain control of Jerusalem. This was the cause of the Crusades.
* European nations have been working during the past three centuries, through conspiracies or naked aggression, to subjugate countries of the Muslim world. Hindus always desired to crush the Muslims as a nation. Several attempts were made by the Hindus to erase Muslim culture and civilisation.
* The Hindus too wished to ruin Muslim civilisation and culture by destroying Urdu which has been closely associated with the Pakistan Movement.
Class VIII Text Book:
* During the Khilafat Movement Hindus and Muslims were completely united and like brothers and they started to cooperate and live in peaceful togetherness. But as soon as this movement ended, Hindu hatred of the Muslim re-emerged.
* Before Islam people lived in untold misery all over the world.
Class IX Text Book:
* The Hindus and the Muslims could not amalgamate each other’s way of life to become one nation.The main reason for this difference of cultures, civilisation and outlook was the religion of Islam which cannot be assimilated in any other system as it is based on the principle of…oneness of God….On the other hand, Hinduism is based on the concept of multiple Gods….There lies the difference between the Hindu and Muslim way of thinking.
* In connivance with the (British) government the Hindus started communal riots and caused loss of life and property. At the time of prayers the Hindus tortured the Muslims by playing music in front of the mosques. Before the commencement of classes the students saluted the portrait of Mahatma Gandhi and Muslim students were also forced to do so.
* Muslims promoted equality and social justice as against the division created by the Hindu caste system.
Class X Text Book:
* The ideology of Pakistan…was a revolt against the prevailing system of India in which Hindu nationalism was imposed on the Muslims.
* Islam gives a message of peace and brotherhood…. There is no such concept in Hinduism. Moreover Islam preaches brotherhood, equality and justice…. On the other hand, the Hindu society is based on caste/class system which downgrades all entire mankind.
* After the establishment of Pakistan, the Hindus and Sikhs created a day of doom for the Muslims in East Punjab.
* The Hindus were encouraged by the (British) government to force the Muslims to join the Congress.
(These extracts have been translated from Urdu which is the standard medium of instruction in Government Schools in Pakistan)
Dr Mubarak Ali, the eminent historian, has rightly observed that the Westernised liberal elite in Pakistan, which inherited power from the British in 1947, had given to education a basically secular and modern character. Subsequently, the self-seeking and opportunistic elite in independent Pakistan completely abandoned all liberal values on account of political and economic exigencies and this disastrous trend has adversely affected the educational system.
The job of any Muslim is to find out and love the truth.
9. Shanawaz Ansari | 05.21.08
This is in reference to Usman’s comments.
Any person could clearly tell that all your opinions are not based on any kind of facts other than maybe popular opinion in pakistan.
To confirm my point
1. Could you please tell us what Gandhi did to lower castes and Muslims?
2. And which Indian Muslims, THAT YOU KNOW, have changed their name to avoid discrimination, what are you even basing these statements on.
I highly recommend you take a trip to india, I would invite you to my house but ignorance and intolerance are not welcome there. Meet some muslims from India, before you make any of the above comments.
With all the problems in this country we still wouldn’t want to go to Pakistan, EVER.
And we are a minority here but we still outnumber you guys in pakistan, and also the fact that we dont have tribals running around trying to implemnt sharia is a bonus. And contrary to what you believe we actually do have successfull and normal lives.
And also you mentioned Gandhi wanting to take revenge of 700 years of rule.
I recommend you go to NWFP in your own country and visit the offices of the ANP, and try and find out who Abdul Gaffar Khan was. And his relationship with Gandhi.
Also check with the ANP office why Pathans never joined the Muslim league and stayed with the Congress till partition trying to oppose the creation of pakistan. Surely they must have know about Gandhi’s GRAND, EVIL PLAN!!!!
10. Muhammad Usman | 05.23.08
Dear Shahida
What I can say? If you do not agree to my point of view, never mind. but let us agree to disagree.Since you have taken the role of judge and instead of putting up your arguments , you are just rejecting emotionally everything
I know Indian Muslim as a co-worker in the Middle east and I know
you are doing pretty well economically well but what about emotionally?. I think you are brain washed by your school texts booksby presenting distorted history Of course Jinnah was best person of his time but I never said and wrote that every Hindu is bad. I have good friends, teachers, classfellows from Hindu Community.
A person is great by his vision and leadership skills and that was lacking in Gandhi.If you read again my observation, you will understand my point of view that agony of Partition could have been prevented by Gandhi. If you admire his disability then you are reading Indian texts deliberately biased to brain washed you.As a student of Indo Pakistn history we have balanced reading both versions and we can tell you who is concealing facts and figure.
You should think Pakistanis are your friends and wel wishers but with different perception.
What you have quoted regarding schooling and the resulting hatred in ordinary, decent, young Pakistanis should have given you time to think, there is some thing wrong on your side and how it can be rectified?
Any historian books will tell you that India being a so called secular and modern country has changed every part of history to please the majority wishes.Your job is to find out and uphold the truth.
11. r mayo | 05.23.08
Mr. Usman
You hold your viewpoint to be the truth. If there is any divergence in views then it is an emotional response not a reasonable debate. Read your own writing and it will become apparent how you are convinced that your viewpoint is justifiably correct and an opposing viewpoint has no merit. Sadly if you had an open mind and not masquerading a limited perspective you would have elevated the conversation above to a meaningful dialog. What it ends up being is a hackneyed and distorted drivel of a conversation.
12. Shahida | 05.23.08
Muhammad Usman
I am sorry, my (Muslim) parents and grandparents, etc. have lived in India and I know what Pakistani texts say about Hindus is wrong, a pack of lies. Check what Pakistanis did to fellow Muslims in Bangladesh and just see the version of that in your texts. Ask, not the Indians, but the Bangladeshis who lived through that what happened, how Pak behaved before and during the war.
I (and all the Muslims I know in India) choose to live here because we appreciate this country. Do we have fights and quarrels with govts and some people? Of course, often, like with all govts. But we are protected, especially women, in many ways. We are also aware of Pakistan’s treatment of Bohris, Ahmediyas and Shias. We never forget the many Hindu activists, like Teesta Setalvad, who always turn up to and help whenever there is a quarrel.
We also see that under your Sharia, big folk get away with theft and crime, while small folk are threatened with arm amputation, honor killing, jail, etc.
I am sorry, I know India well and feel that we Muslims are far better off here than in Pak’s pseudo Islamic oligarchy. First of all correct what your history books say. As a Muslim, find out if the white washed lies in your texts are true. Also remember more Muslims chose to remain and continue to choose to remain in India. Even when they a have choice!
13. Muhammad Usman | 05.23.08
Dear Shanawaz Ansari
I welcome your comment with the saying that ignorance is bliss ad knowledge is curse
Have you read your own press and historian who have true comments on Gandhi:
http://www.expressindia.com/latest-news/NehruGandhi-family-did-not-help-dalits-Maya/296666 you can find more on internet.
Read the article on internet about Indian Muslims have to change their name to get job in socalled secular India.
I was borned in British India and travelled several times and visited my ancestors burial palce. I know what is your condition and you are keeping a brave face.
Thanks for your conditional invitation, I invite you unconditionally to visit us and learn yourself the tainted picture of Pakistan is so wrong!. Meet all community people and return back with a good heart.Of course you have Naxilites turned into Robinhood.I have been in NWFP and I know Sarhadi Gandhi named in contempt because he opposed self determination Plebicite and people voted to join Pakistan. Of course every body knew about Gandhi’s center of gravity including Kashmiri except Shiekh Abdullah
14. Solomon | 05.26.08
Send to me the GANDHI CURCHILL book
Solomon Aklilu
P.O.Box 54971
Addis Ababa
Ethiopis
15. Blueprint | 06.01.08
The subject of Churchill, Gandhi, and the British Raj is a very complex subject to discuss and review without stirring debate and emotion. The review, given its scope and limitation of print space, is a very good read.
Churchill may well be grinning from ear to ear given India’s adherence to democratic principles, and economic and technological advances. His Labor opposition, however, might think differently with “outsourced” jobs lost to the Indian sub-continent. And Gandhi for his part, would most likely have a deep furrow in his brow. The prosperity and growth of a new Indian consumer middle-class does not quite extend to the country side, the villages, and to the rural peasants he so passionately cared about. SC
16. s.nivas | 06.24.08
What do the readers think about the British engineered partition of India on religious lines? Was the price of millions dead or expelled worth it? Are sixty years of a land divided against itself worth it? Was setting neighbor against neighbor and friend against friend worth it?
Would Britain or any western democracy agree to divide its own country on the basis of relgion? Why was this reserved for the victims of their colonial exploitation?
Will this game ever stop? Can we ever expect a world based on justice and freedom for all?
17. Alaskan Reader | 07.11.08
It is true that the arguments being voiced in America today about Iraq (especially on the radio) sound eerily similar to Churchill’s beliefs about India, i.e. that we are there to help them, that they are better off with us, that they are too stupid to do it on their own (yes, I have heard this), and that we are benevolently giving them our “American Democracy.”
But against all this, their is no Gandhi, just militant Islam. And I subject this will lead to wholly different results for Iraq.
1. american man | 05.18.08
Churchill was a colonialist imperalist.
Gandhi was a peaceful freedom fighter.
Thats the simple difference.