-
(Fwd) Out today from Ashwin Desai and Goolam Vahed: Gandhi as "Stretcher-bearer of Empire"
from PatrickBond on Sep 01, 2015 03:11 PMStanford University Press The South African Gandhi Stretcher-Bearer of Empire Ashwin Desai <http://navayana.org/blog/2015/08/31/ashwin-desai/> and Goolam Vahed <http://navayana.org/blog/2015/08/31/goolam-vahed/> In the pantheon of global liberation heroes, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi has pride of place. Leaders like Mandela have lauded him as being part of the epic battle to defeat the white regime and prepare the way for a non-racial country. A popular sentiment in South Africa goes: ‘India gave us Mohandas, and we returned him to you as Mahatma’. Against this background, /The South African Gandhi: Stretcher-Bearer of Empire /unravels the complex story of a man who, throughout his stay on African soil (1893–1914), remained true to Empire while expressing disdain for Africans. For Gandhi, whites and Indians were bound by an Aryan bloodline that had no place for the African. His racism was matched by his class (and caste) prejudice towards the Indian indentured. He persistently claimed that they were ignorant and needed his leadership, and wrote their struggles out of history—struggles this book documents. The authors show that Gandhi never missed an opportunity to demonstrate his loyalty to Empire, with a particular penchant for war. He served as stretcher-bearer in the war between Brit and Boer, demanded that Indians be allowed to carry fire-arms, and recruited volunteers for the imperial army in both England and India during the First World War. *Ashwin Desai* <http://navayana.org/blog/2015/08/31/ashwin-desai/> is Professor of Sociology at the University of Johannesburg. His previous books include /South Africa: Still Revolting/, /‘We are the Poors’: Community Struggles in Post-Apartheid South Africa /and /Reading Revolution: Shakespeare on Robben Island /among others. *Goolam Vahed* <http://navayana.org/blog/2015/08/31/goolam-vahed/> is Associate Professor of History at the University of KwaZulu Natal. He writes on histories of migration, ethnicity, religion, and identity formation among Indian South Africans. ISBN 9788189059736 | Hardback | 344 pages | 6.25 x 9.25” ‘This is a wonderful demonstration of meticulously researched, evocative, clear-eyed and fearless history-writing. It uncovers a story, some might even call it a scandal, that has remained hidden in plain sight for far too long’ —*Arundhati Roy*, author of “The Doctor and the Saint” ‘In this impressively researched study, two South African scholars of Indian background bravely challenge political myth-making on both sides of the Indian Ocean that has sought to canonise Gandhi as a founding father of the struggle for equality in South Africa’ — *Joseph Lelyveld*, author of /Great Soul: Mahatma Gandhi and His Struggle with India/ ‘Most arresting perhaps to readers familiar only with the hagiography will be Gandhi’s persistent attempts to improve the position of South African Indians by emphasising their superiority to Africans and reliability as subjects of Empire’—*Kathryn Tidrick*, author of /Gandhi: A Political and Spiritual Life/