The Gandhi Quote

[Ry Jones <rjones@moscow.com>]

The Gandhi Quote

for a year or so now I've had this quote as my .sig:
--
"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."
   -- Mahatma Gandhi

I have been asked many times for the source, and just as many times I have 
been challenged on the accuracy of the quote. Surely this is taken out of 
context, people ask. To end the debate once and for all, here is the 
complete quote:

GANDHI: An autobiography. The story of my experiments with Truth

Page 446, on which Gandhi is relating his struggles raising volunteers to 
fight for the Crown in World War I:
"I used to issue leaflets asking people to enlist as recruits. One of the 
arguments I had used was distasteful to the Commissioner: '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. If we want the Arms Act 
to be repealed, if we want to learn the use of arms, here is a golden 
opportunity. If the middle classes render voluntary help to Government in 
the hour of its trial, distrust will disappear, and the ban on possessing 
arms will be withdrawn.' The Commissioner refereed to this and said that he 
appreciated my presence in the conference in spite of the differences 
between us. And I had to justify my standpoint as courteously as I could."

In this wonderful book (go and buy it now, it covers everything from gun 
control to home schooling to constipation (a lot on this last topic, 
actually) Gandhi repudiates his views when they have changed, and calls out 
very clearly even minor errors he has made. Never in this book does he step 
back from condemning gun control. In fact, on page 477 he touches on the 
classic "when is it time to shut up and shoot the b*s" argument:

"As I proceeded further and further with my inquiry into the atrocities 
that had been committed on the people, I came across tales of Government's 
tyranny and the arbitrary despotism of it's officers such as I was hardly 
prepared for, and they filled me with deep pain. What surprised me then, 
and what still continues to fill me with suprise, was the fact that a 
province that had furnished the largest number of soldiers to the British 
Government during the war, should have taken all these brutal excesses 
lying down."

Straight from the man's own book.

BTW I have corrected my quote in my .sig.

Ry

PS: To those not on four19, I bcc'd you. Anyone can join four19 by going to 
topica.com's signup page or sending me mail asking to be added.
--
"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