Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi

MOHANDAS KARAMCHAND GANDHI The Wikipedia page on Henry David Thoreau makes the standard grandiloquent assertion that “Thoreau’s philosophy of civil disobedience later influenced the political thoughts and actions of such notable figures as Leo Tolstoy, Mohandas Gandhi, and Martin Luther King, Jr.” It would be pointless to attempt to modify the page to point up the fact that although this is a standard assertion, it is a standard piece of puffery that happens to be entirely unsupported by anything except piety, because any such information would instantly be deleted, with extreme outrage. Nevertheless, the primary American influence upon Tolstòy –according to Tolstòy himself– was the Reverend Adin Ballou who lived in the Hopedale intentional Christian community outside Worcester during Thoreau’s lifetime and had once debated Thoreau about war. And, the primary influence upon Gandhi –according to Gandhi himself– was a Jain ascetic, Shrimad Rajchandra, who died during Gandhi’s early sojourn in South Africa. And, the primary influence upon the Reverend King was Friend Bayard Rustin, a black queer pacifist Quaker civil-rights activist. While it is accurate that all three of these now- adored leaders have attempted to explain themselves to American audiences familiar with Thoreau by affiliating themselves with Thoreau, “explaining yourself” by means of something familiar to the people with whom you are communicating, by the tactic of referring to some point-of-reference A with which they are familiar, is not the same animule as being “influenced by” that given point-of-reference A. In the case of Tolstòy, had he attempted to explain himself by reference to the Reverend Adin Ballou he would have encountered only blank stares or hostility — Americans know nothing whatever about the Reverend Ballou and, when they do learn something about him, in general they disdain people of his sort. Although Tolstoy’s beliefs were in some respects similar to those of Thoreau, we have been unable to specify any particular belief of Thoreau which induced Tolstòy, when he learned of it, to then adopt a similar belief. In the case of Gandhiji, had he attempted to explain himself by reference to this Jain ascetic, this would have decidedly hurt him politically, for he was an Indian politician whose primary field of influence lay among persons of the Hindu faith, people who would have been put off by this primary affiliation with HDT WHAT? INDEX MOHANDAS KARAMCHAND GANDHI GANDHIJI Jainism. Again, although Gandhiji’s beliefs were in some respects similar to those of Thoreau, we are unable to specify any particular belief shared by Thoreau and Gandhi which Gandhi had not already held before he became familiar with the writings of Thoreau (also, he said to us point blank that it wasn’t so). In the case of the Reverend King, had he attempted to explain himself by reference to a black queer Quaker pacifist, this would have hurt him both in the black American community (which typically is disdainful of black queers as people whose very existence is harmful to their race cause), and in the white American community (which typically condescends to pacifists as people who don’t understand how the world works, or are so cowardly that they cannot bring themselves to play a proper manly role). In each of these three cases –Tolstòy, Gandhi, King– making reference to Thoreau had been useful, had been helpful — but had not really amounted to anything that one might usefully term “influence.” “NARRATIVE HISTORY” AMOUNTS TO FABULATION, THE REAL STUFF BEING MERE CHRONOLOGY Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Projec HDT WHAT? INDEX GANDHIJI MOHANDAS KARAMCHAND GANDHI 551 BCE Confucius was born in about this year into a family with pretensions to the nobility, in Ch’ü-fu in the small feudal state of Lu in what is now the Shandong province of China, during the 22d year of the reign of Duke Hsiang. Although an allegation that he was born on the 27th day of the 8th lunar month is regarded by historians as unsubstantiated, for our purposes one day will of course do quite as well as another and so he is widely honored in East Asia each September 28th. His tomb there in Ch’ü-fu has now been desecrated by the Red Guard. He would not have recognized this name “Confucius,” as it is merely our archaic pseudo-Latinate transliteration of the respectful form of address K’ung-fu-tzu, Master K’ung, his family’s name having been K’ung and his personal name Ch’iu. Throughout Chinese history he has been referred to affectionately as K’ung-tzu, Old K’ung, in precisely the same manner in which Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi is being referred to affectionately throughout India as Gandhiji.1 1. There are not and there never have been and there never will be any Confucians in China. The 18th-Century terms “Confucian” and “Confucianism,” which have been coined on the basis of the Latinized name-form “Confucius,” have been entirely descriptive terms coined by outsiders, and nothing similar to this coinage has ever been used in the Chinese language, which relies upon the term Ruxue meaning very precisely “the teachings of the literati.” HDT WHAT? INDEX MOHANDAS KARAMCHAND GANDHI GANDHIJI 273 BCE From this year until 232 BCE, the reign of Asoka the Great over a major area of the Indian subcontinent. This was the emperor who erected the inspirational 40-foot columns inscribed with “Laws of Right Conduct and Nonviolence,” later to be remarked upon by Henry Thoreau, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, and the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. HDT WHAT? INDEX GANDHIJI MOHANDAS KARAMCHAND GANDHI 1685 October 18, Sunday (Old Style): John Evelyn’s diary entry for this day was in part as follows: Dr. Good-man [at Whitehall:] preached on 2:Cor:4:18: The King was now building all that range from East to west by the Court & Garden to the streete, & making a new Chapel for the Queene, whose Lodgings this new building was: as also a new Council Chamber & offices next the South end of the Banqueting-house: HDT WHAT? INDEX MOHANDAS KARAMCHAND GANDHI GANDHIJI King Louis XIV of France commenced a merciless persecution of his Protestant subjects., by declaring the April 13, 1598 Edict of Nantes which had been issued by King Henry IV to be null and void and by removing all religious and civil liberties of any French citizens who were Huguenots. The eighth and largest mass out-migration of Huguenots began:2 WALDENSES In this year Pierre Thoreau, who at the time was approximately ten years of age, his two sisters Francoise and Marie, and their mother, fled from the Poitou-Charentes district of France, initially to Richmond near London and then to St. Hélier on the island of Jersey in the English Channel. Presumably this religio-political situation was what occasioned the flight, at penalty of being sent to row in the galleys had they been intercepted. (We can imagine the image above, which is of Huguenots arriving in this year on the shingle beach under the white cliffs at Dover, as an approximation of the group including the combined Thoreau and Guillet families disembarking in the harbor on the island of Jersey!) Presumably the Thoreau family fled from France to Jersey in the Channel Islands in about 1685, at roughly the same time that the Jacques Louis Guillet family fled to 2. This movement of refugees is said to have been the “largest forced migration of Europeans in the early modern period.” Refer to Jon Butler’s THE HUGUENOT IN AMERICA: A REFUGEE PEOPLE IN NEW WORLD SOCIETY. Cambridge MA: Harvard UP, 1983. The English word “refugee” would come about due to reluctance to employ the term “diaspora” which seemed to be reserved for 1 the scattering of the Jews per JOHN 7:35. The Huguenots amounted to some /4th million out of France’s 20 million citizens, and during the years 1682-1690 were concentrated in the West and in the South. After some 50,000 had fled to England, they made up 5% of London town at a time when the London population was 10% of England. Genetically, the statistical probability that the next English person you meet in England will have at least some Huguenot ancestry is 75%. Refer to Bernard Cottret’s THE HUGUENOT IN ENGLAND and to Peter Steven Gannon’s volume on REFUGEES IN THE SETTLING OF COLONIAL AMERICA. In 1985 French President Mitterrand would issue an official apology, on behalf of the French government and the French people, for Louis XIV’s diktat revoking the Edict of Nantes, and a commemorative postage stamp would be issued characterizing this our modern era as under the suasion of “Tolerance, Pluralism, Brotherhood.”) HDT WHAT? INDEX GANDHIJI MOHANDAS KARAMCHAND GANDHI HDT WHAT? INDEX MOHANDAS KARAMCHAND GANDHI GANDHIJI Jersey, because the two families were intermarried. It would be Pierre’s grandson Philippe Thoreau who would become the ancestor of Henry David, but it would be his great-granddaughter Marie who would marry Charles William Guillet in 1796 and it would be their son John Guillet who would emigrate in 1832 to Cobourg on Lake Ontario east of Toronto, eventually producing Edwin Clarence Guillet, the Canadian historian. Since the American branch of the Thoreau family would come to an end with the unmarried generation of Helen Louisa Thoreau, John Thoreau, Jr., Henry David Thoreau, and Sophia Elizabeth Thoreau, this Edwin Clarence Guillet, who died in 1974, would be one of Henry David’s few modern American relatives (though Henry had a closer relative in England until 1949, a son of Sophia Thoreau Du Parcq who had risen to the status of Law Lord and been entitled, who was named at birth Herbert Du Parcq).

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