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  • From: Toby Hemenway <toby@patternliteracy.com>
  • To: permaculture <permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [permaculture] politics and permies - Ghandi quote
  • Date: Tue, 04 Dec 2007 19:19:29 -0800

A bit of a tangent, but a recent book, "How Non-Violence Protects the State," by Peter Gelderloos, points out that according to British documents, Gandhi was not the reason the British got out of India. What drove the British out, Gelderloos says these records state, was the systematic assassination of British officials by Indian militants. Few could be persuaded to come administer the colony when their predecessors and their families had been murdered. He makes a similar claim for M.L. King, that violent race riots in Selma and other cities opened the door for King. I don't know what to make of his claims (I have only read reviews of the book, not the book itself). But I am reminded of Derrick Jensen's statement that the reason we have used violence so consistently is because it is so effective. Non-violence can be effective, too--it's just a lot more difficult and we're no where near as good at it.

Toby
http://patternliteracy.com



Charles de Matas wrote:
I read the following in an article in a local newspaper [Charles]:
'As far back as 1928, Mahatma Gandhi, looking at western patterns of consumption, warned: "God forbid that India should ever take to industrialisation after the manner of the west. If an entire nation of 300 million (India's population at the time) took to similar economic exploitation, it would strip the world bare like locusts."
To think that Gandhi had not seen the wild consumerism that has enveloped most of the world - India included. He was a visionary. And we are blinded by the good times that we think will roll on forever.'







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