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Partition

Err... so, why is it written that he was "vehemently" opposed to partition? He didn't exactly go out of his way to stop it, now did he? Graft 06:47 Sep 27, 2002 (UTC)

• My memory of this is that he worked very hard to stop it (though making some political compromises to, as he felt, prevent greater suffering), and was extremely saddened that it proceeded anyway. I think he thought that Partition was the chief failure of his life. (I'll try to get some more on this Monday.)

I'm not sure he had a choice. Remember, the whole partition debate - well, confrontation - was happening in 1946-47. These were turbulent times, in which the Muslim League and the Congress Party were fighting over the governance, against a British declaration that whatever happened, they would leave India by August, 1948. Jinnah called for wide-spread riots across India, to demonstrate pro-partition sentiment, leading to terrible Hindu-Muslim riots in many parts of the country. This worsened Hindu-Muslim relations, which was partially responsible for the horrible carnage of Partition.

Incidently, some of the worse of the Partition fighting occured in Calcutta (now Kolkatta). These were eventually quelled by Gandhi taking a fast-unto-death. Gandhi was in Calcutta on August 15, 1947, when India gained independence.

-- Me (again)

I suppose that, given Gandhi's pacifism and his inability to match violence with anything other than defeat, he didn't have much of a choice. But Partition was a catastrophe, for Muslims and for Hindus. Many more people died in Partition than in the antecedent riots. You can say he was weak, you can say Jinnah knew how to defeat him - you can't say he had no choice. Hindsight is 20/20, I know, but to submit to Partition because you have a pathological opposition to violence when you have the authority to prevent it... argh, I mean, he must have been a lunatic to choose Partition. Yes, he didn't have a choice within his narrow ideological bounds. Can't I fault him for those when they led to the death of a million? Graft

Satyagraha

I have heard that applying the term pacifism to gandhi is not accurate. is this true?

I don't see how! His non-violence was religious; I don't if that's relevant. Where did you hear this? -- Sam

i heard it from gandhi, who made a big point about the difference. i'm certainly not saying he wasn't non-violent, just that its not the same as pacifism in other fundamental ways. read satyagraha

____________

Perhaps the source of the problem is found in the entry:

Gandhi's principle of satyagraha (Sanskrit: truth + grasping firmly or holding onto it), often roughly translated as "passive resistance"

Roughly translated says it all. How does truth become passive and grasping firmly become resistance. I'll bounce over to satyagraha yet but I'll see what it says. The translation stopped me dead in my tracks.

Satyagraha is possibly a neologism of Ghandi's. I think truth+force is the way it gets translated. I have never seen the movie.

64.229.14.142

For further understanding of Satyagraha see http://www.smith.edu/philosophy/jgarfieldnonviolence.html and http://www.montelis.com/satya/backissues/sep98/satyagraha.html

In fact mere word by word translation of Sanskrit to English cannot be accurate. For example Dharma is a word/concept that doesn't have one English word/phrase to translate it. Depending on the context it could be translated as: goodness, charity, religion, tradition, rituals, justness etc. They all are manifestations of the same concept that has something to do with things traditionally considered to be "good".

________________________________

Sure. I'm familiar with class of translation problems. I'm familiar the dharma example,too . Is satyagraha a neologism from Ghandi? Because that would make a big difference.

I clipped the first thing at http://www.montelis.com/satya/backissues/sep98/satyagraha.html

Truth (satya) implies love,

and firmness (agraha)

serves as a synonym for force.

He came to name his movement satyagraha. Is it his word in the sense that he made it. Or did he adopt it from prior use?

Peace out.64.229.14.142

It is something that I'm working on for the pedia: The talk pages have burned with Ghandi for long periods of time about several different articles. If there was a definitive satyagraha article, all those poeple would be free. Could you take a look. Let me know what you think in the talk. ___________________________________

Satyagraha is a neologism, as far as I know, created by Gandhi. Graft

Mahatma vs Mohandas

Why do we have fr:Mahatma Gandhi, pl:Mahatma Gandhi but en:Mohandas Gandhi? -- Paddu

not quite sure. Its not troubling to me right now: the typical user will simply pump in "gandhi" and get a disambiuation page. Most everyboy knows the term Mahatma means great soul . In conversation I have only had one person question Mohandas Gandhi --- maybe everybodyelse just thought it was his first name :-) During his lifetime, to masses of Indians he was called by the affectionate and familiar Gandhiji. Two16

Should this be moved to Mahatma Ghandi? Which version was more common - Mahatma or Mohandas? --Jiang 06:12 4 Jul 2003 (UTC)

"the title of 'Mahatma' that they have won for me has, therefore, even less. Often the title has deeply pained me, and there is not a moment I can recall when it may be said to have tickled me." - M.K. Gandhi, The Ashram, Sabarmati. Autobiography - the story of my experiments with truth, introduction. 1983, Dover publications, inc., New York. Translated by Mahadev Desai. - Jeandré, 2003-08-31t11:31z

I personally feel the edits that were done to convert Mahatma to Mohandas in multiple pages was not necessary. As I had mentioned in ], the search results in Google show "Mahatma Gandhi" is being searched for a lot more number of times than "Mohandas Gandhi".

Now lets see what Misplaced Pages is meant for. It's for looking up information. Replacing Mahatma with Mohandas in every page where the text appears, means lesser people are going to find a wikipedia link while they search. Redirection to Mahatma from Mohandas (his official name but not the name by which he is known) is the best approach, which is the way it was till a few days back, not the other way round.

Jay 22:54, 1 Sep 2003 (UTC)

"Lesser people"? RickK 23:04, 1 Sep 2003 (UTC)

ahh.. lesser number of people i meant. this refers to the google thing where 205,000 results are returned for "Mahatma Gandhi" as opposed to 30,700 for "Mohandas Gandhi". Now with the Mahatma-to-Mohandas rechristening a lesser number of people than before will really find what they're looking for. Jay 23:45, 1 Sep 2003 (UTC)

The grammatically correct term is "fewer" since people can be counted. --Jiang

Thanks Jiang for that piece of info. Whats the antonym of fewer ? Jay 22:54, 2 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Google ranks its results based on links, not on what people are searching for. Interestingly wikipedia links for, http://www.google.com/search?q=%22Mohandas+Gandhi%22&start=7 7th, http://www.google.com/search?q=%22Mahatma+Gandhi%22&start=59 59th. - Jeandré, 2003-09-04t19:38z

You're right about Google. Google ranks a page based on the number of hyperlinks that exist on the internet that link to it. Regarding the search results you mentioned, what did u want to say ? Jay 08:42, Sep 10, 2003 (UTC)

Be that as it may, "Mahatma" is a nickname and is POV. Not everyone need agree that Gandhi was a mahatma. Graft 13:47, 2 Sep 2003 (UTC)

That makes sense ... Jay 19:19, 2 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Or that spirits/souls exist. - Jeandré, 2003-09-04t19:38z

The Reserve Bank of India calls him Mahatma Gandhi on all the currency notes it produces. Mahatma Gandhi has become more his name than a title, in India. This is reflected ALL over India. Indian text books, magazines, news papers, TV Channels, people, leaders refer to him as Mahatma Gandhi, or even as Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi and almost never as Mohandas Gandhi. (Further, an average Indian is inclined to think that Mohandas Gandhi is perhaps the name of Mahatma's grand son !! So popular is the name Mahatma, and strange, the name Mohandas Gandhi) So, i guess it is NOT POV. Or atleast this is a special case where the POV rules have to be obviated. - Kesava 05:08, 10 Sep 2003. (UTC)

---

I did a bit of reading on Misplaced Pages conventions, here are some points, they handle Graft's "Mahatma is just a nickname" opinion, and to an extent the POV one :

1. "Use the most common name of a person or thing ..." (from Misplaced Pages:Naming_conventions)
2. (from Misplaced Pages:Naming_conventions_(common_names))

"When choosing a name for a page ask yourself: What word would the average user of the Misplaced Pages put into the search engine? "

"We want to maximize the likelihood of being listed in other search engines, thereby attracting more people to Misplaced Pages"

"...search engines will often give greater weight to the contents of the title than to the body of the page. Since "Jimmy Carter" is the most common form of the name, it will be searched on more often.."

The examples the page suggests are William_Clinton redirecting to Bill_Clinton, Samuel_Clemens redirecting to Mark_Twain, etc. The name by which a person is more "commonly" known gets to be the main page, thereby being on the page-title and becoming the target of all other redirects.

Currently we are going against convention in the Mahatma vs Mohandas case.

• Also you can have a look at the naming conventions discussion page where the users reached a consensus on usage of the common name as opposed to the "technically correct" or legal name - Wikipedia_talk:Naming_conventions_(pseudonyms)

This will avoid us going over the discussion again.
Jay 22:54, 2 Sep 2003 (UTC)

On the other hand, "Peter the Great" is titled "Peter I of Russia"; similarly "Ivan the Terrible"; 'place-it-at-the-most-commonly-known' is a convention, not a hard-and-fast rule. Personally I won't be terribly offended if Gandhi lives at Mahatma, but:

1. Placing the article at "Mohandas" emphasizes that "Mahatma" is not his real name, something that isn't well-known.
2. Placing it at "Mahatma" creates a bad precedent for other POV titles.

The redirect suffices to take care of those who come looking for Mahatma Gandhi. Graft 23:18, 2 Sep 2003 (UTC)

The names you have mentioned come under a different context. They follow the convention for Royal and Monarchical Titles Misplaced Pages:Naming_conventions_(names_and_titles) and in case of Pseudonyms check Misplaced Pages:Redirect, Section: What do we use redirects for?

For the issue of POV titles, I've started a discussion at Wikipedia_talk:Redirect
Jay 18:07, Sep 7, 2003 (UTC)

By Graft's logic 'Mother Teresa' page' title should be changed to 'Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu'.
Astavakra Nov 18, 2003

Well, no need to get snippy, as I said I wouldn't (and am not going to) make a big deal if it got moved... but anyway, the difference is that "Mahatma" is a clear word of praise, e.g. the Indian government likes to pass it around as propaganda, to build up the "Father of the Country" mythos, whereas Mother Teresa is not so obviously laudatory. But whatever. Graft 16:37, 18 Nov 2003 (UTC)

I've removed the following:

Though the committee has remained tightlipped in this matter, independent opinions point to various factors that could have influenced the decisions of not considering Gandhi. Some observers say his struggle was too "nationalistic" and "not a global one" and hence he could not be considered as an apostle of world peace. But, a few others argue that recent laureates like Yasser Arafat and David Trimble fit the same description and the violent background of their struggle makes them less fit than Gandhi to receive the prize.

This counter-argument adds to the suspicion of a number of people who speculate that the process of deciding the winning laureates was biased in the early years, and the committee rarely looked beyond the European and American white community to choose the laureates. Some have even accused the committee of buckling to British pressure against the award to Gandhi.

These are speculations about the Nobel process; they are not about Gandhi. Engaging in speculations that winners in later years were less worthy is unbecoming of Gandhi's memory. ☮ Eclecticology 21:48, 2003 Nov 30 (UTC)

i think this passage should be there. It is better to err on being too skeptical than not, esp when the issue is the establishment. If we are not going to include the above passage, then i believe the whole Noble section should simply be reduced to one single sentence: "Ghandi was never a Nobel laureate.".

Xah P0lyglut 00:33, 2003 Dec 1 (UTC)

The issue is about relevance, not skepticism. There is nothing constructive to speculating about unprovable conspiracy theories about the establish when there are enough true ones for which they should be held accountable. It's true enough that until Lutuli won in 1960, all the winners were either European or of European ancestry. The implication that Arafat and Trimble were less deserving of the prize is inappropriate. I've read the discussion at the Nobel link where the argument that they were not prepared to issue a posthumous prize is much stronger, but even that would be better discussed at a site about the Nobel Peace Prize. ☮ Eclecticology 02:50, 2003 Dec 1 (UTC)

I think you have in this page an image with copyright; same in catalan wiki.

Plàcid 22:13, 4 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Can you say which one? Graham  :) 23:26, 4 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Graham, it looks to me like it's the top image, as that's the only image in the Catalan article. But the image we have is reversed (go to ca.wikipedia.org/Mahatma_Gandhi to see what I mean). I don't know whether or not this has anything to do with Placid's question. :) Jwrosenzweig 23:31, 4 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Well is it worth listing on Misplaced Pages:Possible copyright infringements when we're not sure whether it is an infringement or not, and don't know the source for it? -- Graham  :) 23:44, 4 Mar 2004 (UTC)

I sure don't think so. :-) Not unless Placid has something more to tell us, that is. Jwrosenzweig 23:49, 4 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Images

I've again removed the image "donated" by ghandiserve. Fair use images is one thing, but when you upload an image, you agree to release it under the GFDL. Having people upload images and then decide not to release them under the GFDL is not acceptable. Anthony DiPierro 13:03, 12 Mar 2004 (UTC)

I'd asked User:Gandhiserve to release the image under GFDL, but there has been no response. Jay 15:29, 12 Mar 2004 (UTC)

According to the image page: The GandhiServe Foundation says: "We are the sole copyright representants of this image, and it can be used in this form on Misplaced Pages. permission granted for use on wikipedia.org only"