Liberal heroes #1: Gandhi

Mahatma Gandhi is more revered than understood by Western liberals, who generally only remember him for his campaign against British colonialism in India and his advocacy of non-violence. Actually he was also a crank, a mystic, sexually-dodgy, and a racist. This week sees the re-release of An Autobiography: The Story of My Experiments with Truth by Mahatma Gandhi by Penguin. You can read a good review of this by Pankaj Mishra in the Guardian, which says that the book shows 'Gandhi was too concerned with diet, sex, household affairs and politics to be the otherworldly saint that many people took him to be.' Mishra also explains that Gandhi's objective was to reintroduce religion into politics, and despite his reputation as a great commentator on the world, his book has nothing  'on the big issues - mass society, technology, total war, ideological totalitarianism - that exercised many intellectuals and artists in his time'. However, for an even more irreverent view of Gandhi, see the 5 minute Penn and Teller 'Bullshit' deconstruction of him. They argue that Gandhi was a racist (against blacks) and a sexual pervert!