“Mandela himself was not removed from the US terrorist watch list until 2008, a full 15 years after winning the Nobel Peace Prize and serving as South Africa’s first president.”

“And if you can’t bear the thought of messing up
your nice, clean soul, you’d better give up the
whole idea of life, and become a saint.”

 ~ John Osborne, “Look Back in Anger”

The perpetuation of the saccharine narrative is enabled by, among other things, the cherry-picking of Mandela’s own words. One endlessly quoted passage has been the end of Mandela’s opening statement at the start of his trial on charges of sabotage, at the Supreme Court of South Africa, on April 20th, 1964:

“During my lifetime I have dedicated myself to this struggle of the African people. I have fought against white domination, and I have fought against black domination. I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons live together in harmony and with equal opportunities. It is an ideal which I hope to live for and to achieve. But if needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die.”

This is stirring stuff, and worthy of being engraved into the marble of a monument, but only if you bother to read the preceding 10,000 words. In a far-reaching statement notable for its pellucidity, Mandela lays out the circumstances and philosophy that resulted in armed struggle against the regime.

“I have already mentioned that I was one of the persons who helped to form Umkhonto [we Sizwe, the armed wing of the ANC]. I, and the others who started the organisation, did so for two reasons. Firstly, we believed that as a result of Government policy, violence by the African people had become inevitable, and that unless responsible leadership was given to canalise and control the feelings of our people, there would be outbreaks of terrorism which would produce an intensity of bitterness and hostility between the various races of this country which is not produced even by war. Secondly, we felt that without violence there would be no way open to the African people to succeed in their struggle against the principle of white supremacy. All lawful modes of expressing opposition to this principle had been closed by legislation, and we were placed in a position in which we had either to accept a permanent state of inferiority, or to defy the government. We chose to defy the law. We first broke the law in a way which avoided any recourse to violence; when this form was legislated against, and then the government resorted to a show of force to crush opposition to its policies, only then did we decide to answer violence with violence.”

Without this context, Mandela’s lofty concluding paragraph is as cheap as a Hallmark card. It’s now clear to the reader exactly the lengths to which Mandela would be willing to go to die for his beliefs – not as a lamb to slaughter, but as a fiery revolutionary. It is difficult to conceive of Gandhi initiating such actions. But why was Mandela prepared at that point to resort to violence? –

I am not gratuitously bringing up Gandhi’s name. His example is especially instructive, since he lived in South Africa for 21 years, and it was in the course of resistance to discrimination against the Hindu, Muslim and Chinese minorities in that country that he first formulated the idea of satyagraha and non-violent resistance that would prove to be so effective, decades later, in India. And yet, as an exclusive strategy, non-violence failed in South Africa, or at least was found to be ineffective enough that, 50 years after Gandhi’s initial experience, ANC leaders like Mandela were forced to conclude that armed resistance was in fact appropriate and necessary. So why did Gandhi’s strategy of nonviolence succeed in India but not in South Africa? In hindsight, we tend to see effective strategies of resistance as almost inevitable, partly thanks to their ennobling nature, but also as a result of the absence of any historical counterfactual. Hannah Arendt, who knew a thing or two about power, wrote in the New York Review of Books in 1969:

“In a head-on clash between violence and power the outcome is hardly in doubt. If Gandhi’s enormously powerful and successful strategy of non-violent resistance had met with a different enemy—Stalin’s Russia, Hitler’s Germany, even pre-war Japan, instead of England—the outcome would not have been decolonization but massacre and submission -”

http://www.3quarksdaily.com/3quarksdaily/2013/12/madiba-mahatma-and-the-limits-of-nonviolence.html#more

( Posted by F. Sheikh )

Thinkers Forum USA Affiliates!

Mirza I Ashraf wrote a blog “Life is Plugged in Today” about Science and Information Technology.

Wequar Azeem and Babar Mustafa wrote comments. You may read the original article and comments in www.ThinkersForumUSABlog.org

Noor Salik wrote a comment on Wequar Azeem and Babar Mustafa comments.

Saeed ul Hassan wrote a comment on Noor Salik’ comment. The comments of affiliates is the real power of Thinkers Forum USA.

I am entering the comments in chronological order. Please read them and comment on them if you feel like.

Editor of the Month TF USA.  (Editors@ThinkersForumUSABlog.Org)

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<

=========  Comment by Noor Salik ======

An interesting comment by Wequer Azeem

Three intellectual giants of TF USA.  (1) Mirza Iqbal Ashraf  (2) Babar Mustafa  (3) Wequer Azeem  There are lot of other intellectual giants in TF USA but normally either  they are busy or they just choose not to participate in intellectual  foray.

TF USA provides you empowering intellectual environment.  You decide what you want to say.> But you should be ready to face some intellectual onslaught by other affiliates who have the capacity to look at an issue from different angles.

TF USA does not have any agenda. All views expressed in TF USA are personal.  You are most welcome if you are a conservative/regressive thinker.> You are equally welcome if you are a progressive/analytical thinker. I mentioned two groups/categories.  I will never know your if your point of view is different until you respond.

NSalik

==========  Comment by Saeed ul Hassan  ====

Who decides based on what criterion that an interacting person is conservative or regressive, analytical or progressive.

Merely being skeptical towards divinity and act of disowning one’s roots gives him or her impressive look?

Only gratitude turns denial into acceptance and chaos into order.

Saeed

My comment is not on trail of the mail below but on Noor’s remarks.

> On Dec 6, 2013, at 1:19 AM, editors@thinkersforumusablog.org wrote: > > > An interesting comment by Wequer Azeem > > Three intellectual giants of TF USA. > (1) Mirza Iqbal Ashraf > (2) Babar Mustafa > (3) Wequer Azeem > There are lot of other intellectual giants in TF USA but normally either > they are busy or they just choose not to participate in intellectual > foray. > > TF USA provides you empowering intellectual environment. > You decide what you want to say. > But you should be ready to face some intellectual onslaught by other > affiliates who have the capacity to look at an issue from different > angles. > > TF USA does not have any agenda. All views expressed in TF USA are personal. > You are most welcome if you are a conservative/regressive thinker. > You are equally welcome if you are a progressive/analytical thinker. > > I mentioned two groups/categories. > I will never know your if your point of view is different until you respond. > > NSalik >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> > <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<< >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> > <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<< > > > > > > > A new comment on the post “Life is plugged in today” is waiting for your > approval > http://www.thinkersforumusablog.org/archives/6875 > > Author : Wequar Azeem > E-mail : Wequar Azeem > Comment: > Hear,  Hear,  Baber Saheb ! Well said. Those days are gone when 3 R’s used > to be the foundation of education. We are in cyber age. I realize that > elderly among us are stuck in the 1950’s and 60’s and find it difficult to > keep pace with march of Time. The only constant in the universe is Change. > Not many people understand the difference between moment to moment passage > of time and the continuum of Absolute Time and its essence. We the humans > have come a long way and have a longer way to go. But the pace of change > is accelerating at geometric progression and even one life-time is too > long to cope with the changes. >

======  Comment by Babar Mustafa ========

Mr. Saeed has raised a very interesting question, “who decides …?”.

I would like to question the labels he mentions (and applies pretty clearly) in his question too of skeptic, gratitude, acceptance, denial, one’s roots, chaos …. Who is skeptic, one who thinks there is a God or the one who can’t find an iota of evidence of divinity? Who is in denial, one who can’t accept that all life is related and has diversified from a single origin or the one who thinks he (species wise) is created as a special being? Who is accepting myths as reality and who is following logic and reason to get to reality? Who is lost in a chaos, one who looks at diversification of life or the one who sees the symmetry in the building blocks of all life? Who is showing gratitude, one who is humbled to accept one’s origins and relations to all animal kingdom and even plants or the one who believes that angels bowed on one’s creation? Roots, ah roots; who decides that one’s roots lead back to ethnic divide, race divide or Garden of Eden or out of Africa or to the primordial soup or from out of other planets of solar systems or other galaxies may be or from the core of stars of this universe or perhaps from multiverse? There are some labels I would like to throw in too for my friends to elaborate, for instance” self righteous”, “custodians of morality”, “enforcers of one’s belief on others”.

Babar

============  Comment by Mirza I. Ashraf ========== Dear Brother Salik Sahib,

Please do not bury me under the weight of “intellectual giant.” Though it is to compliment the drop of knowledge which I am still trying to understand, but I have not yet stepped into the shoreless sea of knowledge . . . . Mirza

بس اتنا جانتا ہوں کچھ نہیں میں جانتا لیکن میں بے خبری سے با خبری کے افکاروں میں ڈوبا ہوں

اشرف

A worth reading article ( shared by Zafar Khizer) by Mubarik ALi on historical perspective of religious consciousness that lead to the partition of India and is further fragmenting the society in Pakistan. ( F. Sheikh ).

In medieval India, people were conscious of their social cast and ethnic identity but in the colonial period right up to 1813, new political and social changes significantly shaped religious identity and its consciousness.

In its earlier days the East India Company, being solely interested in economic expansion, but also aware of the religious sensitivities of the subcontinent, discouraged missionaries from coming to India. Later, as the government became more stable, their policies changed and they supported the missionaries who arrived in the subcontinent to convert people to Christianity. The government believed that if the people converted and became Christians, it would be relatively easier to govern them on the basis of sharing the same religious beliefs.

The missionaries condemned the religions of the subcontinent and persuaded people to embrace the Christian faith. They openly preached in public places like Lahore’s Anarkali bazaar. Their activity intensified when in 1837, a German missionary known as Karl Pfander arrived in the subcontinent at a time when the Muslim community had lost its political power, vitality and energy. He believed that the society was backward and degenerate, so it would be easy to convert people to Christianity, which was — in his view — an advanced and progressive religion. But his argument was refuted by Dr Nazir and Maulvi Rehmat Ali in public discussions and a disappointed Pfander left India in 1857.

The activities of the missionaries alarmed people who began to feel insecure about their religious beliefs. The Hindu and Muslim religious leaders came forward to defend their religion through munazra or public debates held in different cities, where people would gather to listen to religious scholars criticising each other’s faith while defending their own religion. These debates created a religious consciousness among the masses while elevating the social status of the religious scholars within the community.

Religious activity was further enhanced when religious organisations such as the Arya Samaj for the Hindu community; and the Tablighi Jamaat and Tanzim for the Muslim community, were founded in order to protect their respective religions. To reach out to the masses, newspapers, magazines, and pamphlets were published to highlight the truth of their avowed faith. Hostility and conflict increased between the communities and riots broke out that continued up to partition in 1947.

http://dawn.com/news/1058176/past-present-a-deadly-consciousness