Long Reads: Talat Ahmed on Gandhi and the Politics of Sainthood
Jacobin Radio
Jacobin
4.7 • 1.5K Ratings
🗓️ 20 March 2021
⏱️ 83 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Long Reads looks in-depth at political topics and thinkers, both contemporary and historical, with the magazine’s longform writers. Hosted by Features Editor Daniel Finn.
The guest for this episode is Talat Ahmed. Talat is a historian who teaches at the University of Edinburgh and the author of Mohandas Gandhi: Experiments in Civil Disobedience.
Read Talat's essay, "Gandhi Led a Mass Movement for India’s Freedom — But He Also Constricted It," here: https://www.jacobinmag.com/2021/01/gandhi-civil-disobedience-independence-india
Produced by Conor Gillies, music by Knxwledge.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello, you very welcome to Long Reads, a jacobin podcast where we look in depth at political |
| 0:06.0 | topics and thinkers. |
| 0:07.6 | My name is Daniel Finn and the features editor here at Jacobin, and I'll be presenting |
| 0:11.8 | the show. |
| 0:13.8 | Few political figures command such universal respect as Mahatma Gandhi. |
| 0:17.7 | The national movement Gandhi helped construct supplied a template for struggles against colonial |
| 0:21.7 | rule all over the world. |
| 0:24.1 | But who is the real politician and thinker behind the rather saintly myth, and where does |
| 0:28.0 | his legacy stand in modern India, but the government led by right-wing Hindu nationalists? |
| 0:34.0 | Our guest today is Talat Ahmed, Talat teaches history at the University of Edinburgh, and |
| 0:39.1 | she's the author of Mahandas Gandhi, Experiments in Civil Disobedience. |
| 0:45.2 | What was the social background and the wider social context into which Gandhi was born? |
| 0:50.2 | Gandhi was born in the middle of the 19th century in 1869, and he was born in a small town |
| 0:58.2 | called Pobanda, which was a coastal town in part of what today is present day Gujarat |
| 1:05.4 | state in India. |
| 1:07.7 | This particular part of India was a princely state. |
| 1:11.4 | Gandhi was born into a caste family, he was from a Hindu background. |
| 1:16.8 | He wasn't from the top caste, the Brahmins, and he also wasn't from the untouchable or |
| 1:22.3 | bottom caste. |
| 1:23.8 | His family occupied what's referred to as the Banyas, which is the third caste, if you |
| 1:28.8 | use the classic Hindu formation of what caste is meant to be. |
| 1:33.2 | So it was a third caste in the hierarchy. |
... |
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