Fanon or Gandhi?
Frantz Fanon and Mahatma Gandhi shared the same primary goals of national independence and decolonization. The methods they proposed to meet those objective were however far different. In Fanon's The Wretched of the Earth1 he explains his theories on why national revolutions occur and how they should be conducted. To the psychiatrist Fanon, violence is required. He writes about colonialism: " It is naked violence and only gives in when confronted with greater violence."2 Ghandi rejects violence. He doesn't even accept that India being under colonial rule is because of violence. He writes The "English have not taken India, we have given it to them."3 I'll describe and compare further the ideas of each.
Frantz Fanon was born on July 20, 1925 in Martinique. He was raised in a middle class urban family, his father was a customs inspector. His education was in the French schools. In 1940 a Vichy government was set up in Martinique and the U.S. Blockaded the island.4 Many French sailors were trapped on the island and proceeded to generally rape and pillage at will. A hatred of the Vichy developed, and of Germany, Fanon joined the Free French in 1943. He remained in the French Army after the war, leaving at the rank of corporal in 1946. He had received a citation for bravery.4 Fanon then continued his schooling in Lyon France, defending his medical thesis in 1951. He took his medical residency under Professor Francois Tosquelles, a pioneer in psychiatric medicine. He passed the Medicat des Hopitaux Psychiatriques exam in 1953. Fanon had been politically active all during medical school. His work Black Skin, White Masks, which merged the political, the psychological, and the social, was completed in 1951. Fanon was a member of the Leftist intellectual community in France.5 Fanon went to Algiers in November 1953 to work as a doctor. He treated the wounded and tortured of both sides of the guerilla war until 1956 when he resigned. He participated in a strike of doctors sympathetic to the FLN and was expelled in 1957. He then decided to work for the FLN as a "professional revolutionary".6 Politically this is where Fanon was when he wrote the The Wretched of the Earth, originally published in 1961. It was a rallying cry and an instruction manual on how to achieve decolonization.
Some highlights of Fanon's experience might explain his views. There is no question that he was very gifted intellectually, but his experience in his late teens and early twenties was that of war. His writings indicate he was well versed in the contemporary works of others on colonialism. Terminology was used by Fanon that is found in other scholarly efforts, like that of J.S. Furnivall and Ghandi. I refer here to terms like metropole, the colonizing power's home base, and to the interior of a colony.7 He had read histories of guerilla warfare, citing the classic example of the Spanish uprising against Napoleon. He also was very aware of the event going on around the world while writing The Wretched of the Earth, like the Vietnam War. He clearly studied the subjects of imperialism and colonialism very well. He was especially aware of the view of the colonialists, that the 'natives' only understand force. Turning that psychology around on the accusers, he observed that it was actually the colonizers who could only understand force. He pointed to the statues of the colonizers, and their own words, to come to the conclusion that "It's them or us".8 He also saw the cold war as a window of opportunity for revolutions for independence, as the colonizers were busy fighting each other.
Fanon used the ideas of the Manichaean religion to explain the situation of the colony, in that he sees the world as a duality of the soul (light, good) and the body (dark earth, bad). Thus he suggested that the colonizing force was bad and should be eradicated. He considered 'enlightened violence' as a cleansing force: "It rids the colonized of their inferiority complex". One of his most famous quotes is that violence is "perfect mediation". That sounds like a satirical jab at Ghandi's use of meditation. More seriously he considered the violence of a revolution to be a powerful legitimizing force for a new nation. The heroes of the revolution will become the political leaders of the new independent nation. 9
Ghandi was born in 1869. His father was Prime Minister of a state in British India. His mother was a devout Hindu. He was married at 14. In 1888 he went to London to study law. In 1893 he accepted a law position in South Africa, where he started working for minority rights. He did a brief stint in the Ambulance Corps in the Boer War.
In 1910 Ghandi's Hind Swaraj (Indian Home Rule) was published. Ghandi was 40 years old at the time, Fanon was 36 when The Wretched of the Earth was published so their ages were close at the time of writing the two. Hind Swaraj describes Ghandi's philosophies & methods towards the goal of independence for India. Ghandi approved of the efforts of the Indian National Congress' goal of self-government for India similar to what Canada had achieved.10
Ghandi saw the English not a enemies, but shrewd businessmen who provided what the Indian's themselves wanted. He wrote "it is proven that the English entered India for the purposes of trade. They remain in it for the same purpose and we help them to do so." 11 If India wanted the British to leave, they had only to look at their own dealings with the British for the solution. All they had to do is ignore the British and they would leave. Ghandi called this approach 'passive resistance'.
Ghandi proposed a social revolution to cast off the shackles of colonialism. He wrote that man should busy himself with godly pursuits rather than worldly pursuits. He blamed modern technologies for many of the troubles in the world. Railroads spread plague germs and make religious treks to holy places meaningless. Doctors and lawyers impoverish the people with high fees. A lawyer by training, he saw how the British court system controlled the society. His solution was to just ignore the British system, their laws, their hospitals, throw away all machinery, move out of the cities and back to the land. Ghandi, even in revolution, had no use for European weapons.13
Ghandi claimed that if the Indians used violence, like the colonialist had done, the results would be the same, a violent society. He wrote: "fair means alone can produce fair results, and that, at least in the majority of cases, if not indeed in all, the force of love and pity is infinitely greater than the force of arms".14
It is interesting to note the difference between the way Fanon considers the cities, and Ghandi. Fanon appreciated the enlightening effects of intellectual thought and discussion going on in the urban regions. Even though the revolution depended totally on the action of the peasantry, the city was where revolutionary thought began. Those who would lead the rural peasantry in the battle to destroy their oppressors were produced in the intellectual community, not in the peasantry itself. Ghandi suggested one to go back into the interior "that has not yet been polluted by the railways" before one could become a true patriot. Fanon appreciated the benefits of modern technology, where Ghandi shunned it. He called for infrastructure investments after the revolution; the previous colonizers should pay large restitutions for the resources and products of slavery they had absconded over the years back to the metropolis.
Some ideas the two have in common are both pointed out the injustices born of racism, and see the racist justification in the colonizer's hypocrisy between their rights of man rhetoric and the realities of their colonial slavery. Both complained about the colonizer's ability to rewrite history. Fanon: "The history he writes is therefore not the history of the country he is despoiling, but the history of his own nation's looting, raping, and starving to death."15
Ghandi complained that history does not record peace and love, only the interruption of peace. Both wanted to purge the colonial elements from the society of the new nation. Both had little use for capitalism. Fanon was definitely leaned socialist but considered Marx too as a European influence that should updated for the times. Fanon appreciated the political power of the labor unions to cripple the economy and bring about negotiations. This is very similar in practice to Ghandi's 'passive resistance', but for Fanon it was only one tool in the revolutionary's toolkit.
Of course the primary difference is in their approach to violence. Ghandi would probably say Fanon, for his revengeful nature, was effeminate, he had not yet reached his manhood, he did fear only God. "When a man abandons truth, he does so owing to fear in some shape or form."16 Fanon would probably call Ghandi a loser who would prefer people suffering to action. " The colonized subject also manages to lose sight of the colonist through religion."17
Fanon acknowledged some problem with national movements had developed. Various factions or political parties struggle for dominance after independence is achieved. In retrospect some of the struggles for independence have remained in conflict zones at the time of this writing, 2008. Could it be that Fanon's violent methods tend to breed continued violence after independence? On the other hand, in Fanon's defense, after independence India fought a civil war and broke in two across religious lines. In both those cases violence continued.
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You have citation numbers but no citations... which leags to the question, is this an original work or is it a seed from somewhere else?
That aside, I think that the characterization of Ghandi's message as just ignore leaves out the concept and tactic of civil disobedience. (I have not, however, read either of the men's books, so my knowledge is lacking in that area.)
One last thought: It was my understanding that the religious conflict in India was there before and beside the end of colonial rule by the British, and that the solution of breaking the nation into Pakistan for the muslim factions and India for the hindu was accomplished while the British were still on the ground, specifically to halt the widespread violence of the time. Am I mistaken? (It really has been a long time since I studied this.)
Thank you.
Interesting essay, also curious as to who's it is.
Thank you for the links, Robert. It will take some time to digest them within my schedule.