GHANDI'S EPIC JOURNEY

Whoever wants to quarrel with Christopher  Watts  about his spelling and illustrations  on his blog must do so on his terms. This blog is not available for anonymous comments to a post on Watt's Trending.

I watched Ghandi night before last.... a classic movie decades old. I grew to adulthood during Ghandi's epic journey. I was never inclined to watch the film before. I knew the narrative and how it ended.

The entire world was shaped to benefit the few with little concern for the many.  The governing elite was all powerful. 

As a consequence the French had a successful revolution accompanied by horrible consequences. 

The Russians later  did much  the same thing under a political banner.  

The Americans had already broken free from the British and down the road massacred each other in a civil war the effects of which are still being felt. 

I was young but old enough when  Ghandi struck a chord with the masses world over. His resolve was to free his country from British Colonial Masters. His life was a triumph of logic, courage and uncompromising commitment to principle and endurance.

The story ended with qualified success .The British partitioned the country between Muslim and Hindu

They divided the people along religious lines and created Pakistan 

Ghandi was shot by a fanatic

Last night I was flipping channels and heard an opening line of dialogue.Ghandi was being welcomed home from South Africa where he published a journal. 

"We needed you to come back to India because of the power of your writing" 

I was hooked. I didn't know that early part of the story.

The British government was busy building an empire and re-arranging the world. 

The British Protectorate of Palestine  was partitioned to create the State of Israel.

Where before Jews and Palestinians lived compatibly side by side for centuries, non Jewish Palestinians became refugees over-night, living in camps ,with schools where  young males  were taught to hate and prepare. Sixty-six years later, that hasn't changed. Except that young Palestinians males and females turn themselves into human detonators that kill Jews indiscriminately and  Israelis have nuclear weapons and heat-seeking missiles that have a specific target and also kill women and children indiscriminately. 

The French finally extricated themselves from French Indo-China after decades of terrorism at home and abroad.  Vietnam emerged. The Americans used flame throwers,Agent Orange and  hundreds of thousands of young American lives to impose their influence. And failed. 

They did the same thing earlier in Korea .

In 1956 ,the French and British invaded  Egypt to protect the private interest of the Suez Canal. American President Dwight Eisenhower ordered them out and Canadian  Prime Minister Lester  B Pearson intervened and Canada became the peacemaker.

Currently, millions of people are pouring out of Iraq and Syria and according to last night's news, Afghanistan . They desperately seek a safe place to raise their children.

In the late fifties hundred of thousands of Europeans flooded out of Europe for the same reason. 

Hundreds of thousands of Russians living in Ukraine are looking to Russia for protection from consequences of  the separation that occurred during the break-up of the former Soviet Republic. 

History continues to march on  with death, destruction, propaganda and the same mistakes 

repeated over and over. 

Billion dollar fortunes are made from weapons of mass destruction, including poison gas manufactured in  Western Canada.If we don't use it to kill people including small babies, I suppose  it doesn't count that it was made in our country and sold to whoever wanted to buy. 

And Canada's Prime Minister is ready to send young Canadians to fight and die while young Ukrainains high -tail it to Poland because they do not want to kill their cousins. And the government gives them sticks to fight with. 

That's reminiscent of the outset of the Second World War when the Polish Cavalry rode out to meet German tanks and howitzers. 

So I watched the movie, was inspired, then returned to terrible and stark reality.