Did you know that Gandhi once wore British uniform? He volunteered during the South African war and was assigned to a mounted ambulance unit. There is a photograph of him wearing uniform with one side of his hat turned up Aussi style
I knew that he served as a British Army stretcher bearer during the Boer War. I understand that he wouldn’t volunteer for a role that meant bearing arms.
I suspect that his PR machine was a little economical with things. His uniform in the photo suggests more than a stretcher bearer. numbers of Indians served with various parts of the RAMC or the IAMC including some doctors and surgeons. Indeed the first Kings commissions were amongst them. However he would not have been allowed to volunteer to bear arms as the conflict had been deemed "a Sahibs war" although there were a few , mainly cavalrymen, who found a way round. The Afrikaners were not viewed with a huge amount of sympathy in India - oh what a surprise.
Are there other plaques for other revolutionaries? Ho Chi Minh or Joseph Stalin for example. Is there one in Liverpool for Adolph?. Britain has given sanctuary etc to so many some good some bad some downright evil so perhaps we need different type of commemorative plaque
There is a plaque for Ho Chi Minh at New Zealand House on the site of the Carlton Hotel where he worked. Don't think Stalin has one. Lenin has got one in Tavistock Place. A couple of others that spring to mind are Kropotkin (Sandridge Park) and Menon (Highgate). Tim
Ghandi served in the Natal Indian Ambulance Corps, which he had himself raised to provide stretcher bearers. Ref his autobiography. "Suffice it to say that my loyalty to the British rule drove me to participation with the British in that war. I felt that, if I demanded rights as a British citizen, it was also my duty, as such, to participate in the defence of the British Empire. I held then that India could achieve her complete emancipation only within and through the British Empire. So I collected together as many comrades as possible, and with very great difficulty got their services accepted as an ambulance corps." Tim
The Forum - Gandhi: Architect of Indian independence - BBC Sounds Mohandas K Gandhi’s decades-long campaign against British rule was the driving force behind Indian independence in August 1947. The way he did it - through ‘satyagraha’, or non-violent resistance - made him one of the most famous and revered thinkers of the 20th century, and has inspired protest movements around the world. Rajan Datar explores the experiences, ideas and people that turned Gandhi from a timid schoolboy and failed lawyer into a man bold enough to take on the might of the British Empire. Plus, we ask whether he achieved the kind of Indian independence he really wanted, and find out why his legacy is the subject of intense debate in India to this day. Producer: Simon Tulett Contributors: Tridip Suhrud, a professor at CEPT university, in Ahmedabad, India, and a Gandhi scholar who has translated many of his works into English, including the first critical edition of Gandhi’s autobiography, ‘My Experiments with Truth’; Karuna Mantena, a professor of political science at Columbia University in the US, currently working on a book about Gandhi’s political thought; Anil Nauriya, a writer on freedom struggles in India and Africa and a lawyer based at the Supreme Court in New Delhi.
