1. He was a huge racist.
In his younger years, Gandhi worked as an attorney for Indian traders in South Africa, while promoting racial segregation against black citizens. His most telling quote is when he says that “Kaffirs” (the equivalent of the “N-word”) are people “whose occupation is hunting, and whose sole ambition is to collect a certain number of cattle to buy a wife with and, then, pass his life in indolence and nakedness.”
2. He enjoyed sleeping with young girls. Who doesn’t, right?
No. Very young girls.
Gandhi was known to sleep in the nude with other nude young women (including his great-niece), in order to ‘experiment’ and ‘test’ his own sexual discipline. The women, who were in their late teens and early twenties at the time, reported long-term mental issues because of the incidents, and ‘psychotic’ was repeatedly mentioned in regards to these women’s mental state afterwards.
3. He had a strange obsession with enemas.
The Indian leader was a fan of internal cleanliness and thereby often received enemas. However, what becomes more peculiar is that he also performed these enemas on his young, female followers. Such invasiveness is creepy to say the least, and certainly an abuse of power.
4. He was a giant hypocrite.
In August 1942, Gandhi and his wife, Kasturba, were imprisoned by the British in Aga Khan Palace near Poona. While detained in the palace, Kasturba developed bronchial pneumonia. Gandhi refused ‘alien medicine’ like penicillin, which could have possibly saved her life. A mere six weeks after Kasturba died, Gandhi was infected with malaria. After three weeks of his health deteriorating, he took the drug quinine and quickly recovered.
5. He expressed sympathy for Hitler.
Perhaps it is his overwhelming empathy and understanding, but in his multiple quotes and letters to Hitler (which he always addressed as “my friend”), Gandhi seems a little too lenient. In a letter from 1940, he said, “I do not want to see the allies defeated. But I do not consider Hitler to be as bad as he is depicted. He is showing an ability that is amazing and seems to be gaining his victories without much bloodshed.”
6. He was a very controlling father.
Gandhi was markedly un-affectionate toward his sons as they grew up. When his eighteen-year-old son asked for permission to marry, Gandhi told him that he was no longer his son. When the son did marry, his wife died, and Gandhi prohibited him from remarrying. When Gandhi discovered that his second son had slept with a married woman, he made the matter public while fasting and persuading the woman to shave her hair.
7. He was quite an abusive husband.
In addition to the previously mentioned actions which Gandhi took with other women, he was also downright cruel to his wife. He admitted to beating her and said of her, “I simply cannot bear to look at Ba’s face. The expression is often like that on the face of a meek cow and gives one the feeling as a cow occasionally does, that in her own dumb manner she is saying something.”
8. He selfishly betrayed the “Untouchables.”
Gandhi threatened to fast until death in response to a British proposal to award the “depressed classes” (the Dalits, or “untouchables”) a separate electorate in the Indian parliament, resulting in frantic negotiations to save his life that created the Poona Pact, which compromised and substituted a guaranteed number of seats in the parliament for the separate electorate. Following Gandhi’s death, the culture of separation took hold again and violence swept the country. India remains hindered by untouchability, and the Dalit community is splintered into several religions and still separate from the rest of Hindu society.
9. He was a Socialist, a Communist and in general, economically blind.
While always advocating for non-violence, Gandhi also believed that workers in a capitalist economy are “exploited” and that “mill owners . . . are not exclusive owners of mills and workmen are equal sharers in ownership.” Gandhi said that in his ideal society, “There will certainly be no have-nots, no unemployment, and no disparity between classes and masses such as we see to-day. I have no doubt whatsoever that if non-violence in its full measure becomes the policy of the State, we shall reach essential equality without strife.”
10. He was against free trade.
There are not many policies that are as well-documented as serving lower classes as free and open trade. However, perhaps in connection to his wrong-headed beliefs in collectivist ideology, Gandhi is documented as being virulently against the practice, instead favoring protectionism. Said Gandhi, “Free trade may be good for England, which dumps down her manufactures among helpless people and wishes her wants to be supplied from outside at the cheapest rate. But free trade has ruined India’s peasantry . . . Moreover, no new trade can compete with foreign trade without protection.”