Gandhi
he single-handedly chased the British out of India! that's what I learned when I was little. my parents spoke of this as A Bad Thing, and the other missionaries agreed with them, or they agreed with the other missionaries, I wasn't sure which. either way sufficed to convince me it was A Very Good Thing. that alone would make me appreciate him damn near seventy years later. but how did he chase them out? civil disobedience and nonviolent protest. at 7 or 8, I could not believe it - the civil and the nonviolent parts. he must've used magic. if I could learn that magic, maybe I could chase the missionaries out of Brasil. maybe I'd be a hero in Brasil! as you know, that didn't happen. when I read about Brasil now, I am appalled at how successful the missionaries were. evangelicals rate mentioning in the same sentence as Catholics as far as percentage of the population goes. we were a toenail clipping at the time I lived there, or I had that impression. but back to Gandhi. I later learned that his chasing the British out was a little more complicated than I had understood from the presentation in my elementary school. that one must have been occasioned by his assassination in 1948. I had to swallow hard and accept it when I learned he'd been a lawyer, and a very successful lawyer, before he became an Indian holy man. (he was so successful that the British Governor of South Africa treated him with respect and wariness.) and I later learned that both civil and nonviolent were real. I still have to shake my head to let in that they really worked. I thought the only kind of revolution that worked was George Washington's and Simon Bolivar's. in any case, as well as I can tell, he really was a holy man, and the British really are out of India. thank you, Gandhi, for making me believe, however shakily, that civility and nonviolence did work once and might work again.
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