What do you think of Gandhi?

[System of Solace]

(I'm sure this could go in Other Religions, but I figured it pertained to history.)
Until I read God is not Great, I had always kinda thought of Gandhi as another one of those peaceful revolution guys, a man who was a role model for many. I still think of him as a good person in general, but an incompetent leader who had some ideals that would be disastrous if followed.
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/arch...hi/308550/
This is an article written by Hitchens on the subject. Gandhi's biggest fault was his "spinning wheel". A symbol of Gandhi's rejection of the modern world. From the book:

This wheel—which still appears as the symbol on the
Indian flag—was the emblem of Gandhi's rejection of
modernity. He took to dressing in rags of his own
manufacture, and sandals, and to carrying a staff, and
expressing hostility to machinery and technology. He
rhapsodized about the Indian village, where the millennial
rhythms of animals and crops would determine how human
life was lived. Millions of people would have mindlessly
starved to death if his advice had been followed, and would
have continued to worship cows (cleverly denominated by
the priests as "sacred" so that the poor ignorant people
would not kill and eat their only capital during times of
drought and famine). Gandhi deserves credit for his
criticism of the inhuman Hindu system of caste, whereby
lower orders of humanity were condemned to an ostracism
and contempt that was in some ways even more absolute
and cruel than slavery. But at just the moment when what
India most needed was a modern secular nationalist leader,
it got a fakir and guru instead. The crux of this unwelcome
realization came in 1941, when the Imperial Japanese
Army had conquered Malaya and Burma and was on the
frontiers of India itself. Believing (wrongly) that this
spelled the end of the Raj, Gandhi chose this moment to
boycott the political process and issue his notorious call for
the British to "Quit India." He added that they should leave
it "To God or to Anarchy," which in the circumstances
would have meant much the same thing. Those who naively credit Gandhi with a conscientious or consistent
pacifism might wish to ask if this did not amount to letting
the Japanese imperialists do his fighting for him.
Among the many bad consequences of the
Gandhi/Congress decision to withdraw from negotiations
was the opening it gave to Muslim League adherents to
"stay on" in the state ministries which they controlled, and
thus to enhance their bargaining positions when the
moment for independence arrived shortly thereafter. Their
insistence that independence take the form of mutilation
and amputation, with western Punjab and eastern Bengal
hacked away from the national body, became unstoppable.
The hideous consequences endure to this day, with further
Muslim-on-Muslim bloodbaths in Bangladesh in 1971, the
rise of an aggressive Hindu nationalist party, and a
confrontation in Kashmir that is still the likeliest
provocation for a thermonuclear war.
There was always an alternative, in the form of the secular
position taken by Nehru and Rajagopalachari, who would
have traded a British promise of immediate postwar
independence for a common alliance, on the part of both
India and Britain, against fascism. In the event, it was in
fact Nehru and not Gandhi who led his country to
independence, even at the awful price of partition. For
decades, a solid brotherhood between British and Indian
secularists and leftists had laid out the case for, and won
the argument for, the liberation of India. There was never
any need for an obscurantist religious figure to impose his
ego on the process and both retard and distort it. The whole
case was complete without that assumption. One wishes
every day that Martin Luther King had lived on and
continued to lend his presence and his wisdom to American
politics. For "the Mahatma," who was murdered by
members of a fanatical Hindu sect for not being devout
enough, one wishes that he could have lived if only to see
what damage he had wrought (and is relieved that he did
not live to implement his ludicrous spinning wheel
program).

[Minimalist]

I think he's dead.

[Polaris]

I think he's dead.

Damn. I was going to put that down.

[System of Solace]

I think he's dead.

[Cyberman]

What do I think of Gandhi? That would be a good idea.

[Cinjin]

Who?

[TaraJo]

People like Ghandi are good spiritual leaders and good inspirations for how to live your personal lives but when given the responsibility for running something, they don't usually do so great.

[Waratah]

He knew how to dress

[KichigaiNeko]

Or "undress" for that matter... certainly was aware of "global warming"

[Red Celt]

Gandhi is often quoted by White Pride™ people. Sadly, he didn't have very kind words about black people... so, the good work that he did wrt Indian independence is slightly marred by some of his other thoughts.