Nobody’s claiming Gandhi was a saint—wait, sorry, everybody claims he was a saint. They call him “The Great Soul,” and cities like New York and Moscow that he had nothing to do with erect statues of him in parks. But Tim Watson and G.B. Singh don’t buy into the hype. In Gandhi Under Cross-Examination, they create an imaginary courtroom where they can put the screws to an imaginary Gandhi over his non-imaginary racial views, his rampant careerism, and the lies and fabrications at the foundation of his movement for the “firmness of truth.”
The initial premise is pretty simple. Basically, there are four written accounts of a racially-based event in which Gandhi was beaten up and thrown off a train while traveling in South Africa in 1893. The differences between the various accounts (who kicked his ass, the number of people who kicked his ass, and the conversation leading up to him being ass-kicked) lead the authors to question whether the event ever really happened. According to Gandhi this event was the beginning of his quest for racial equality, so it’s kind of major if he just pulled it out of his ass. I thought the focus of sit-down with Watson would be the book, but somehow he found the time to venture off into other exciting and plausible realms, like little-known agents of Freemasonry such as Paul Bernardo and Osama Bin Laden and speculation about Shakespeare’s real identity being Edward de Vere, Earl of Oxford. I still have no idea what compelled them to put Hillary Clinton on the book’s cover.
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Vice: In your book you’re pretty harsh on Gandhi. You kind of go so far as to say that he would have ditched his wife if it would have helped his career.
Tim Watson: You know what? I’m not a gossip and I don’t like gossip. And I don’t like talking about reputations. I don’t like sullying people’s character. I don’t like speaking ill of people, or casting aspersions on them. And that’s the genuine God’s truth. But, when I saw G. B. Singh and met him for the first time and he showed me the four accounts of the racial train and coach incident, my only and prime motivation was to expose the fact that these accounts had not been properly examined. As for Gandhi, whether he’s as sacred a cow as the Hindu holy cow or a dissembler, liar, hypocrite or what-have-you, to be honest, it’s not a concern to me. When I saw a century of scholarship not properly examining the racial train and coach incidents to see their anomalies and inconsistencies, I just felt it had to be point out.
What did you glean about the real nature of Gandhi from your investigation?
OK, I’m not going to be so bold as to say exactly what kind of man he is, but what I will do is say this. Our team was thinking about doing a documentary film, which is currently on hold, I don’t know what’s happening with it. I had two colleagues that went to India to interview Gopal Godse, the brother of Gandhi’s assassin Nathuram Godse. He was 85 at the time and he died about a year after the interview. We caught it on tape, it lasted about six hours. Very poor quality by the way, but we managed to get the man on tape. He also gave us his book. It’s called May It Please Your Honor. It was written by him, and it represents his brother Nathurum’s courtroom testimony. Having read this book, which I take to be a very honest and faithful account, he says that his brother was denied by the Congress Party of India the opportunity to have his side, or his case, presented to the people. There were armed police in the courtroom who took the notebooks out of the reporter’s hands, tore them up, in some cases stamped on them very threateningly, and told these journalists that they were not to print a single word of what he gave as testimony in his own defense. One of the hallmarks of a man of honor and true integrity is that he conducts his own defense without a lawyer or a defense attorney, which Nathuram did. And he also voluntarily waited for the police to arrest him by holding up his arms and simply surrendering. He didn’t try to run or escape in any way. He wanted to be arrested. He wanted to face capital crimes. He wanted to present his case. He was never granted that luxury. His testimony is unknown to the world. Now, some people would say “a felon, and indicted individual, why should we hear what they have to say?” My idea of democracy is perhaps a little different from theirs. I believe everyone should at least have a chance to speak their peace.
Sure, but this is all happening after Gandhi’s death. How does it tie in with him being a jerk?
As far as I know, G. B. Singh and I are the only Gandhi scholars that have actually read this book… I certainly don’t know of any scholarly accounts that have given it even token attention. What he claims in this book is that Gandhi was in touch with the Amir of Afghanistan and was helping him plot a Muslim Khilafat in India.
Khilafat being?
A Muslim protectorate. Like a caliphate.
Ah, OK. But wasn’t Gandhi Hindu? Why would he want to turn India over to Islam?
Well, there is a strong affiliation between Freemasonry and the Islamic tradition. I strongly believe Gandhi had sympathies and strong affiliations with Islamic teachings and traditions, and I think that he showed a bias toward the Muslim community. He never spoke out against any of the activities of the Muslim leaders, even though men, women and children were being slaughtered in the streets of Calcutta and West Bengal.
You put a lot of emphasis on the role of the “Gandhi propaganda machine” for his early popularity. Who besides Gandhi do you think was behind it?
Well I believe it’s Masonry itself. Reverend J. J. Doke, the author of the 1909 work M. K. Gandhi: An Indian Patriot in South Africa was a Freemason as was Gandhi.
Really? And that’s documented?
Uh, documented by me because I believe it’s all but smoking-gun proof. Doke and Gandhi were in too many organizations together that were spawned by Freemasonry. The fact is he helped spearhead with Gandhi the Satyagraha movement for non-violence. He acted as the editor-in-chief of the Indian Opinion newspaper. So the idea that it’s an unbiased biography written by a completely neutral individual is just patently false.
You also reference “Gandhi haters.” Is this a big group of people?
There are a number of people, particularly from Bengal and from the Sikh community of the Punjab, that do not like him because of what happened in Bengal during the time period in which he was the head of the Congress Party of India. As I said, he left the Hindu population helpless in the face of the Muslim League. I believe that the Muslim Brotherhood is the Middle Eastern branch of Freemasonry. Osama Bin Laden, for example, was a member of the Muslim Brotherhood.
So… Osama Bin Laden is a Freemason?
In essence, because he belonged to the Muslim Brotherhood. He was initiated into Muslim Freemasonry. Now that was set up by MI6, right? So MI6 is in there thick in the Middle East. This guy Bernard Lewis – the famous Islamic scholar from Cambridge University – he’s MI6, deep cover agent. The reason he’s such an expert on Middle Eastern affairs is that he’s been through the whole works. He was one of those that was instrumental in setting up the Muslim Brotherhood. So I’m convinced that the Muslim League was an MI6 operation. Gandhi went to the Inner Temple in London, which means that he was doing law at one of the five inns of court. This is late 1880s, early 1890s. This is a time period in European history where there was deeply ingrained racism. Not only was he a commoner, but he was a foreigner. And not even white. So the fact that he was able to study at one of these ins of court was a privilege that seems somehow surprising and even out of place. How did he get there? What got him in? This is exceptional. Normally this is a place where only aristocrats and landed gentry could study, right? It wasn’t until after World War One that people like you and I had the luxury of going to university.
All right, just to put one last nail in the coffin, was Gandhi a racist?
By today’s standard yes. By yesterday’s standards, he was a supporter of castes. I have a list of quotes from various sources where he shows himself to be a supporter of castes. And he regarded caffers, or native Africans—caffers is a derogatory term that he did use—he regarded them as untouchables.
INTERVIEW BY PAUL JOHNSTON
