A fine post on the shortcomings of Gandhi, with a follow-up here.

I obviously did not grow up in India, so my perspective on this is largely based on the extremely sentimentalized view that I think people here take of Gandhi. The movie did wonders to sanctify the image of his life, and cement the view here that the man was perfection embodied.

Odd for me, as it was the act of finally deciding to come to grips with the man's principles themselves by reading his autobiography that soured me on him and his ideas. It's been quite a few years since I read it and I can't recall many specifics, but I found myself intuitively put off by much of it. My recollection of it is of a narrative filled with a willful, almost belligerent naivete, rooted as much in fantasy as in any reasonable sense of reality. If there was one truly admirable quality I got out of it, it was his tenacity. I do admire his discipline and rigor, but my sense was that the ideas those qualities served were muddled at best, flat wrong at worst.

Enough pontificating. I will add that I found myself spending considerable time at The Examined Life, far more than I usually do on new (to me) blogs. There are some wonderful and provocatively titled entries with good reading, and lots of interesting links to sites I know (knew?) nothing about. The blogosphere at its best.