Compare And Contrast Gandhi And Fanon

In similar time periods in the Eastern Hemisphere, two men were leading movements with the same goal - to expel Western civilization from their countries. Although these two men had the same goal in mind, the methods through which they hoped to achieve these goals were drastically different. In Africa, Franz Fanon was calling for a violent removal of the French from Algeria through his book The Wretched of the Earth. In Asia, M.K. Gandhi was writing his pleas to the Indian people to push the British out of India through far less violent means. If these two men are fighting for the same cause, how is it that their methods were so different? One can answer this question by examining how each man viewed the European power in their country, as well as the role of violence in the original colonization. To look at how the methods of decolonization differ, it may first be appropriate to examine how both men view the relationship between the colonizer and the colonized under colonial rule. Both view the Western …show more content…
Fanon could only justify using violence to force the French out of Algeria, because he had witnessed the French take Algeria through violent methods. Whereby Fanon advocated for violent means, Gandhi proclaimed that by using violence as the Europeans did, one would in essence become the corrupted European, which should not have been considered desirable by the Indian person (Gandhi 81). Gandhi preferred a movement of peaceful resistance, as he believed the British arrived in India on peaceful terms, and only because the Indians allowed them to stay on their land (39). Although the philosophies of Gandhi and Fanon share the same structure, it is clear to see how each man’s experiences shaped their perspectives on colonialism and what the best method of decolonization would