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 civilization as a negative presence in their perspective countries; however they each view the invading European countries in distinct ways. Fanon views the relationship between the French and the Algerians not as one of cohabitation, but “rather [an] exploitation of the colonized by the colonizer” (2). In agreement with this statement, he also emphasizes that there cannot exist two separate “sectors” in Algeria; “one of them is superfluous” and must be eliminated (Fanon 4). In this respect, each sector constantly views the other to be “the enemy, the antagonist, [and] in plain words public enemy number 1” (Fanon 14). On the other hand, Gandhi views England in a more pitiful sense. In his point of view, England should be pitied because it has fallen to the evils of Western Civilization. In some sense, England has become a false civilization, or a “civilization only in name”, by which then nation is becoming more “ruined day by day” (Gandhi 33). There is also another fundamental difference between Fanon and Gandhi that defines how they each view decolonization. Fanon believes that to get rid of the French, the native peoples must physically destroy the Europeans settled in the country. Because Fanon sees that there is constant competition between the French and the Algerians, it is plausible for him to believe that violence is the only way to get rid of the European competition. In the very first paragraph of his book he even states, as a fact; “decolonization is always a violent …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