A First-Rate Madness (39 page)

88
“was literally praying that God should gather him”:
Ibid.

88
“He was very shy and withdrawn”:
Erikson,
Gandhi's Truth,
99.

89
“Our want of independence began to smart”:
Mohandas K. Gandhi,
Autobiography: The Story of My Experiments with Truth
(New York: Dover, 1983 [1948]), 22–23.

89
“I decided at last to write out the confession”:
Ibid., 23.

90
only about 2 percent of children try to kill themselves:
Ronald C. Kessler, Guilherme Borges, and Ellen E. Walters, “Prevalence of and Risk Factors for Lifetime Suicide Attempts in the National Comorbidity Survey,”
Archives of General Psychiatry
56 (1999): 617–626. David M. Fergusson and Michael T. Lynskey, “Childhood Circumstances, Adolescent Adjustment, and Suicide Attempts in a New Zealand Birth Cohort,”
Journal of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry
34 (1995): 612–622.

90
Indeed, 90 percent of children who attempt suicide:
David Shaffer, Madelyn S. Gould, Prudence Fisher, Paul Trautman, Donna Moreau, Marjorie Kleinman, and Michael Flory, “Psychiatric Diagnosis in Child and Adolescent Suicide,”
Archives of General Psychiatry
53 (1996): 339–348. Fergusson et al., “Childhood Circumstances.”

90 (or possibly, given some hypersexuality, cyclothymia):
Based on incomplete and debated evidence, it is also possible that Gandhi's baseline temperament consisted of cyclothymia. Some observers report that Gandhi sometimes had a high amount of energy, as exemplified by his habit of taking long, vigorous walks (Fischer,
Gandhi: His Life and Message for the World,
1954). There is also some evidence of possible hypersexuality: for instance, in his
Autobiography,
Gandhi describes very high libido when he first got married; he describes marked guilt because he was engaged in sexual intercourse with his wife at the very moment his father died. He felt he could not control his urges even enough to stay by his father's deathbed. Freud once remarked that a major prohibition usually reflects a profound instinctual urge. In this sense, Gandhi's later emphasis on celibacy may reflect a strong sexual instinct. In his later life, there was also a controversy around the fact that Gandhi slept with his young niece. Some close aides even left the Mahatma over that scandal. Gandhi claimed he was only testing his vow of celibacy, and that he was literally sleeping, not having sex. If these controversies and claims are correct, then these behaviors are not consistent with pure dysthymia but may reflect periods of high energy and hypersexuality, which would make a cyclothymic temperament more likely. I did not make that diagnosis in the text because the veracity of these claims is not entirely clear to me. At least Gandhi had dysthymic temperament, I would conclude, but he possibly had cyclothymic temperament instead. Bal Ram Nanda,
Gandhi and His Critics
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), 14–17. Jad Adams,
Gandhi: Naked Ambition
(London: Quercus Publishing, 2011).

90
“I was a coward”:
Gandhi,
Autobiography,
17.

90
“I always felt tongue-tied”:
Ibid., 55.

91
“I felt the illness was bound to be prolonged”:
Ibid., 407–408.

92
the unfortunate life of Gandhi's eldest son:
Chandulal Bhagubhai Dalal,
Harilal Gandhi: A Life
(Chennai, India: Orient Longman, 2007).

93
“My attitude towards the English”:
Louis Fischer,
The Essential Gandhi
(New York: Vintage, 1983), 192–193.

93
“We can do nothing without Hindu-Moslem unity”:
Ibid., 253.

94
“
Three-fourths of the miseries and misunderstandings in the world
”:
Ibid., 255–256.

95
“Europe has sold her soul”:
Richard Grenier, “The Gandhi Nobody Knows,”
Commentary,
March 1983, 59–72.

95
“Let them take possession of your beautiful island”:
Ibid.

95
They repeat the conventional wisdom:
This viewpoint was later repeated by Erik Erikson in conversations with Huey P. Newton, the founder of the Black Panther Party in the 1960s, and a critic of King's nonviolence. Erik H. Erikson and Huey P. Newton,
In Search of Common Ground
(New York: Norton, 1973).

96
Gandhi tried to persuade Nehru and other Hindu leaders:
Documents online at
http://www.oocities.org/sadna_gupta/Extra6A_1940to43offersofJinnahPMship.html
(accessed February 26, 2011).

96
to give Pakistan £44 million:
Bal Ram Nanda,
Gandhi and His Critics
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), 109.

97
“There was a time when people listened to me”:
Fischer,
The Essential Gandhi,
355–356.

97
“He said, there was a time when India listened to him”:
Arthur Koestler,
The Yogi and the Commissar, and Other Essays
(New York Collier, 1961), 267.

97
“what he had mistaken for Satyagraha”:
Ibid., 266.

97
“Where do congratulations come in?”:
Fischer,
The Essential Gandhi,
362.

98
“The woes of Mahatmas”:
Gandhi,
Autobiography,
215.

98
“a dark and deadly future”:
Fischer,
The Essential Gandhi,
368.

99
“For several minutes, Gandhi and his guests discussed Christianity”:
Lerone Bennett,
What Manner of Man: A Biography of Martin Luther King Jr.
(Chicago: Johnson Publishing Company, 1964), 3–4.

100
American black leaders had become deeply interested in satyagraha:
Vijay Prashad, “PropaGandhi Ahimsa in Black America,”
Little India,
2002,
http://www.littleindia.com/march2002/PropaGandhi%20Ahimsa%20in%20Black%20America.htm
(accessed January 17, 2011).

100
“The black workers led by young, educated ministers”:
William Edward Burghardt DuBois,
W. E. B. DuBois: A Reader
(New York: Macmillan, 1995), 92.

100
“The American Negro is not yet free”:
Ibid.

101
An edited collection of his papers, published after his death:
Clayborne Carson, ed.,
The Autobiography of Martin Luther King Jr.
(New York: Warner Books, 1991).

101 Time
magazine reported in its 1963 “Man of the Year” article:
Available at
http://www.time.com/time/subscriber/personoftheyear/archive/stories/1963.html
(accessed September 3, 2010).

101
“The first incident occurred”:
Bennett,
What Manner of Man,
18.

102
Jesse Jackson recalls:
Jesse Jackson, online oral interview,
http://www.thehistorymakers.com/programs/dvl/files/Jackson_Jessef.html
(accessed January 17, 2011).

102
This MLK was too radical for many:
Vincent Harding,
Martin Luther King: The Inconvenient Hero
(Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1996).

103
“By 1968, King was working at a frenzied pace”:
Stephen B. Oates,
Let the Trumpet Sound: A Life of Martin Luther King, Jr.
(New York: Harper and Row, 1982), 440.

103
“‘Bayard,' King said [to Rustin]”:
Ibid., 444–445.

104
“After the Meredith march, there were fewer marches”:
Author interview with Alvin Pouissant, Boston, January 29, 2010.

104
“What I have been doing is giving, giving, giving”:
David Garrow,
Bearing the Cross: Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference
(New York: HarperCollins, 2004), 125.

105
Dr. Poussaint . . . gave me a firsthand assessment:
Author interview with Alvin Pouissant, January 29, 2010.

107
some of King's aides urged their leader to get psychiatric help:
Oates,
Let the Trumpet Sound,
440.

107
“Psychologists would say that a guilt complex”:
The King Papers Project, Stanford University,
http://mlk-kpp01.stanford.edu/primarydocuments/Vol4/27-Oct-1957_InterviewByAgronsky.pdf
(accessed September 3, 2010).

107
“put our outrage into perspective”:
Andrew Young,
A Way Out of No Way
(Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1994), 63.

107–108
Bevel's insight was hard earned:
Les Carpenter, “A Father's Shadow: A Civil Rights Hero and the Daughter He Abused,”
Washington Post Magazine,
May 27, 2008, available at
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/discussion/2008/05/22/DI2008052202148.html
(accessed February 27, 2011).

108
“By nonviolence, we were trying to cure”:
Author interview with Alvin Poussaint.

108
“a sort of aesthetic or romantic love”:
Martin Luther King,
Strength to Love
(Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1977), 52.

109
“What do nonviolent fighters do”:
Bennett,
What Manner of Man,
210–211.

109
The answer, as King would later tell Poussaint:
Author interview with Alvin Poussaint.

110
“war without violence”:
Krishnalal Shridharani,
War Without Violence: A Study of Gandhi's Method and Its Accomplishments
(New York: Harcourt, Brace and Co., 1938).

110
“My creed of nonviolence is an extremely active force”:
http://www.mkgandhi.org/nonviolence/phil8.htm
(accessed September 3, 2010).

110
“The nonviolent resister is just as opposed to the evil”:
http://mlk-kpp01.stanford.edu/index.php/encyclopedia/documentsentry/non_aggression_procedures_to_interracial_harmony/
(accessed September 3, 2010).

110
King did not reject violence per se:
From his 1957 interview with Martin Agronsky:

The King Papers Project, Stanford University,
http://mlk-kpp01.stanford.edu/primarydocuments/Vol4/27-Oct-1957_InterviewByAgronsky.pdf

(accessed September 3, 2010).
110
in a 1967
New York Times Magazine
article:
Alvin Poussaint, “A Negro Psychiatrist

Explains the Negro Psyche,”
New York Times Magazine,
August 20, 1967.

111
Another black political leader:
Frantz Fanon,
The Wretched of the Earth
(New York: Grove Press, 1965).

111
He called it “constructive assertiveness”:
Poussaint, “A Negro Psychiatrist Explains the Negro Psyche.”

111
Shortly afterward, when King visited Boston:
Author interview with Alvin Poussaint, January 29, 2010.

111
the coming together of... Frantz Fanon and Martin Luther King:
Years later, Erik Erikson, who had published a careful study of Gandhi, made this connection as he tried to understand the ideas of the leader of the Black Panther Party, Huey Newton. Erikson wrote, “There is a relationship between violence and nonviolence which is rarely considered by those who have not studied the question. . . . [Gandhi's] point . . . was that nonviolence doesn't just mean abstention from a violence which one would not have the means to carry through anyway, but the renunciation of armed tactics one would well know how to use. In this sense, the meaningful opposition is not that of arbitrary violence versus fragmented nonviolence, but that of disciplined violence versus disciplined nonviolence.” Erik H. Erikson and Huey P. Newton,
In Search of Common Ground
(New York: Norton, 1973), 49–50.

112
“Martin always felt that anger was a very important commodity”:
Oates,
Let the Trumpet Sound,
274.

112
“Many people fear nothing more terribly”:
King,
Strength to Love,
21.

113
“you have to be a little crazy”:
Available on iTunes:
http://deimos3.apple.com/WebObjects/Core.woa/Browse/new.duke.edu.1293697282.01293697292.1874801640?i=1201849001
(accessed July 15, 2010).