Journal Article — Confronting Colonialism and Racism: Fanon and Gandhi — by Hira Singh

Fanon and Gandhi were products of colonial social formations, confronting the violence of racism embedded in colonial domination and control by seeking emancipation through political action. This article explores the trajectory of Gandhi’s political engagement to empower the Asian laboring and trading classes, racially discriminated and politically marginalized by the imperial-colonial set up in South Africa from the 1890s to the 1910s. The article compares the commonalities and differences in the experiences of colonialism and racism by Gandhi and Fanon in their respective historical contexts as reflected in their political tactics and strategies informed by their respective understandings and cultural interpretations of the modernity of the west–the colonizer–in relation to the east (albeit, non-western world)–the colonized. The article highlights the significance of a comparative account of colonized people’s resistance to the racialized discourse and intercourse of colonialism-imperialism and its particular urgency in the current context of globalization shrouded in the mission of democratization.