The Centre for Civil Society based within the School of Built Environment and Development Studies invites you to the seminar :-The Gandhi debate

Speakers: Ashwin Desai, Betty Govinden, Crispin Hemson and Andile Mngxitama
Date: Friday 27 November 2015
Time: 17:30-20:00
Venue: Ike's Books, 48a Florida Road, Morningside, Durban

Topic:
The book The South African Gandhi: Stretcher-Bearer of Empire - coauthored by Ashwin Desai and Goolam Vahed - is a controversial study of how Gandhi's devotion to the British Empire, his class loyalty to merchants, and his failure to ally with local Zulu people during his 1893-1914 stay in South Africa were integral to his development as a political campaigner. Yet these features are contested, and since the book's publication a variety of disputes have emerged. This seminar will focus on the historical trajectory of Gandhi's South African politics, although current implications of the research for local race and ethnic relations are upper-most in many readers' minds.

Speakers:
Ashwin Desai is professor of sociology at the University of Johannesburg. Betty Govinden is author of the award-winning book Sister Outsiders – Representation of Identity and Difference in Selected Writings by South African Indians. Crispin Hemson is the director of the International Centre of Non-Violence at the Durban University of Technology. Andile Mngxitama is a founder of Black First Land First and edits New Frank Talk.