A Dinner with Mr. Gandhi: The Failure of Western Education

Dr. Suryaraju Mattimalla

Mr. Barack Obama,

You once said
that if you could invite anyone,
dead or alive,
to share a meal with you,
you would choose Mr. Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi.

Mr. Barack,

You said if you could share a meal
With anyone from the past or present,
You would choose a small dinner with Mr. Gandhi,
Calling him one of your true heroes.

You said you wanted a very small meal
because Gandhi did not eat much.
You called him one of your greatest heroes.

Mr. Obama,

Your words made me think
about your years of education.

You studied at Occidental College.
You went to Columbia University.
You earned a law degree from Harvard.
You even became the first Black president
of the Harvard Law Review.

I think of your years of study,
From Occidental to Columbia,
And your time leading the law review at Harvard.
With all those degrees and books,
Did you look closely at the history you praise?

Mr. Obama,

I thought of your higher education at Occidental College,
where you studied liberal arts in Los Angeles for two years, from 1979 to 1981,
and at Columbia University, where you studied for your Bachelor of Arts in political science,
and at Harvard Law School, where you earned your Juris Doctor magna cum laude. During your time there, you became the first African American president of the Harvard Law Review.

But still I knew.
I knew you were not an intellectual.
I knew you were not even a scholar.
I knew you had not even read an article
that was published by the Harvard Law Review.
Otherwise, you would never choose Mr. Gandhi or
any icon of Asian liberation movements to have dinner with.

Mr. Barack Obama,

Time and again, you have proved that you are a Muslim
without any critical thinking and
without any critical faculties.
Critical thinking and critical faculties come from extensive reading of academic scholarship
and observing the person you revere.
You were born to a Kenyan Muslim man and a white woman,
but you remained a hardcore Muslim without any critical faculties.
I thought that your birth to a white woman or your education at Occidental College,
a liberal arts college, and Columbia University would transform you from an uneducated Muslim into an
intellectual, but you remained a Muslim.

But tell me, Mr. Obama,

What is the value of education?
if it does not teach us to question?

What is the value of a degree?
If it does not teach us to think?

What is the value of reading
if we never question the people we admire?

You studied law.
You studied politics.
You studied history.

But have you studied Mr. Gandhi?
beyond the stories of his greatness?

Have you read the history?
of his treatment of Africans?

Have you examined his early writings?
about the Black people of Africa?

Or have you simply accepted
the image that the Hindu world created for him?

Mr. Obama,

A true intellectual does not worship heroes.
A true scholar questions their actions.
A serious mind does not fear history.
It faces the truth,
even when the truth is painful.

When I think of your wish
to share a meal with Mr. Gandhi,
I remember another history.

I remember the African Christians
who faced his racial attitudes
during his years in South Africa.

I remember the questions
that Ghanaian historians and scholars
have raised about his writings.

I remember the Ghanaian critical studies
that challenge the image of Mr. Gandhi
as a perfect man.

Mr. Obama,

Would you still call him your hero
if you studied every page
of that difficult history?

Would you still invite him to dinner?
If you were the person
he once looked down upon?

Would he welcome you?
with the same respect
that you offer him?

Would he accept you as an equal?

Would his followers
look at you without brutal racism?

These are not small questions, Mr. Obama.
They are questions about human dignity.
They are questions about race.
They are questions about justice.

And they deserve honest answers.

Mr. Obama,

I also question the education
that Western universities celebrate.

What is the purpose of Oxford?
What is the purpose of Cambridge?
What is the purpose of Harvard?
What is the purpose of Columbia?

Is education only about degrees,
titles, and powerful positions?
Or should education teach us
to challenge racism,
to expose hypocrisy,
and to defend human dignity?

I ask you, Mr. Obama:

Where is the critical thinking?
Where is the courage to question?
Where is the intellectual honesty?

A university should not produce
people who simply follow famous names.
It should produce people
who examine the truth.

And this is why
I turn my attention to Africa.

I turn my attention to the University of Ghana,
to Ghanaian scholars,
and to those who question
the accepted stories of history.

Scholars in Africa, like those at the University of Ghana,
Have looked deeply into Mr. Gandhi’s ideology.
They point to his own words in South Africa,
Where he wrote harshly against Black Africans
And fought for separation, not unity.

So when you praise him as a hero,
A hard question must be asked.
Would the man from those early writings
Have welcomed you to his table as an equal?
Would he have walked beside you as a brother?

Let Ghanaian scholarship speak.
Let Ghanaian historians question.
Let Ghanaian voices challenge
the false heroes created by the Western democracies,
created by the Western liberal states,
created by the Western left-wing powers,
created by the Western labour governments.
No historical figure
should be above criticism.

True learning means looking at the whole truth,
Not just the easy parts of a famous story.
When leaders ignore the painful facts of history,
Even the highest degrees
Cannot excuse a blind eye.

Not Mr.Gandhi.
Not Mr.Ambedkar.
Not Mr.Martin Luther King Jr.
Not Mr.Nelson Mandela.
Not Mr.Islamist Obama.
Not Mr.Islamist Malcolm X
Not Mr.Ram.
Not Mr.Krishna.
Not Ms.Sita.
Not Ramayana.
Not Mahabharata.
Not Quran.
Not Mr.Buddha.
Not Mr.Jain.
Not Hind.
Not Mr.Mohammed.
Not Mr.Allah.
Not Muslim.
Not Sikh.
Not Parsi.
Not Mr.Pope.
Not any president.
Not any religious leader.

Mr. Obama,

You invaded the political offices of the West
and became President of the United States.
You invited tens of millions of Arab Muslims and
invited millions of African Muslims.

Look at the number of visas you issued and the number of people
you accepted for asylum, and look at the foreign funds you donated.
You donated trillions of dollars to Muslim countries.
You made America the Republic of the Islamic State.
When you said you wanted to have dinner with Mr. Gandhi,
I revisited Mr. Gandhi and his standpoint against the African race,
to which you belong.

When I revisited the groundbreaking work of the University of Ghana,
I understood that your Columbia University education, or
your Occidental education, or your liberal arts college education, was futile.

Look at the critical studies of the University of Ghana and its critical scholarship
on Mr. Gandhi,
which revealed Mr. Gandhi as a brutal racist and a hate monger against the African race.

Mr. Barack,

You want to have dinner with him.
But will Gandhi sit down with you for dinner?
Will Gandhi accept your dinner invitation?
Will Gandhi invite you to his home?
Will Gandhi or his people allow you to walk in their streets in India?

Mr. Barack,

Forget India.
Forget Arab.
Forget Muslim spaces.
Forget Hindu spaces.
Forget Islamic spaces.
Forget Asian-Pacific spaces.

They are not allowing people of your African race to walk in your mother's homeland.
They are not allowing people of your race to walk in your own African streets.

Where is your Western critical scholarship?
Where is your rigorous academic scholarship?
Where is your critical thinking?

I am so sorry for your Western academic institutions
that produced millions of people like you.

You are all parasites and chameleons,
invading political offices, occupying Western Christian spaces,
using egalitarian Christian philosophies and transforming civilized Western spaces into shithole Islamic and Hindutva spaces.

Mr. Obama,

I will change my opinion if any Gandhi follower loves your daughter.
I will change my opinion if any Arab Muslim loves your daughter.
I will change my opinion if any Muslim loves your daughter.
I will change my opinion if any Hindu loves your daughter.
I will change my opinion if any Sikh, Buddhist, Jain, or Parsi loves your daughter.

Mr. Barack,

I will change my opinion if any of Gandhi's own blood invites your daughters to marry.
I will change my opinion if any Arab Muslim invites your daughter to marry.
I will change my opinion if any Muslim invites your daughter to marry.
I will change my opinion if any Hindu invites your daughter to marry.
I will change my opinion if any Sikh, Buddhist, Jain, or Parsi invites your daughter to marry.

Mr. Barack,

Ask the University of Ghana,
not Columbia University,
not Cambridge University,
not Oxford University,
not MIT,
not Princeton University.
not any Western University.

Your Western universities are producing parasites and chameleons,
but look at the University of Ghana.
It produced critical scholarship on the brutal racist Mr. Gandhi.
Mr. Gandhi or his people will never escape from the academic scholarship of the University of Ghana.

Mr. Barack, you loaded America with Arab Muslims and African Muslims.
Look at what is happening to Christianity.
Look at the people you made mayors of New York City.
Look at the Senate members you made.
Look at the Somalian pirate who married her own brother.
Look at the fraud of Hindus and Muslims.
Look at the fraud of Democrats and their allies in the US and across Western spaces.

You went to Columbia to plunder the wealth of Good Samaritans,
but you do not want to eat your meal with Good Samaritans but with brutal racists like Hindus and Muslims.

The University of Ghana knows the true face of your allies, from which you,
Mr. Gandhi, or his people, cannot escape.

Mr. Barack,

You occupied the highest office
in the most powerful country on earth.

Your decisions affected millions of Christians.
Your policies shaped lives
far beyond America’s borders.

You spoke about equality.
You spoke about freedom.
You spoke about democracy.

But words are not enough.

A leader must answer
for the consequences of his decisions.

A leader must face criticism.
A leader must explain his choices.
A leader must never hide
behind the glory of his education.

And no leader should believe
that a university degree
makes him greater than the people
who question him.

Mr. Obama,

I judge a person
by his religion or his caste.
I judge him by his genocidal actions,
his totalitarian ideas,
and his treatment of other human beings.

I do not judge Mr. Gandhi
by the beautiful stories told about him.
I judge him by his complete historical record.

I do not judge you
by the universities you attended.
I judge you by the questions
you are willing to face.

That is the difference
between education and wisdom.

That is the difference
between fame and greatness.

That is the difference
between worshipping history
and understanding history.

And now, Mr. Obama,
let me ask you one final question.

If you are so proud
to share a meal with Gandhi,
would his followers welcome you?
To become part of their own family?

Would they welcome your daughters?
with the same love and respect?

Would they accept an African family?
as their own?

I ask these questions
because of their Hindu or Muslim religions,
because equality must be tested
in the real life of Hindu or Muslim,
not just in speeches.

Mr. Obama,

You wanted a small meal with Gandhi.
But I want a much bigger conversation.

A conversation about the brutal racism of Muslims, Hindus,
and Asian-Pacific races.
A conversation about the brutal caste system.
A conversation about the brutal practices of untouchability.
A conversation about history.
A conversation about hypocrisy.
A conversation about the difference
between a hero and a human being.

Do not serve me the stories of greatness.
Show me the historical evidence.

Do not give me the names of universities.
Show me the power of your thinking.

Do not tell me whom you admire.
Tell me whether you have studied
the people you admire.

For a man may possess many degrees
and still fail to question.

A man may occupy the highest office
and still fail to understand history.

A man may call another man a hero
without knowing the full story
of the people that hero once hurt.

Mr. Barack Obama,

The real test of education
is not how many books you have read,
how many degrees you have earned,
or how many powerful people you know.

The real test is simple:
Can you question your heroes?

Can you face an uncomfortable truth?

Can you defend the dignity?
of those whom history has ignored?

Until you can answer these questions,
your dinner with Mr. Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi
will remain a symbol of stupidity,
not a symbol of understanding.

And history, Mr. Obama,
will continue to ask
the questions that powerful men
would rather avoid.

Biography: Dr. Suryaraju Mattimalla is a renowned Indian poet based in Germany, a prolific human rights writer, a vegan, a refugee, a truth-seeker, and a free-speech advocate. Born into the Madiga (Untouchable Caste)-Yadav Christian family, which has historically faced caste-based and untouchability-based genocide in India, he writes poetry addressing Dalit genocide, Dalit pogroms, atrocities against untouchable castes, caste discrimination, human rights, and social justice. He has written and published hundreds of poems in the United States, Europe, Israel, France, India, Nagalim, Ghana, Somaliland, and the Federal Republic of West Papua. He has also published academic papers in prestigious academic journals and newspapers, including The Age of Human Rights Journal, Peace Chronicles, and Israel National News, Arutz Sheva. Public libraries in the United States of America and Germany have catalogued his literary works. The French-based humanitarian organization Salam translated his poetry from English into French. It published it in French, and the Federal Republic of West Papua-based newspaper Suara Papua translated his English poems into Bahasa and published them. Through his writing, Mattimalla seeks to challenge caste/religious/ethnocentric oppression/extremism/terrorism, defend human dignity, and give a voice to marginalized communities. He lives with his Ethiopian wife, Cartoonist Her Royal Highness Princess Selamawit Hailu Bezabih, and their three children: Saviour Suryaraju Mattimalla, the late Stanford Suryaraju Mattimalla, and Strathfield or Skylar Suryaraju Mattimalla. Her Royal Highness Princess Selamawit Hailu Bezabih is the great-granddaughter of His Royal Highness Emperor Yohannes IV and the immediate granddaughter of His Excellency Dejazmach Negusse Bezabih, the leader of the 1943 Woyane Rebellion. His first child was killed by Hindus in the name of honor in India in 2010, and his second son, Stanford Suryaraju Mattimalla, died following forced vaccination administered by a neo-Nazi German gynecologist on June 28, 2023, in Regensburg, Germany.