The Ottawa City Council voted to place a statue of Gandhi in Strathcona Park (Sandy Hill). We oppose this statue for many reasons which have been previously covered. There are so many good reasons to oppose ever allowing such a statue that it is difficult to find space for covering them all. However, one more reason which we believe demands immediate attention has just recently come to our notice.

As documented in the book “100 Things You’re Not Suppose to Know” by Russ Kirk (The Disinformation Company, 2008), there is a disturbing conclusion to the story of the death of Gandhi’s wife, Kasturba. Kirk sums up the problem with the following title: “Gandhi refused to let his dying wife take penicillin yet took quinine to save himself.” This incident further reveals Gandhi’s stunning hypocrisy as he spent his life masking his actions of intolerance and racism with words of peace and love. We have included the full story of Kasturba’s death below.

A man who treated his wife in such a thoughtless and self-serving manner should never be honored with a statue in Ottawa.

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[The following is an excerpt from pp. 167-169 of 100 THINGS YOU’RE NOT SUPPOSED TO KNOW by Russ Kick]

GANDHI REFUSED TO LET HIS DYING WIFE TAKE PENICILLIN YET TOOK QUININE TO SAVE HIMSELF

Gandhi is often ranked, directly or subtly, alongside Jesus Christ and Martin Luther King Jr. as one of the greatest peacemakers – indeed, one of the greatest human beings – of all time. The mythology that surrounds him – which he built, leaving his followers, admirers, and hagiographers to reinforce and embellish – has almost completely smothered the many unflattering facts about him.

In such a compact book, space doesn’t permit a full exploration of Gandhi’s numerous, consequential skeletons – his racism toward blacks and whites, his betrayal of the Untouchables, his acquiescence toward the Nazis. Instead let’s focus on something more personal and, in some ways, more upsetting.

In August 1942, Gandhi and his wife, Kasturba, among others, were imprisoned by the British in Aga Khan Palace, near Poona. Kasturba had poor circulation and she’d weathered several heart attacks. While detained in the palace, she developed bronchial pneumonia. One of her four sons, Devadas, wanted her to take penicillin. Gandhi refused. He was okay with her receiving traditional remedies, such as water from the Ganges, but he refused her any medicines, including this newfangled antibiotic, saying that the Almighty would have to heal her.

“The Life and Death of Mahatma Gandhi” quotes him on February 19, 1944; “If God wills it, He will pull her through.” “Gandhi: A Life” adds this wisdom from the Mahatma: “You cannot cure your mother now, no matter what wonder drugs you may muster. She is in God’s hands now.” Three days later, Devadas was still pushing for the penicillin, but Gandhi shot back: “Why don’t you trust God?” Kasturba died that day.

The next night, Gandhi cried out: “But how God tested my faith!” He told one of Kasturba’s doctors that the antibiotic wouldn’t have saved her and that allowing her to have it “would have meant the bankruptcy of my faith.” (Emphasis mine.)

But Gandhi’s faith wasn’t much of an obstacle a short time later when it was his ass on the line. A mere six weeks after Kasturba died, Gandhi was flattened by malaria. He stuck to an all-liquid diet as his doctors tried to convince him to take quinine. But Gandhi completely refused and died of the disease, right? No, actually, after three weeks of deterioration, he took the diabolical drug and quickly recovered. The stuff about trusting God’s will and testing faith only applied when his wife’s life hung in the balance. When he needed a drug to stave off the Grim Reaper, down the hatch it went.

Source: BC