let riot be the rhyme of the unheard the life of che

At the risk of seeming ridiculous, let me say that the true revolutionary is guided by a great feeling of love. It is impossible to think of a genuine revolutionary lacking this quality.
Ernesto Che Guevara
True to the words said by Che Guevara, no revolution can succeed without love. A revolutionary without love is not a revolutionary but a dictator. There are only a handful of people in this earth who have risen above their personal self to fight for the interest of common people. Mahatma Gandhi did it in Asia, Nelson Mandela did it in Africa, and Martin Luther King Jr did it in America. They all gave up their life for the struggle of the people; they all rose above themselves to give us the freedom that we need. Their methods were all different. While Gandhi took the path of non violence, Mandela took up arms. Similarly one guy rose for the people of South America. His name was Ernesto Che Guevara, or simply Che. Someone once said ?worse are people who live with injustice than people who do injustice.? Che couldn?t see his brothers and sisters of South America live in injustice.
Whenever I think of Che I imagine a young man in army fatigue working in the field with common peasants. A faint smile shrouded his face even in difficult situations. His face was stern with determination. His eyes seem to cry from watching all the injustice faced by his brothers and sisters. With deep and thoughtful eyes he looked like Lord Buddha watching over his disciples. It told people not to live with injustice and hatred. It fueled the fire of revolution in the heart of all the rebels. A sweet revolutionary fire.
Che was born Ernesto Guevara de la Serna on 14 June 1928 in Rosario, Argentina. He was born in a relatively upper middle class family. He started suffering from a severe case of asthma from his early childhood. But that didn?t prevent him from playing football as a teen. He got an early education in Marxism and socialism from the books in his father?s library. He was a quick learner and an intellectual person. CIA was quoted as saying ?He (Che) is quite intelligent for a Latino.? He studied medicine and became interested in leprosy. He was also interested in South America thus, during 1948 he made a solo road trip of 4,000 miles around northern Argentina on a moped. He qualified as a doctor in 1953 and specialized as a dermatologist. But something was to happen before that which would change his life forever.
During 1952 Che and his friend Alberto Granado set out on a motorcycle tour of South America. Between them they had good spirits, an urge for exploration and, an old motorbike. ?What do we leave behind when we cross each frontier? Each moment seems split in two; melancholy for what was left behind and the excitement of entering a new land? said Che Guevara in his book The Motorcycle Diaries. They journeyed through Buenos Aires, down the coast of Argentina, through the Andes into Chile, and then north into Peru, Columbia and Venezuela. They also spent few weeks in a leprosy camp in Peru. The land was lush green with forest and farmland. But to the dismay of young Che most of the farmland belonged not to the native people who farmed but to wealthy aristocrats. During his journey he met a lot of natives who had been displaced from their lands by imperialist government. He met people who had nothing to eat, even though they owned land. He met people who had no work except manual labor, even though they were educated. He saw native people being squashed by invaders and native culture raped by western atrocity. He began the journey as a young student uncertain of his goals and ended it as a man determined to free the people.
Che was known to be of a very kind personality. He wasn?t a kind of man that would get angry very often. But to foes he was a formidable opponent who knew no mercy. He was the main driving force in Cuban revolution which overthrew the fascist regime of Fulgencio Batista. Even though he was second only to Fidel Castro he worked with the common farmers in the fields. Like Gandhi he lived a simple life. He lived with poor people and never misused the power or money. He was never a politician and like all revolutionist he fared badly when it came to politics. He wanted to unite the whole South America. He felt that people sharing the same language the same culture shouldn?t be divided by the boundaries of nation. While visiting Peru?s Inca ruins he wonders ?how can I feel nostalgic for a land I have never been to.? With this he tells us that all of South America is same as they all share same culture.
After a while he became quite disillusioned with the way the government was going. Cuba became a pawn in the cold war game of America and Russia. The leaders he trusted as friends sold out to westernization. Looking at the situation in Cuba he says, ?Cruel leaders are replaced only to have new leaders turn cruel!? - Ernesto Che Guevara. After this he moved to Bolivia to continue his revolution. At the tender age of thirty-nine he was taken captive by the Bolivian government, and with the help of CIA, was shot six times and killed. His last words before dying were, "I knew you were going to shoot me; I should never have been taken alive. Tell Fidel that this failure does not mean the end of the revolution, that it will triumph elsewhere. Tell Aleida (his wife) to forget this, remarry and be happy, and keep the children studying. Ask the soldiers to aim well."
I encountered Che when I was in tenth grade in the revolutionary magazines of my uncle. The picture was inspiring enough and single handedly led me into leftist ideology. I read the book he wrote about his travel of South America called, ?The Motorcycle Diaries?, and recently watched a movie based on the book. There are certain excerpts from the book that inspire and show his struggle towards becoming a revolutionist. ?Yet afterwards I doubted whether driftwood has the right to say, "I win," when the tide throws it on to the beach it seeks. But that was later, and is of no interest to the present?, The Motorcycle Diaries. In the above line he describes himself as driftwood struggling between his youth and a call for revolution.
Thus we lost a great soul. But even after his death he is inspiring revolution. Death of a comrade gives birth to 1000 soldiers. For me he is an icon of freedom, of revolution, of resistance against injustice. People have called him terrorist a dictator a failed head of state. But he was a revolutionist and not a politician. He would obviously fail if he, a doctor, was given to run the national bank. He gave his life for a noble cause and fought for a noble cause. He discarded the lust of power for revolution; only few people can do that. Even though he has been turned into a cult icon, with his t-shirts and posters infiltrating the market, he will always inspire me as a person who cared for the betterment of others. With his name alone he will inspire a million of revolutionist for years to come.

Maobadi, Nice one. One from me...Great Soul Gandhi

Born on October 2, 1869 in Porbandar, India, Gandhi is one of the most respected spiritual and political leaders of India. Indians call him ?Mahatma? which means great soul. He was an obstinate idealist, audacious fighter, a deep thinker, and a great leader.
He was able to unite India like none other; he helped free the Indian people from the British rule through nonviolent resistance. He was the one who proved that it is possible to fight successfully without violence. Reminding his readers of the importance of Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr. writes, ?Gandhi was inevitable. If humanity is to progress, Gandhi is inescapable. He lived, thought and acted, inspired by the vision of humanity evolving toward a world of peace and harmony. We may ignore Gandhi at our own risk.?
Even though Gandhi was born in India, He had two citizenships. He was a citizen of both India and South Africa. He started his earlier career as a sophisticated and westernized lawyer in South Africa. Both the countries have contributed a lot in the making of one of the greatest leader of the 20th century. Nelson Mandela, the great South African leader writes, ?Gandhi dared to exhort nonviolence in a time when the violence of Hiroshima and Nagasaki had exploded; he exhorted morality when science, technology and the capitalist order had made it redundant; he replaced self-interest with group interest without minimizing the importance of self,? (Nelson Mandel; ?People of the Century? Time Magazine, January 3, 2000).
While replacing ?self-interest? with ?group interest? one has to sacrifice a lot. Gandhi did the same. He sacrificed his bright career as a lawyer and started a nonviolent resistance against the mighty British rule in India. He assembled the nonviolence strikes and then started a peaceful non-cooperation campaign against the British. He gave up the sophisticated life style, which he had adopted in South Africa, and urged people to denounce anything that was not Indian for example foreign clothes, goods, books and even the language. He believed that we can only be dominated if we cooperate with our dominators. If British rulers were not given the chance to exploit Indian, India would no longer be useful to British colony. They would have to leave India, and India would ultimately be an independent nation. Gandhi was victorious; the British were forced to leave India due to Gandhi?s non-cooperation movement. It was Mahatma Gandhi?s principle that brought independence to India.
Mahatma Gandhi?s principle did not only bring independence to India but also gave birth to other great leaders who followed Gandhi?s principle of nonviolence and non-cooperation. Among many leaders influenced by Gandhi, who later influenced the world, is Martin Luther King, Jr. King was influenced by Gandhi's belief in nonviolence. King studied both Gandhi and his teaching. Gandhi inspired him with a new way of looking at things. Gandhi?s search for truth influenced King. Gandhi believed he could find truth through tolerance and concern for others. After King talked to some of Gandhi's followers, he was convinced that nonviolence was the strongest way to help people to freedom. Martin Luther King, Jr. was influenced by the man whose life is an example of one who lived the principle of holding on to truth, and bringing about peace in a world of unrest.
Gandhi has not only influenced a single people or nation, but he has also inspired countless other people to struggle for peace, justice and freedom. Gandhi?s principle and his success has informed and influenced a lot of nonviolent resistance movements and peace movements against several discriminations. Nelson Mandela also followed the principle of Gandhi. Nelson Mandela himself suffered the colonial oppression. Like Gandhi, Mandela also mobilized his people against the violent that violated their freedom. Mandela, however, adopted some form of violence in his movement. He justifies his adoption as learning from Gandhi. He quotes Gandhi?s saying ?Where choice is set between cowardice and violence, I would advise violence... I prefer to use arms in defense of honor rather than remain the vile witness of dishonor ..." Gandhi sure was full of teachings. He surely was a great soul.
There is no doubt about Gandhi?s soul being a great soul, but people do have myths about how he looked. People generally have a stereotype of Gandhi as a very skinny man. He was not as skinny as he looks in the pictures. He did have very skinny legs but had a very broad chest. We don?t get to see his broad chest in the pictures because he was bowed and always wrapped himself with a piece of white cloth which he made himself by spinning cotton yarn on a compact spinning wheel.
Gandhi was a preacher of nonviolence; people tend to believe that he was a very soft person, but he had a deep, dynamic voice to match his personality as a lawyer. People are also confused about who Gandhi really is. Some people call Gandhi "a saint trying to be a politician," and others call him ?a politician trying to be a saint.? Gandhi preferred the latter one, and I prefer the same. Gandhi was not born as a leader or a saint. He was as ordinary as any of us. It was the situation and his willingness to fight against it that turned Gandhi into Mahatma Gandhi. We all can become mahatma what we need is to do is hold to the right principle and fight against wrong. You never know who might be the next ?mahatma? in making. Gandhi?s life story is a dream come true to the ordinary people like me who dream of being an extra-ordinary. He is an inspiration to many. Many have learnt a lot from him.
One can learn lot of things from Gandhi?s life and his teachings. The one that inspires me the most is his teaching on violence and its cure. Unless we know what is wrong, we will never recognize what is right. Gandhi encouraged people to recognize what harm a violent nature could do to him or another person. If I harm someone today, the chances are, tomorrow he might come back and return my favor with ?interest.? The tendency is that I might go back to and harm him more greatly than before. This would never end. It is the act of violence that gives birth to the evils such as hate, revenge, prejudice, and its siblings. He believed that once a human realized the risk of his violent nature, he would let go violence and takes a path of nonviolence. Gandhi also said that the root cause of violence is anger.
The most important thing that I learned from Gandhi is to recognize anger and deal with it. Gandhi, when he became the victim of racial discrimination, became as angry as anyone would be; however, unlike any of us, he did not allow his anger to shape into violence. He managed his anger; he channeled it to a different direction. He made his anger as resolution to fight against the discrimination that he experienced. As a result of his properly managed anger, India revolted for its independence in a nonviolent and effective manner. We should also learn to manage our anger. When we get angry, we should not let it to shape into violence. Instead, what I do when I get angry is write down my anger on paper. I just pour my anger in papers and later read them. Sometimes I laugh at the fact that I could get angry over such a small thing. Writing helps me to remember and realize why I got angry. I try my best to mobilize my anger for betterment than any sort of violence like Gandhi did.
I was not born in the time when Gandhi led his crusades against colonial oppression. I did not get to chance to see how he revolted. I have read about him in several books. I respect what he did. I value his whole idea of nonviolence. I am mesmerized by his idea of non-cooperation. Gandhi, to me, is an explanation of a living soul, and weather dead or alive, represents a vital image and a hero who helped me to look at my different aspects of life such as anger and nonviolence. I salute Gandhi for who he was and what he did.

Megalomaniac
I enjoyed reading it. I know it's long but worth it.Great job



Maobadi
good one

megalomaniac;
now u ask me that question again i will say with happy face
YA! i read ur article abt gandhi :)
good one
u know smth we do have smth in common>>>>writing!
i write dairy u write on paper....SAME PINCH:)

maobadi;
good article
love this quote.>>
Thus we lost a great soul. But even after his death he is inspiring revolution. Death of a comrade gives birth to 1000 soldiers
till now i didn't knew abt che.....
learnt smth today..........so thx :)

hats off to u, great topic, writing too.
gotta follow the people who's got love for the people.-che, Javier Elorriaga Berdegu?,
gandhi, mandela, and there is this guy whom people never give credit for his role in the indian freedom movement--subash chandra bose, his chose guns over non-violence, but dont think that the british left india solely because of gandhi..
lastly i do not support the peoples movement in nepal. started for a good cause, just went astray.
reason-only innocent people died, corrupted officials still living large..

Interesting read, Mao and Mega. It is indeed saddening that their principles are fading away in so many countries around the world.
It is ironic that to gain peace in the world, people are using violence as a shield and a weapon.
Scorpion has mentioned Subhash Chandra Bose.I do agree with him that Mr.Bose also had a hand in India's freedom although, being one of the extremists... his death is of a mystery.
Che,King, Gandhi and Mandela have withstood the hands of time in their own respective ways.I was discussing with a fren of mine about how Nepal never had any such leader who could make a mark in History.Known throughout the world as the " Land of Buddha", the country right next door during Gandhi's Ahimsa movement...were our people never aware of it? The internal strife in our country is really shameful. No one has the slightest clue as to how to handle a country... Damn it's a country we are talking about.. not a child's toy.We definitely need a Saviour in our country.
I salute these people who sacrificed their lives for such a noble cause.They are indeed True Heroes.