Western elites projected Christ imagery onto Gandhi despite vast social differences

Evidence

Perhaps because the Western Christian world was apprehensive about the spreading influence of the Russian Revolution, and was traumatised by the horror of the First World War, Europeans and Americans vied to honour the living avatar of Christ. It didn’t seem to matter that unlike Gandhi, who was from a well-to-do family (his father was the prime minister of the princely state of Porbandar), Jesus was a carpenter from the slums of Jerusalem who stood up against the Roman Empire instead of trying to make friends with it. And he wasn’t sponsored by big business. — Ambedkar, B R, Annihilation of Caste_ The Annotated…, 283

Categorization

• XREF: Echoes the broader literature on how Western audiences orientalize and reframe Asian leaders (King’s ‘Gandhi gave method’ framing, later postcolonial critiques of the West’s Gandhi).