Gandhi's three monkeys

Generations of children in India have grown up with these 2500 year old Chinese sayings popularized by Gandhi in India.

Speak no evil
Hear no evil
See no evil


(Image from: http://www.southasiaoutreach.wisc.edu/high%20school/gandhiDiscovery.htm)

Is this the right thing? It actually clashes with a poem from my high-school English text book:

THEY are slaves who fear to speak
For the fallen and the weak;
They are slaves who will not choose
Hatred, scoffing, and abuse,
Rather than in silence shrink	5
From the truth they needs must think;
They are slaves who dare not be
In the right with two or three.

-- James Russell Lowell (1819-1891)
-- 344, A Stanza on Freedom

It is time we start speaking for the truth - that Gandhi's three monkeys have ill served the Indian society.