Mahatma Gandhi
Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, more commonly known as ‘Mahatma’ (meaning
‘Great Soul’) was born in Porbandar, Gujarat, in North West India, on 2nd
October 1869. He is known as Father of Nation, played a key role in
winning freedom for India, introduced the concept of Ahimsa and Satyagraha.
Mahatma Gandhi was born in middle class family of Vaishya caste. His
father, Karamchand Gandhi, was a Prime Minister of Porbandar. His mother,
Putlibai, was a very religious lady and left a deep impression on Gandhiji's mind.
Gandhiji was a mediocre student and was excessively shy and timid. Gandhiji was married at the age of thirteen to Kasturbai.
Gandhiji sailed for England on September 4, 1888. He went there to pursue his study in law. He first struggled with the transition to Western culture there and
during his three-year stay in London, but once he had found kindred spirits he flourished and started to learn more about world religions.
he completed his Law degree in 1891 and returned to India.
On completing his degree in Law, Gandhi returned to India, where he was
soon sent to South Africa to practise law. In South Africa, Gandhi was struck
by the level of racial discrimination and injustice often experienced by
Indians.
Once When
a European magistrate in Durban asked him to take off his turban, he refused
and left the courtroom. On a train voyage to Pretoria, he was thrown out of a
first-class railway compartment and beaten up by a white stagecoach driver
after refusing to give up his seat for a European passenger. That train journey
served as a turning point for Gandhi, and he soon began developing and teaching
the concept of satyagraha (“truth and firmness”), or passive resistance, as a
way of non-cooperation with authorities.
THE BIRTH OF PASSIVE RESISTANCE
In
1906, after the Transvaal government passed an ordinance regarding the
registration of its Indian population, Gandhi led a campaign of civil
disobedience that would last for the next eight years. During its final phase
in 1913, hundreds of Indians living in South Africa, including women, went to
jail, and thousands of striking Indian miners were imprisoned, flogged and even
shot. Finally, under pressure from the British and Indian governments, the
government of South Africa accepted a compromise negotiated by Gandhi and
General Jan Christian Smuts, which included important concessions such as the
recognition of Indian marriages and the abolition of the existing poll tax for
Indians.
In
July 1914, Gandhi left South Africa to return to India. He supported the
British war effort in World War I but
remained critical of colonial authorities for measures he felt were unjust. In
1919, Gandhi form an organized campaign of passive resistance in response to
the rowlett acts, which gave colonial authority to suppress subversive
activities. He backed off after violence broke out but only temporarily, and by
1920 he was the most visible figure in the movement for Indian independence.
LEADER OF A MOVEMENT
Gandhi’s
ascetic lifestyle based on prayer, fasting and meditation earned him the reference
of his followers, who called him Mahatma (Sanskrit for “the great-souled one”).
Invested with all the authority of the Indian National Congress (INC or
Congress Party), Gandhi turned the independence movement into a massive
organization, leading boycotts of British manufacturers and institutions
representing British influence in India, including legislatures and schools.
After sporadic violence
broke out, Gandhi announced the end of the resistance movement, to the dismay
of his followers. British authorities arrested Gandhi in March 1922 and tried
him for sedition; he was sentenced to six years in prison but was released in
1924 after undergoing an operation for appendicitis. He refrained from active
participation in politics for the next several years, but in 1930 launched a
new civil disobedience campaign against the colonial government’s tax on salt,
which greatly affected Indian’s poorest citizens.
A DIVIDED MOVEMENT
In
1931, after British authorities made some concessions, Gandhi again called off
the resistance movement and agreed to represent the Congress Party at the Round
Table Conference in London. Arrested upon his return by a newly aggressive
colonial government, Gandhi began a series of hunger strikes in protest of the
treatment of India’s so-called “untouchables” (the poorer classes), whom he
renamed Harijans, or “children of God”. The fasting caused a stir among his
followers
In 1934, Gandhi
announced his retirement from politics in, as well as his resignation from the
Congress Party, in order to concentrate his efforts on working within rural
communities. Drawn back into the political fray by the outbreak of World War II, Gandhi again
took control of the INC, demanding a British withdrawal from India in return
for Indian cooperation with the war effort. Instead, British forces imprisoned
the entire Congress leadership, bringing Anglo-Indian relations to a new low
point.
PARTITION AND DEATH OF GANDHI
After
the Labor Party took power in Britain in 1947, negotiations over Indian home
rule began between the British, the Congress Party and the Muslim League. Later
that year, Britain granted India its independence but split the country into
two dominions: India and Pakistan. Gandhi strongly opposed Partition, but he
agreed to it in hopes that after independence Hindus and Muslims could achieve
peace internally. Amid the massive riots that followed Partition, Gandhi urged
Hindus and Muslims to live peacefully together, and undertook a hunger strike
until riots in Calcutta ceased.
In
January 1948, Gandhi carried out yet another fast, this time to bring about
peace in the city of Delhi. On January 30, 12 days after that fast ended,
Gandhi was on his way to an evening prayer meeting in Delhi when he was shot to
death by Nathuram Godse, a Hindu fanatic who’s enraged by Mahatma’s efforts to
negotiate with Jinnah and other Muslims. The next day, roughly 1 million people
followed the procession as Gandhi’s body was carried in state through the
streets of the city and cremated on the banks of the holy Jumna River.
Gandhi's
life and teachings have inspired many liberationists of the 20th Century,
including Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in the United States, Nelson Mandela and Steve Biko in South Africa, and Aung San Suu Kyi in
Myanmar.
