|
RELATED LINKS:
| GANDHI |
|
Mahatma Mohandas
Gandhi, 1869-1948
A man who epitomized nonviolence, he was killed by an assassin.
Trained as a lawyer in London, Mohandas Gandhi first found
prominence in South Africa, where he worked on behalf of Indian laborers who had immigrated to that country. Initiating a
campaign of non-violent opposition and civil disobedience, he successfully gained concessions from the South African government,
which had earlier failed to recognize Indian marriages and had charged a poll tax to discourage Indians from voting.
He called his method "Satyagraha," which is Sanskrit for "truth and firmness,"
and later successfully used it again in India while attempting to gain that country's independence from Britain. Revered by
fellow Indians for his calm determination, he was given the title "Mahatma" (Great Soul).
In 1947, India was granted independence. However, Gandhi was dismayed
that the country was divided into a predominantly Muslim Pakistan and a primarily Hindu India. After urging tolerance for
the Muslim minority still living in India, Gandhi was assassinated by a fellow Hindu.
More on Mahatma Gandhi:
Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi was born in the town of Porbander in the state
of what is now Gujarat on 2 October 1869. He had his schooling in nearby Rajkot, where his father served as the adviser or
prime minister to the local ruler. Though India was then under British rule, over 500 kingdoms, principalities, and states
were allowed autonomy in domestic and internal affairs: these were the so-called 'native states'. Rajkot was one such state.
Gandhi later recorded the early years of his life in his extraordinary
autobiography, The Story of My Experiments with Truth. His father died before Gandhi could finish his schooling, and
at thirteen he was married to Kasturbai, who was even younger. In 1888 Gandhi set sail for England, where he had decided to
pursue a degree in law. Though his elders objected, Gandhi could not be prevented from leaving; and it is said that his mother,
a devout woman, made him promise that he would keep away from wine, women, and meat during his stay abroad. Gandhi left behind
his son Harilal, then a few months old.
In London, Gandhi encountered theosophists, vegetarians, and others who
were disenchanted not only with industrialism, but with the legacy of Enlightenment thought. They themselves represented the
fringe elements of English society. Gandhi was powerfully attracted to them, as he was to the texts of the major religious
traditions; and ironically it is in London that he was introduced to the Bhagavad Gita. Here, too, Gandhi showed determination
and single-minded pursuit of his purpose, and accomplished his objective of finishing his degree from the Inner Temple. He
was called to the bar in 1891, and even enrolled in the High Court of London; but later that year he left for India.
After one year of a none too successful law practice, Gandhi decided
to accept an offer from an Indian businessman in South Africa, Dada Abdulla, to join him as a legal adviser. Unbeknown to
him, this was to become an exceedingly lengthy stay, and altogether Gandhi was to stay in South Africa for over twenty years.
The Indians who had been living in South Africa were without political rights, and were generally known by the derogatory
name of 'coolies'. Gandhi himself came to an awareness of the frightening force and fury of European racism, and how far Indians
were from being considered full human beings, when he when thrown out of a first-class railway compartment car, though he
held a first-class ticket. From this political awakening Gandhi was to emerge as the leader of the Indian community, and it
is in South Africa that he first coined the term satyagraha to signify his theory and practice of non-violent resistance.
Gandhi was to describe himself preeminently as a votary or seeker of satya (truth), which could not be attained other
than through ahimsa (non-violence, love) and brahmacharya (celibacy, striving towards God). Gandhi conceived
of his own life as a series of experiments to forge the use of satyagraha in such a manner as to make the oppressor and the
oppressed alike recognize their common bonding and humanity: as he recognized, freedom is only freedom when it is indivisible.
In his book Satyagraha in South Africa he was to detail the struggles of the Indians to claim their rights, and their
resistance to oppressive legislation and executive measures, such as the imposition of a poll tax on them, or the declaration
by the government that all non-Christian marriages were to be construed as invalid. In 1909, on a trip back to India, Gandhi
authored a short treatise entitled Hind Swaraj or Indian Home Rule, where he all but initiated the critique, not only
of industrial civilization, but of modernity in all its aspects.
Gandhi returned to India in early 1915, and was never to leave the country
again except for a short trip that took him to Europe in 1931. Though he was not completely unknown in India, Gandhi followed
the advice of his political mentor, Gokhale, and took it upon himself to acquire a familiarity with Indian conditions. He
traveled widely for one year. Over the next few years, he was to become involved in numerous local struggles, such as at Champaran
in Bihar, where workers on indigo plantations complained of oppressive working conditions, and at Ahmedabad, where a dispute
had broken out between management and workers at textile mills. His interventions earned Gandhi a considerable reputation,
and his rapid ascendancy to the helm of nationalist politics is signified by his leadership of the opposition to repressive
legislation (known as the "Rowlatt Acts") in 1919. His saintliness was not uncommon, except in someone like him who immersed
himself in politics, and by this time he had earned from no less a person than Rabindranath Tagore, India's most well-known
writer, the title of Mahatma, or 'Great Soul'. When 'disturbances' broke out in the Punjab, leading to the massacre
of a large crowd of unarmed Indians at the Jallianwala Bagh in Amritsar and other atrocities, Gandhi wrote the report of the
Punjab Congress Inquiry Committee. Over the next two years, Gandhi initiated the non-cooperation movement, which called upon
Indians to withdraw from British institutions, to return honors conferred by the British, and to learn the art of self-reliance;
though the British administration was at places paralyzed, the movement was suspended in February 1922 when a score of Indian
policemen were brutally killed by a large crowd at Chauri Chaura, a small market town in the United Provinces. Gandhi himself
was arrested shortly thereafter, tried on charges of sedition, and sentenced to imprisonment for six years. At The Great Trial,
as it is known to his biographers, Gandhi delivered a masterful indictment of British rule.
Owing to his poor health, Gandhi was released from prison in 1925. Over
the following years, he worked hard to preserve Hindu-Muslim relations, and in 1924 he observed, from his prison cell, a 21-day
fast when Hindu-Muslim riots broke out at Kohat, a military barracks on the Northwest Frontier. This was to be of his many
major public fasts, and in 1932 he was to commence the so-called Epic Fast unto death, since he thought of "separate electorates"
for the oppressed class of what were then called untouchables (or Harijans in Gandhi's vocabulary, and dalits in today's
language) as a retrograde measure meant to produce permanent divisions within Hindu society. Gandhi earned the hostility of
Ambedkar, the leader of the untouchables, but few doubted that Gandhi was genuinely interested in removing the serious
disabilities from which they suffered, just as no one doubt that Gandhi never accepted the argument that Hindus and Muslims
constituted two separate elements in Indian society. These were some of the concerns most prominent in Gandhi's mind, but
he was also to initiate a constructive programme for social reform. Gandhi had ideas -- mostly sound -- on every subject,
from hygiene and nutrition to education and labor, and he relentlessly pursued his ideas in one of the many newspapers which
he founded. Indeed, were Gandhi known for nothing else in India, he would still be remembered as one of the principal figures
in the history of Indian journalism.
In early 1930, as the nationalist movement was revived, the Indian National
Congress, the preeminent body of nationalist opinion, declared that it would now be satisfied with nothing short of complete
independence (purna swaraj). Once the clarion call had been issued, it was perforce necessary to launch a movement
of resistance against British rule. On March 2, Gandhi addressed a letter to the Viceroy, Lord Irwin, informing him that unless
Indian demands were met, he would be compelled to break the "salt laws". Predictably, his letter was received with bewildered
amusement, and accordingly Gandhi set off, on the early morning of March 12, with a small group of followers towards Dandi
on the sea. They arrived there on April 5th: Gandhi picked up a small lump of natural salt, and so gave the signal to hundreds
of thousands of people to similarly defy the law, since the British exercised a monopoly on the production and sale of salt.
This was the beginning of the civil disobedience movement: Gandhi himself was arrested, and thousands of others were also
hauled into jail. It is to break this deadlock that Irwin agreed to hold talks with Gandhi, and subsequently the British agreed
to hold a Round Table Conference in London to negotiate the possible terms of Indian independence. Gandhi went to London in
1931 and met some of his admirers in Europe, but the negotiations proved inconclusive. On his return to India, he was once
again arrested.
For the next few years, Gandhi would be engaged mainly in the constructive
reform of Indian society. He had vowed upon undertaking the salt march that he would not return to Sabarmati Ashram in Ahmedabad,
where he had made his home, if India did not attain its independence, and in the mid-1930s he established himself in a remote
village, in the dead center of India, by the name of Segaon [known as Sevagram]. It is to this obscure village, which was
without electricity or running water, that India's political leaders made their way to engage in discussions with Gandhi about
the future of the independence movement, and it is here that he received visitors such as Margaret Sanger, the well-known
American proponent of birth-control. Gandhi also continued to travel throughout the country, taking him wherever his services
were required.
One such visit was to the Northwest Frontier, where he had in the imposing
Pathan, Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan (known by the endearing term of "Frontier Gandhi", and at other times as Badshah [King]
Khan), a fervent disciple. At the outset of World War II, Gandhi and the Congress leadership assumed a position of
neutrality: while clearly critical of fascism, they could not find it in themselves to support British imperialism. Gandhi
was opposed by Subhas Chandra Bose, who had served as President of the Congress, and who took to the view that Britain's moment
of weakness was India's moment of opportunity. When Bose ran for President of the Congress against Gandhi's wishes and triumphed
against Gandhi's own candidate, he found that Gandhi still exercised influence over the Congress Working Committee, and that
it was near impossible to run the Congress if the cooperation of Gandhi and his followers could not be procured. Bose tendered
his resignation, and shortly thereafter was to make a dramatic escape from India to find support among the Japanese and the
Nazis for his plans to liberate India.
In 1942, Gandhi issued the last call for independence from British rule.
On the grounds of what is now known as August Kranti Maidan, he delivered a stirring speech, asking every Indian to
lay down their life, if necessary, in the cause of freedom. He gave them this mantra: "Do or Die". The response of the British
government was to place Gandhi under arrest, and virtually the entire Congress leadership was to find itself behind bars,
not to be released until after the conclusion of the war.
A few months after Gandhi and Kasturba had been placed in confinement
in the Aga Khan's Palace in Pune, Kasturba passed away: this was a terrible blow to Gandhi, following closely on the heels
of the death of his private secretary of many years, the gifted Mahadev Desai. In the period from 1942 to 1945, the Muslim
League, which represented the interest of certain Muslims and by now advocated the creation of a separate homeland for Muslims,
increasingly gained the attention of the British, and supported them in their war effort. The new government that came to
power in Britain under Clement Atlee was committed to the independence of India, and negotiations for India's future began
in earnest. Sensing that the political leaders were now craving for power, Gandhi largely distanced himself from the negotiations.
He declared his opposition to the vivisection of India. It is generally conceded, even by his detractors, that the last years
of his life were in some respects his finest. He walked from village to village in riot-torn Noakhali, where Hindus were being
killed in retaliation for the killing of Muslims in Bihar, and nursed the wounded and consoled the widowed; and in Calcutta
he came to constitute, in the famous words of the last viceroy, Mountbatten, a "one-man boundary force" between Hindus and
Muslims. The ferocious fighting in Calcutta came to a halt, almost entirely on account of Gandhi's efforts, and even his critics
were wont to speak of the Gandhi's 'miracle of Calcutta'. When the moment of freedom came, on 15 August 1947, Gandhi was nowhere
to be seen in the capital, though Nehru and the entire Constituent Assembly were to salute him as the architect of Indian
independence, as the 'father of the nation'.
The last few months of Gandhi's life were to be spent mainly in the capital
city of Delhi. There he divided his time between the 'Bhangi colony', where the sweepers and the lowest of the low stayed,
and Birla House, the residence of one of the wealthiest men in India and one of the benefactors of Gandhi's ashrams. Hindu
and Sikh refugees had streamed into the capital from what had become Pakistan, and there was much resentment, which easily
translated into violence, against Muslims. It was partly in an attempt to put an end to the killings in Delhi, and more generally
to the bloodshed following the partition, which may have taken the lives of as many as 1 million people, besides causing the
dislocation of no fewer than 11 million, that Gandhi was to commence the last fast unto death of his life. The fast was terminated
when representatives of all the communities signed a statement that they were prepared to live in "perfect amity", and that
the lives, property, and faith of the Muslims would be safeguarded. A few days later, a bomb exploded in Birla House where
Gandhi was holding his evening prayers, but it caused no injuries. However, his assassin, a Marathi Chitpavan Brahmin by the
name of Nathuram Godse, was not so easily deterred. Gandhi, quite characteristically, refused additional security, and no
one could defy his wish to be allowed to move around unhindered. In the early evening hours of 30 January 1948, Gandhi met
with India's Deputy Prime Minister and his close associate in the freedom struggle, Vallabhai Patel, and then proceeded to
his prayers.
That evening, as Gandhi's time-piece, which hung from one of the
folds of his dhoti [loin-cloth], was to reveal to him, he was uncharacteristically late to his prayers, and he fretted
about his inability to be punctual. At 10 minutes past 5 o'clock, with one hand each on the shoulders of Abha and Manu, who
were known as his 'walking sticks', Gandhi commenced his walk towards the garden where the prayer meeting was held. As he
was about to mount the steps of the podium, Gandhi folded his hands and greeted his audience with a namaskar; at that moment,
a young man came up to him and roughly pushed aside Manu. Nathuram Godse bent down in the gesture of an obeisance, took a
revolver out of his pocket, and shot Gandhi three times in his chest. Bloodstains appeared over Gandhi's white woolen shawl;
his hands still folded in a greeting, Gandhi blessed his assassin: He Ram! He Ram!
As Gandhi fell, his faithful time-piece struck the ground, and the hands
of the watch came to a standstill. They showed, as they had done before, the precise time: 5:12 P.M.
Select Quotations
God has no religion. -- Mahatma Gandhi
Force, violence, pressure, or compulsion with a view to conformity
are both uncivilized and undemocratic. -Mahatma Gandhi Human kin d has to get out of violence only through nonviolence. Hatred
can be overcome only by love. Counter-hatred only increases the surface as well as the depth of hatred. --Mahatma Gandhi
"God forbid that India should ever take to industrialism
after the manner of the west…keeping the world in chains. If [our nation] took to similar economic exploitation, it
would strip the world bare like locusts."-- Mahatma Gandhi
It is a mystery to me how a person can feel honored by the
humiliation of his fellow human beings." --Mahatma Gandhi
"The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute
of the strong." -- Mahatma GandhiYou must be the change you wish to see in the world. - Mahatma Gandhi
"I have learned through bitter experience the one supreme
lesson to conserve my anger, and as heat conserved is transmitted into energy, even so our anger controlled can be transmitted
into a power that can move the world." -- Mahatma Gandhi, Indian philosopher Whenever you are confronted with an opponent,
conquer him with love. --Mahatma Gandhi
The truest test of civilization, culture, and dignity is
character, not clothing.
Civil disobedience is the assertion of a right which law
should give but which it denies.
Civil disobedience becomes a sacred duty when the State becomes
lawless or, which is the same thing, corrupt.
Democracy is a great institution and, therefore, it is liable
to be greatly abused.
Evolution of democracy is not possible if we are not prepared
to hear the other side.
The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute
of the strong. --Mahatma Gandhi
When I despair, I remember that all through history the way
of truth and love has always won. There have been tyrants and murderers and for a time they seem invincible but in the end,
they always fall -- think of it, ALWAYS. --Mahatma Gandhi
If I had no sense of humor, I would long ago have committed
suicide. ~ Mahatma Gandhi
"I believe that a man is the strongest soldier for daring
to die unarmed." - Mohandas Gandhi
"I have not the shadow of a doubt that any man or woman can
achieve what I have, if he or she would make the same effort and cultivate the same hope and faith. What is faith if it is
not translated into action." - Mahatma Gandhi (1869 - 1948) A man who was completely innocent, offered himself as a sacrifice
for the good of others, including his enemies, and became the ransom of the world. It was a perfect act. - Mahatma Gandhi
‘Transformation begins when a vision that belongs to
one person becomes one that belongs to many.”
"It is better to be violent, if there is violence in our
hearts, than to put on the cloak of nonviolence to cover impotence." - Mahatma Gandhi
The only tyrant I accept in this world is the 'still small
voice' within me. --Gandhi
"In matters of conscience, the law of majority has no place."
--Gandhi
“True nonviolence should mean a complete freedom from ill-will
and anger and hate and an overflowing love for all.” -Mahatma Ghandi
“Faith gains in strength only when people are willing to lay down
their lives for it.” - Mahatma Ghandi
|
