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Who Was Gandhi?
Compiled by Rachelle Drouin
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Mohandas Karmachand Gandhi was born October 2, 1869 in Porbandar in the present state of Gujarat. He was educated in India and London. After successfully studying law at University College, London, Gandhi was admitted to the English Bar in 1889. He returned to India in 1891. His attempts to set up a law firm in Bombay were unsuccessful but in 1893, he found work as a legal advisor in Durban, South Africa. Satyagraha and Passive ResistanceApartheid was prominent and Gandhi soon learned that anyone whose skin was not white was treated as an inferior, second-class citizen. He was appalled by the denial of civil liberties and political rights to Indian immigrants to South Africa. He became a successful lawyer and a leader of the Indian community, involving himself in the fight to end discrimination against South Africa's Indian minority. In 1906, Gandhi initiated his Satyagraha movement against the Natal government -- a government that was trying to pass an Ordinance to disenfranchise Indians living in South Africa. Gandhi explained that Satyagraha is "a relentless search for Truth and a determination to search for Truth. Satyagraha is an attribute of the spirit within. Satyagraha can be described as an effective substitute for violence." On September 11, 1906, Indians gathered to discuss ways to challenge the Ordinance. Gandhi proposed to them the idea of facing violence with non-violence. He drew from the likes of Tolstoy, Ralph Waldo Emerson, John Ruskin, Annie Besant, William Hunter, Henry David Thoreau, and Jesus for inspiration and began to teach his method of passive resistance and of fighting for truth and justice with suffering. At the time, Gandhi said there were 2,000 participants against a nation capable of crushing them. He warned those at the September 11, 1906 meeting that the pursuit of Satyagraha might mean imprisonment: he himself had been incarcerated and harshly beaten several times. Gandhi also warned also that Satyagraha may cost participants their lives. Yet, all who attended the meeting pledged to oppose the Ordinance with non-violence, whatever the provocation. In 1914, Gandhi secured an agreement from the Natal government that promised the alleviation of anti-Indian discrimination. As a result of Gandhi's campaigns, the South African government made a number of concessions to the Indian people living there: the honor of South Africa was saved and a new history written by the Satyagrahis. After the victory of 1914, Gandhi decided to focus his attention on improving life in his native India. He returned to India in 1915 and discovered that his ideology was well received. He soon found himself with many followers who themselves regularly practiced passive resistance. Campaign for Indian SovereigntyAt the time of the First World War, India was still under the British Raj. Gandhi wished to hasten India's freedom and led agrarian and labor reform demonstrations that embarrassed the British who, naturally, took a dislike to Gandhi's campaigning and deemed it revolutionary. Therefore, at an April 1919 demonstration in the Jalianwala Bagh, an enclosed park in the city of Amristar, British troops opened fire on hundreds of Indian nationalists, wounding and killing them. The Amristar massacre of 1919 stirred Indian nationalist consciousness and Gandhi instigated a policy of non-cooperation with the British as well as a number of Satyagraha campaigns. Gandhi was opposed to India's caste system. His program included a free, united India and complete abolition of the caste system. Although Gandhi's ideas met with opposition from some Indians, they were widely and vigorously espoused: Indians began to squat in the streets to protest. Parents began removing their children from government-run schools. Even when faced with harsh physical punishments, the Indian people refused to move. Their position was steadfast. |
From the early 1920s, Gandhi dominated the Indian National Congress and had achieved personal prestige so high, the title of Mahatma (great soul) was bestowed upon him. The British imprisoned Gandhi in an act of retaliation but later released him. Because of increasing violence from India towards Britain, Gandhi, in 1924, was forced to call an end to his campaign of non-cooperation. In 1930, in protest against the government's salt tax, Gandhi and his followers began their famous 200-mile march to extract salt from the sea. This drew the wrath of the British, who again imprisoned Gandhi. While imprisoned, Gandhi would begin to fast in protest. This drew anger and resentment from the British who knew that should Gandhi die while wrongly imprisoned, there would be far-reaching and grave repercussions from the people of India. Gandhi was released from prison in 1931 to attend the London Round Table Conference on India as the sole representative of the Indian National Congress. Gandhi resigned from politics in 1934 when the Congress refused to embrace his program in its entirety. So great had Gandhi's influence been, however, that his protege, Jawarhalal Nehru, was named leader of the organization. India's IndependenceDespite his withdrawal from the political arena, Gandhi continued with his program for a free and united India. In 1942, he proposed that India would fully cooperate with Britain in World War II if the British would grant immediate independence to India. This offer was rejected, and Gandhi thereby called for Satyagraha and launched the Quit India campaign. For this, he was interned until 1944. At the close of WWII in 1945, Gandhi was a major figure in postwar conferences with the viceroy, Lord Mountbatten, and Muslim League leader Muhammad Ali Jinnah. Gandhi's years of tireless campaigning reached a culmination in 1947 when India successfully gained its independence from Britain. Gandhi hoped secession from Britain would not lead to the ultimate partitioning of India: he believed those of Muslim and Hindu faith could coexist peacefully. Despite this, however, a separate Muslim state (Pakistan) was carved out as a result of India's independence and on January 30, 1948, while holding a prayer and pacification meeting in New Delhi, Gandhi was fatally shot by a Hindu fanatic. His assassin, Nathuram Godse, was angered by Gandhi's solicitude for the Muslims. Following his death in 1948, Gandhi's methods of civil disobedience and non-violence were adopted by civil rights leaders in the United States (Martin Luther King, Jr.) and by many protest movements throughout the world (Daisaku Ikeda and Nelson Mandela). Sources:
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