Mahatma Gandhi
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Mahatma Gandhi
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Born
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Died
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30 January 1948 (aged 78)
New Delhi, India
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Cause of death
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Resting place
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Nationality
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Indian
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Other names
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Mahatma Gandhi, Bapu, Gandhiji
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Ethnicity
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Known for
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Religion
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Spouse(s)
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Children
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Parents
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Putlibai Gandhi (Mother)
Karamchand Gandhi (Father)
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Signature
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Born and raised in a Hindu, merchant caste, family in coastal Gujarat,
western India, and trained in law at the Inner Temple, London, Gandhi first employed non-violent civil
disobedience as an expatriate lawyer in South Africa, in the resident Indian
community's struggle for civil rights. After his return to India in 1915, he
set about organising peasants, farmers, and urban labourers to protest against
excessive land-tax and discrimination. Assuming leadership of the Indian
National Congress in 1921, Gandhi led nationwide
campaigns for easing poverty, expanding women's rights, building religious and
ethnic amity, ending untouchability, but above all for achieving Swaraj or self-rule.
Gandhi famously led Indians in
challenging the British-imposed salt tax with the 400 km (250 mi) Dandi Salt March in 1930, and later in calling for the British to Quit India in 1942. He was imprisoned for many years, upon many
occasions, in both South Africa and India. Gandhi attempted to practise
non-violence and truth in all situations, and advocated that others do the
same. He lived modestly in a self-sufficient residential community and wore the traditional Indian dhoti
and shawl, woven with yarn hand spun on a charkha. He ate simple vegetarian food, and also undertook long fasts as means
of both self-purification and social protest.
Gandhi's vision of a free India
based on religious pluralism, however, was challenged in the early 1940s by a
new Muslim nationalism which was demanding a separate Muslim homeland carved
out of India. Eventually, in August 1947, Britain granted independence,
but the British Indian
Empire was partitioned into two dominions,
a smaller Hindu-majority India
and Muslim Pakistan. As many displaced Hindus, Muslims, and Sikhs made
their way to their new lands, religious violence broke out, especially in the Punjab
and Bengal.
Eschewing the official
celebration of independence in Delhi,
Gandhi visited the affected areas, attempting to provide solace. In the months
following, he undertook several fasts unto death to promote religious harmony. The last of these, undertaken
on 12 January 1948 at age 78, also had the indirect goal of pressuring India to pay out
some cash assets owed to Pakistan. Some Indians thought Gandhi was too accommodating. Among them was Nathuram Godse, a Hindu nationalist, who assassinated Gandhi on 30 January 1948 by firing three
bullets into his chest at point-blank range.
Early
life and background
The Indian classics, especially the
stories of Shravana and king Harishchandra, had a great impact on Gandhi in his childhood. In his
autobiography, he admits that they left an indelible impression on his mind. He
writes: "It haunted me and I must have acted Harishchandra to myself times
without number." Gandhi's early self-identification with truth and love as
supreme values is traceable to these epic characters.
In May 1883, the 13-year-old Mohandas
was married to 14-year-old Kasturbai Makhanji (her first name was usually shortened to
"Kasturba", and affectionately to "Ba") in an arranged
child marriage, according to the custom of the region. In the process, he lost a year at school. Recalling the day of their marriage, he once said, "As
we didn't know much about marriage, for us it meant only wearing new clothes,
eating sweets and playing with relatives." However, as was prevailing
tradition, the adolescent bride was to spend much time at her parents' house,
and away from her husband. In 1885, when Gandhi was 15, the couple's first child was
born, but survived only a few days. Gandhi's father, Karamchand Gandhi, had
also died earlier that year. The religious background was eclectic. Gandhi's father was Hindu Modh Baniya and his mother was from Pranami Vaishnava family. Religious
figures were frequent visitors to the home.
Mohandas and Kasturba had four more
children, all sons: Harilal, born in 1888; Manilal,
born in 1892; Ramdas, born in 1897; and Devdas,
born in 1900. At his middle school in Porbandar and high school in Rajkot, Gandhi
remained a mediocre student. He shone neither in the classroom nor on the
playing field. One of the terminal reports rated him as "good at English,
fair in Arithmetic and weak in Geography; conduct very good, bad
handwriting." He passed the matriculation exam at Samaldas College in Bhavnagar,
Gujarat, with some difficulty. Gandhi's family wanted him to be a barrister,
as it would increase the prospects of succeeding to his father's post.
English
barrister
In 1888, Gandhi travelled to London,
England, to study law at University
College London, where he studied Indian law and
jurisprudence and trained as a barrister
at the Inner Temple. His time in London was influenced by a vow he had made to
his mother upon leaving India, in the presence of a Jain monk, to observe the
precepts of abstinence from meat and alcohol as well as of promiscuity. Gandhi tried to adopt "English" customs,
including taking dancing lessons. However, he could not appreciate the bland
vegetarian food offered by his landlady and was frequently hungry until he
found one of London's few vegetarian restaurants. Influenced by Henry Salt's writing, he joined the Vegetarian Society, was elected to its executive committee, and started a local Bayswater
chapter. Some of the vegetarians he met were members of the Theosophical
Society, which had been founded in 1875 to
further universal brotherhood, and which was devoted to the study of Buddhist
and Hindu
literature. They encouraged Gandhi to join them in reading the Bhagavad Gita both in translation as well as in the original. Not having shown interest in religion before, he became
interested in religious thought.
Gandhi was called to the bar in June
1891 and then left London for India, where he learned that his mother had died
while he was in London and that his family had kept the news from him. His attempts at establishing a law practice in Bombay failed
because he was too shy to speak up in court. He returned to Rajkot to make a
modest living drafting petitions for litigants, but he was forced to close it
when he ran foul of a British officer. In 1893, he accepted a year-long contract from Dada Abdulla
& Co., an Indian firm, to a post in the Colony of Natal, South Africa, then part of the British Empire.
Civil
rights movement in South Africa (1893–1914)
Gandhi was 24 when he arrived in
South Africa to work as a legal representative for the Muslim Indian
Traders based in the city of Pretoria. He spent 21 years in South Africa, where he developed his
political views, ethics and political leadership skills.
Indians in South
Africa were led by wealthy Muslims, who
employed Gandhi as a lawyer, and by impoverished Hindu indentured labourers
with very limited rights. Gandhi considered them all to be Indians, taking a
lifetime view that "Indianness" transcended religion and caste. He
believed he could bridge historic differences, especially regarding religion,
and he took that belief back to India where he tried to implement it. The South
African experience exposed handicaps to Gandhi that he had not known about. He
realised he was out of contact with the enormous complexities of religious and
cultural life in India, and believed he understood India by getting to know and
leading Indians in South Africa.
In South Africa, Gandhi faced the
discrimination directed at all coloured people. He was thrown off a train at Pietermaritzburg after refusing to move from the first-class. He protested
and was allowed on first class the next day. Travelling farther on by stagecoach, he was beaten by a
driver for refusing to move to make room for a European passenger. He suffered other hardships on the journey as well,
including being barred from several hotels. In another incident, the magistrate
of a Durban
court ordered Gandhi to remove his turban, which he refused to do.
These events were a turning point in
Gandhi's life and shaped his social activism and awakened him to social
injustice. After witnessing racism, prejudice
and injustice against Indians in South Africa, Gandhi began to question his
place in society and his people's standing in the British Empire.
Gandhi extended his original period
of stay in South Africa to assist Indians in opposing a bill to deny them the
right to vote. In regards to this bill Gandhi sent out a memorial to Joseph Chamberlain, British Colonial Secretary, asking him to reconsider his
position on this bill. Though unable to halt the bill's passage, his campaign was
successful in drawing attention to the grievances of Indians in South Africa.
He helped found the Natal Indian
Congress in 1894, and through this organisation, he moulded the Indian
community of South Africa into a unified political force. In January 1897, when
Gandhi landed in Durban, a mob of white settlers attacked him and he escaped only through the efforts of the wife of the
police superintendent. He, however, refused to press charges against any member
of the mob, stating it was one of his principles not to seek redress for a
personal wrong in a court of law.
In 1906, the Transvaal
government promulgated a new Act compelling registration of the colony's Indian
population. At a mass protest meeting held in Johannesburg on 11 September that
year, Gandhi adopted his still evolving methodology of Satyagraha
(devotion to the truth), or non-violent protest, for the first time. He urged Indians to defy the new law and to suffer the
punishments for doing so. The community adopted this plan, and during the
ensuing seven-year struggle, thousands of Indians were jailed, flogged, or shot
for striking, refusing to register, for burning their registration cards or
engaging in other forms of non-violent resistance. The government successfully
repressed the Indian protesters, but the public outcry over the harsh treatment
of peaceful Indian protesters by the South African government forced South
African leader Jan Christiaan
Smuts, himself a philosopher, to
negotiate a compromise with Gandhi. Gandhi's ideas took shape, and the concept
of Satyagraha matured during this struggle.
Gandhi
and the Africans
Gandhi focused his attention on
Indians while in South Africa and opposed the idea that Indians should be
treated at the same level as native Africans while in South Africa. He also stated that he believed "that the white race
of South Africa should be the predominating race." After several treatments he received from Whites in South
Africa, Gandhi began to change his
thinking and apparently increased his interest in politics. White rule enforced strict segregation among all races and
generated conflict between these communities. Bhana and Vahed argue that
Gandhi, at first, shared racial notions prevalent of the times and that his
experiences in jail sensitized him to the plight of South Africa's indigenous
peoples.
During the Boer war
Gandhi volunteered in 1900 to form a group of ambulance drivers. He wanted to
disprove the British idea that Hindus were not fit for "manly"
activities involving danger and exertion. Gandhi raised eleven hundred Indian
volunteers. They were trained and medically certified to serve on the front
lines. At Spion Kop Gandhi and his bearers had to carry wounded soldiers for
miles to a field hospital because the terrain was too rough for the ambulances.
Gandhi was pleased when someone said that European ambulance corpsmen could not
make the trip under the heat without food or water. General Redvers Buller
mentioned the courage of the Indians in his dispatch. Gandhi and thirty-seven
other Indians received the War Medal.
In 1906, the British declared war against the Zulu Kingdom in Natal, Gandhi encouraged the British to recruit Indians. He argued that Indians should support the war efforts to
legitimise their claims to full citizenship. The British accepted Gandhi's offer to let a detachment of
20 Indians volunteer as a stretcher-bearer corps to treat wounded British
soldiers. This corps was commanded by Gandhi and operated for less than two
months. The experience taught him it was hopeless to directly
challenge the overwhelming military power of the British army—he decided it
could only be resisted in non-violent fashion by the pure of heart.
After the black majority came to
power in South Africa, Gandhi was proclaimed a national hero with numerous
monuments.
Struggle
for Indian Independence (1915–47)
In 1915, Gandhi returned to India
permanently. He brought an international reputation as a leading Indian
nationalist, theorist and organiser. He joined the Indian National Congress and
was introduced to Indian issues, politics and the Indian people primarily by Gopal Krishna
Gokhale. Gokhale was a key leader of the
Congress Party best known for his restraint and moderation, and his insistence
on working inside the system. Gandhi took Gokhale's liberal approach based on
British Whiggish traditions and transformed it to make it look wholly Indian.
Gandhi took leadership of Congress
in 1920 and began a steady escalation of demands (with intermittent compromises
or pauses) until on 26 January 1930 the Indian National Congress declared the
independence of India. The British did not recognise that and more negotiations
ensued, with Congress taking a role in provincial government in the late 1930s.
Gandhi and Congress withdrew their support of the Raj when the Viceroy declared
war on Germany in September 1939 without consulting anyone. Tensions escalated
until Gandhi demanded immediate independence in 1942 and the British responded
by imprisoning him and tens of thousands of Congress leaders for the duration.
Meanwhile the Muslim League did co-operate with Britain and moved, against
Gandhi's strong opposition, to demands for a totally separate Muslim state of
Pakistan. In August 1947 the British partitioned the land, with India and
Pakistan each achieving independence on terms of which Gandhi disapproved.
Role
in World War I
In April 1918, during the latter
part of World War I, the Viceroy invited
Gandhi to a War Conference in Delhi. Perhaps to show his support for the Empire and help his
case for India's independence, Gandhi agreed to actively recruit Indians for the war
effort. In contrast to the Zulu War of 1906 and the outbreak of
World War I in 1914, when he recruited volunteers for the Ambulance Corps, this
time Gandhi attempted to recruit combatants. In a June 1918 leaflet entitled
"Appeal for Enlistment", Gandhi wrote "To bring about such a
state of things we should have the ability to defend ourselves, that is, the
ability to bear arms and to use them...If we want to learn the use of arms with
the greatest possible despatch, it is our duty to enlist ourselves in the
army." He did, however, stipulate in a letter to the Viceroy's
private secretary that he "personally will not
kill or injure anybody, friend or foe."
Gandhi's war recruitment campaign
brought into question his consistency on nonviolence. Gandhi's private secretary noted that "The question of the consistency between
his creed of 'Ahimsa' (non-violence) and his recruiting campaign was raised not
only then but has been discussed ever since."
Champaran
and Kheda
Gandhi's first major achievements
came in 1918 with the Champaran and Kheda agitations of Bihar and Gujarat. The Champaran agitation pitted the
local peasantry against their largely British landlords who were backed by the
local administration. The peasantry was forced to grow Indigo, a cash crop
whose demand had been declining over two decades, and were forced to sell their
crops to the planters at a fixed price. Unhappy with this, the peasantry
appealed to Gandhi at his ashram in Ahmedabad. Pursuing a strategy of
non-violent protest, Gandhi took the administration by surprise and won concessions
from the authorities.
In 1918, Kheda was hit
by floods and famine and the peasantry was demanding relief from taxes. Gandhi
moved his headquarters to Nadiad, organising scores of supporters and fresh volunteers from
the region, the most notable being Vallabhbhai Patel. Using non-co-operation as a technique, Gandhi initiated a
signature campaign where peasants pledged non-payment of revenue even under the
threat of confiscation of land. A social boycott of mamlatdars and talatdars
(revenue officials within the district) accompanied the agitation. Gandhi
worked hard to win public support for the agitation across the country. For
five months, the administration refused but finally in end-May 1918, the
Government gave way on important provisions and relaxed the conditions of
payment of revenue tax until the famine ended. In Kheda, Vallabhbhai Patel
represented the farmers in negotiations with the British, who suspended revenue
collection and released all the prisoners.
Khilafat
movement
In 1919 Gandhi, with his weak
position in Congress, decided to broaden his base by increasing his appeal to
Muslims. The opportunity came from the Khilafat movement, a worldwide protest by Muslims against the collapsing
status of the Caliph, the leader of their religion. The Ottoman Empire had lost
the World War and was dismembered, as Muslims feared for the safety of the holy
places and the prestige of their religion. Although Gandhi did not originate the All-India Muslim
Conference, which directed the movement in India, he soon became its
most prominent spokesman and attracted a strong base of Muslim support with
local chapters in all Muslim centres in India. His success made him India's first national leader with a
multicultural base and facilitated his rise to power within Congress, which had
previously been unable to reach many Muslims. In 1920 Gandhi became a major
leader in Congress. By the end of 1922 the Khilafat movement had collapsed.
Gandhi always fought against
"communalism", which pitted Muslims against Hindus in politics, but
he could not reverse the rapid growth of communalism after 1922. Deadly
religious riots broke out in numerous cities, including 91 in U.P. (Uttar Pradesh) alone. At the leadership level, the proportion of Muslims among
delegates to Congress fell sharply, from 11% in 1921 to under 4% in 1923.
Non-co-operation
With Congress now behind him in
1920, Gandhi had the base to employ non-co-operation, non-violence and peaceful
resistance as his "weapons" in the struggle against the British Raj. His wide popularity among both Hindus and Muslims made his
leadership possible; he even convinced the extreme faction of Muslims to
support peaceful non-co-operation. The spark that ignited a national protest was overwhelming
anger at the Jallianwala
Bagh massacre (or Amritsar massacre) of hundreds
of peaceful civilians by British troops in Punjab. Many Britons celebrated the action as needed to prevent
another violent uprising similar to the Rebellion
of 1857, an attitude that caused many
Indian leaders to decide the Raj was controlled by their enemies. Gandhi
criticised both the actions of the British Raj and the retaliatory violence of
Indians. He authored the resolution offering condolences to British civilian
victims and condemning the riots which, after initial opposition in the party,
was accepted following Gandhi's emotional speech advocating his principle that
all violence was evil and could not be justified.
After the massacre and subsequent
violence, Gandhi began to focus on winning complete self-government and control
of all Indian government institutions, maturing soon into Swaraj or complete individual, spiritual, political independence. During this period, Gandhi claimed to be a "highly
orthodox Hindu"
and in January 1921 during a speech at a temple in Vadtal, he spoke
of the relevance of non-co-operation to Hindu Dharma, "At this holy place, I declare, if you want to
protect your 'Hindu Dharma', non-cooperation is first as well as the last
lesson you must learn up.".
In December 1921, Gandhi was
invested with executive authority on behalf of the Indian National Congress.
Under his leadership, the Congress was reorganised with a new constitution,
with the goal of Swaraj. Membership in the party was opened to anyone
prepared to pay a token fee. A hierarchy of committees was set up to improve
discipline, transforming the party from an elite organisation to one of mass
national appeal. Gandhi expanded his non-violence platform to include the swadeshi policy—the
boycott of foreign-made goods, especially British goods. Linked to this was his
advocacy that khadi
(homespun cloth) be worn by all Indians instead of British-made textiles.
Gandhi exhorted Indian men and women, rich or poor, to spend time each day
spinning khadi in support of the independence movement.
Gandhi even invented a small,
portable spinning wheel that could be folded into the size of a small
typewriter. This was a strategy to inculcate discipline and dedication
to weeding out the unwilling and ambitious and to include women in the movement
at a time when many thought that such activities were not respectable
activities for women. In addition to boycotting British products, Gandhi urged
the people to boycott British educational institutions and law courts, to
resign from government employment, and to forsake British titles and
honours.
"Non-cooperation" enjoyed
widespread appeal and success, increasing excitement and participation from all
strata of Indian society. Yet, just as the movement reached its apex, it ended
abruptly as a result of a violent clash in
the town of Chauri Chaura, Uttar
Pradesh, in February 1922. Fearing that the movement was about to take a turn
towards violence, and convinced that this would be the undoing of all his work,
Gandhi called off the campaign of mass civil disobedience. This was the third time that Gandhi had called off a major
campaign. Gandhi was arrested on 10 March 1922, tried for sedition,
and sentenced to six years' imprisonment. He began his sentence on 18 March
1922. He was released in February 1924 for an appendicitis operation, having served only two years.
Without Gandhi's unifying
personality, the Indian National Congress began to splinter during his years in
prison, splitting into two factions, one led by Chitta Ranjan Das and Motilal Nehru favouring party participation in the legislatures, and the
other led by Chakravarti
Rajagopalachari and Sardar
Vallabhbhai Patel, opposing this move. Furthermore,
co-operation among Hindus and Muslims, which had been strong at the height of
the non-violence campaign, was breaking down. Gandhi attempted to bridge these
differences through many means, including a three-week fast in the autumn of
1924, but with limited success. In this year, Gandhi was persuaded to preside over the
Congress session to be held in Belgaum.
Gandhi agreed to become president of the session on one condition: that
Congressmen should take to wearing homespun khadi. In his long political
career, this was the only time when he presided over a Congress session.
Salt
Satyagraha (Salt March)
Gandhi stayed out of active politics
and, as such, the limelight for most of the 1920s. He focused instead on
resolving the wedge between the Swaraj Party and the Indian National Congress,
and expanding initiatives against untouchability, alcoholism, ignorance and
poverty. He returned to the fore in 1928. In the preceding year, the British
government had appointed a new constitutional reform commission under Sir John
Simon, which did not include any Indian as its member. The result was a boycott
of the commission by Indian political parties. Gandhi pushed through a
resolution at the Calcutta Congress in December 1928 calling on the British
government to grant India dominion status or face a new campaign of non-co-operation with
complete independence for the country as its goal. Gandhi had not only
moderated the views of younger men like Subhas Chandra Bose and Jawaharlal Nehru, who sought a demand for immediate independence, but also
reduced his own call to a one year wait, instead of two.
The British did not respond. On 31
December 1929, the flag of India was unfurled in Lahore. 26
January 1930 was celebrated as India's
Independence Day by the Indian National Congress
meeting in Lahore. This day was commemorated by almost every other Indian
organisation. Gandhi then launched a new Satyagraha against the tax on salt in
March 1930. This was highlighted by the famous Salt March to Dandi from 12
March to 6 April, where he marched 388 kilometres (241 mi) from Ahmedabad
to Dandi, Gujarat to make salt himself. Thousands of Indians joined him on this
march to the sea. This campaign was one of his most successful at upsetting
British hold on India; Britain responded by imprisoning over
60,000 people.
Women
Gandhi strongly favoured the
emancipation of women, and he went so far as to say that "the women have
come to look upon me as one of themselves." He opposed purdah, child marriage, untouchability, and the extreme oppression of Hindu widows, up to and
including sati. He especially recruited women to participate in the salt
tax campaigns and the boycott of foreign products. Sarma concludes that Gandhi's success in enlisting women in
his campaigns, including the salt tax campaign, anti-untouchability campaign
and the peasant movement, gave many women a new self-confidence and dignity in
the mainstream of Indian public life.
Gandhi
as folk hero
Congress in the 1920s appealed to
peasants by portraying Gandhi as a sort of messiah,
a strategy that succeeded in incorporating radical forces within the peasantry
into the nonviolent resistance movement. In thousands of villages plays were
performed that presented Gandhi as the reincarnation of earlier Indian
nationalist leaders, or even as a demigod. The plays built support among
illiterate peasants steeped in traditional Hindu culture. Similar messianic
imagery appeared in popular songs and poems, and in Congress-sponsored
religious pageants and celebrations. The result was that Gandhi became not only
a folk hero but the Congress was widely seen in the villages as his sacred
instrument.
Negotiations
The government, represented by Lord Edward Irwin,
decided to negotiate with Gandhi. The Gandhi–Irwin Pact was signed in March 1931. The British Government agreed to
free all political prisoners, in return for the suspension of the civil
disobedience movement. Also as a result of the pact, Gandhi was invited to
attend the Round Table Conference in London as the sole representative of the
Indian National Congress. The conference was a disappointment to Gandhi and the
nationalists, because it focused on the Indian princes and Indian minorities
rather than on a transfer of power. Lord Irwin's successor, Lord Willingdon, taking a hard line against nationalism, began a new
campaign of controlling and subduing the nationalist movement. Gandhi was again
arrested, and the government tried and failed to negate his influence by
completely isolating him from his followers.
Untouchables
In 1932, through the campaigning of
the Dalit leader B. R. Ambedkar, the government granted untouchables separate electorates
under the new constitution, known as the Communal Award. In protest, Gandhi embarked on a six-day fast on 20
September 1932, while he was imprisoned at the Yerwada Jail, Pune. The resulting public outcry successfully forced the
government to adopt an equitable arrangement (Poona Pact) through negotiations mediated by Palwankar Baloo. This was the start of a new campaign by Gandhi to improve
the lives of the untouchables, whom he named Harijans,
the children of God. On 8 September 1931, Mahatma Gandhi who was sailing on SS Rajputana, to the second Round Table Conference
in London, Mahatma
Gandhi met Meher Baba in his cabin on board the ship, and discussed issues of
untouchables, politics, state Independence and spirituality
On 8 May 1933, Gandhi began a 21-day
fast of self-purification and launched a one-year campaign to help the Harijan
movement. This new campaign was not universally embraced within the Dalit community, as Ambedkar condemned Gandhi's use of the term Harijans
as saying that Dalits were socially immature, and that privileged caste Indians
played a paternalistic role. Ambedkar and his allies also felt Gandhi was
undermining Dalit political rights. Gandhi had also refused to support the
untouchables in 1924–25 when they were campaigning for the right to pray in
temples. Because of Gandhi's actions, Ambedkar described him as "devious
and untrustworthy". Gandhi, although born into the Vaishya
caste, insisted that he was able to speak on behalf of Dalits, despite the
presence of Dalit activists such as Ambedkar. Gandhi and Ambedkar often clashed because Ambedkar sought
to remove the Dalits out of the Hindu community, while Gandhi tried to save
Hinduism by exorcising untouchability. Ambedkar complained that Gandhi moved
too slowly, while Hindu traditionalists said Gandhi was a dangerous radical who
rejected scripture. Guha noted in 2012 that, "Ideologues have carried
these old rivalries into the present, with the demonization of Gandhi now
common among politicians who presume to speak in Ambedkar's name." Guha adds that their work complemented each other, and
Gandhi often praised Ambedkar.
In the summer of 1934, three
attempts were made on Gandhi's life.
Congress
politics
In 1934 Gandhi resigned from
Congress party membership. He did not disagree with the party's position but
felt that if he resigned, his popularity with Indians would cease to stifle the
party's membership, which actually varied, including communists, socialists,
trade unionists, students, religious conservatives, and those with pro-business
convictions, and that these various voices would get a chance to make
themselves heard. Gandhi also wanted to avoid being a target for Raj propaganda
by leading a party that had temporarily accepted political accommodation with the
Raj.
Gandhi returned to active politics
again in 1936, with the Nehru presidency and the Lucknow session of the
Congress. Although Gandhi wanted a total focus on the task of winning
independence and not speculation about India's future, he did not restrain the
Congress from adopting socialism as its goal. Gandhi had a clash with Subhas Chandra Bose, who had been elected president in 1938, and who had
previously expressed a lack of faith in non-violence as a means of protest. Despite Gandhi's opposition, Bose won a second term as
Congress President, against Gandhi's nominee, Dr. Pattabhi Sitaramayya;
but left the Congress when the All-India leaders resigned en masse in protest
of his abandonment of the principles introduced by Gandhi. Gandhi declared that Sitaramayya's defeat was his defeat.
World
War II and Quit India
Gandhi initially favoured offering
"non-violent moral support" to the British effort when World War II broke out in 1939, but the Congressional leaders were
offended by the unilateral inclusion of India in the war without consultation
of the people's representatives. All Congressmen resigned from office. After long deliberations, Gandhi declared that India could
not be party to a war ostensibly being fought for democratic freedom while that
freedom was denied to India itself. As the war progressed, Gandhi intensified
his demand for independence, calling for the British to Quit India in a
speech at Gowalia Tank Maidan. This was Gandhi's and the Congress Party's most definitive
revolt aimed at securing the British exit from India.
Gandhi was criticised by some
Congress party members and other Indian political groups, both pro-British and
anti-British. Some felt that not supporting Britain more in its struggle
against Nazi Germany was unethical. Others felt that Gandhi's refusal for India
to participate in the war was insufficient and more direct opposition should be
taken, while Britain fought against Nazism, it continued to refuse to grant
India Independence. Quit India became the most forceful movement in the
history of the struggle, with mass arrests and violence on an unprecedented
scale.
In 1942, although still committed in
his efforts to "launch a non-violent movement", Gandhi
clarified that the movement would not be stopped by individual acts of
violence, saying that the "ordered anarchy" of "the
present system of administration" was "worse than real
anarchy." He called on all Congressmen and Indians to maintain
discipline via ahimsa, and Karo ya maro ("Do or die") in the
cause of ultimate freedom.
Gandhi and the entire Congress
Working Committee were arrested in Bombay by the
British on 9 August 1942. Gandhi was held for two years in the Aga Khan Palace in Pune. It was here that Gandhi suffered two terrible blows in his
personal life. His 50-year old secretary Mahadev Desai died of a heart attack 6 days later and his wife
Kasturba died after 18 months imprisonment on 22 February 1944; six weeks later
Gandhi suffered a severe malaria attack. He was released before the end of the war on 6 May
1944 because of his failing health and necessary surgery; the Raj did not want
him to die in prison and enrage the nation. He came out of detention to an
altered political scene—the Muslim League for example, which a few years earlier had appeared marginal,
"now occupied the centre of the political stage" and the topic of Jinnah's campaign for Pakistan was a major talking point. Gandhi
met Jinnah in September 1944 in Bombay but Jinnah rejected, on the grounds that
it fell short of a fully independent Pakistan, his proposal of the right of
Muslim provinces to opt out of substantial parts of the forthcoming political
union.
While the leaders of Congress
languished in jail, the other parties supported the war and gained
organizational strength. Underground publications flailed at the ruthless
suppression of Congress, but it had little control over events. At the end of the war, the British gave clear indications
that power would be transferred to Indian hands. At this point Gandhi called
off the struggle, and around 100,000 political prisoners were released,
including the Congress's leadership.
Partition
and independence, 1947
As a rule, Gandhi was opposed to the
concept of partition as it contradicted his vision of religious unity. Concerning the partition of India
to create Pakistan, while the Indian National Congress
and Gandhi called for the British
to quit India, the Muslim League passed a resolution for them to divide and quit, in 1943. Gandhi suggested an agreement which required the Congress
and Muslim League to co-operate and attain independence under a provisional
government, thereafter, the question of partition could be resolved by a
plebiscite in the districts with a Muslim majority. When Jinnah called for Direct Action, on 16 August 1946, Gandhi was infuriated and personally
visited the most riot-prone areas to stop the massacres. He made strong efforts to unite the Indian Hindus, Muslims,
and Christians and struggled for the emancipation of the "untouchables" in Hindu society.
On 14 and 15 August 1947 the Indian
Independence Act was invoked. In border areas some
10–12 million people moved from one side to another and upwards of a half
million were killed in communal riots pitting Hindus, Muslims, and Sikhs
against each other. But for his teachings, the efforts of his followers, and
his own presence, there perhaps could have been much more bloodshed during the
partition, according to prominent Norwegian historian, Jens Arup Seip.
Stanley Wolpert has argued, The "plan to carve up British India was
never approved of or accepted by Gandhi...who realised too late that his closest
comrades and disciples were more interested in power than principle, and that
his own vision had long been clouded by the illusion that the struggle he led
for India's freedom was a nonviolent one."
Assassination
Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi was
assassinated in garden of the former Birla House (now Gandhi Smriti) at 5:17 PM on 30 January 1948. Accompanied by his
grandnieces, Gandhi was on his way to address a prayer meeting, when his
assassin, Nathuram Godse, fired three bullets from a Beretta
9 mm pistol into his chest at point-blank range. Godse was a Hindu nationalist with links to the extremist Hindu Mahasabha, who held Gandhi guilty of favouring Pakistan and strongly
opposed the doctrine of nonviolence. Godse and his co-conspirator were tried and executed in
1949. Gandhi's memorial (or Samādhi) at Rāj
Ghāt, New Delhi, bears the epigraph
"Hē Ram", (Devanagari: हे ! राम or, He Rām), which may be translated as "Oh God". These are
widely believed to be Gandhi's last words after he was shot, though the
veracity of this statement has been disputed. Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru addressed the nation
through radio:
"Friends and comrades, the light has gone out of our lives, and there is darkness everywhere, and I do not quite know
what to tell you or how to say it. Our beloved leader, Bapu as we called him,
the father of the nation, is no more. Perhaps I am wrong to say that;
nevertheless, we will not see him again, as we have seen him for these many
years, we will not run to him for advice or seek solace from him, and that is a
terrible blow, not only for me, but for millions and millions in this country."—Jawaharlal
Nehru's address to Gandhi
Gandhi's death was mourned
nationwide. Over two million people joined the five-mile long funeral
procession that took over five hours to reach Raj Ghat from Birla house, where
he was assassinated. Gandhi's body was transported on a weapons carrier, whose
chassis was dismantled overnight to allow a high-floor to be installed so that
people could catch a glimpse of his body. The engine of the vehicle was not
used, instead four drag-ropes manned by 50 people each pulled the vehicle. All Indian-owned establishments in London remained closed
in mourning as thousands of people from all faiths and denominations and
Indians from all over Britain converged at India House in London.
While India mourned and communal
(inter-religious) violence escalated, there were calls for retaliation, and
even an invasion of Pakistan by the Indian army. Nehru and Patel, the two
strongest figures in the government and in Congress, had been pulling in
opposite directions; the assassination pushed them together. They agreed the
first objective must be to calm the hysteria. They called on Indians to honour Gandhi's memory and even
more his ideals. They used the assassination to consolidate the authority of
the new Indian state. The government made sure everyone knew the guilty party
was not a Muslim. Congress tightly controlled the epic public displays of grief
over a two-week period—the funeral, mortuary rituals and distribution of the
martyr's ashes—as millions participated and hundreds of millions watched. The
goal was to assert the power of the government and legitimise the Congress
Party's control. This move built upon the massive outpouring of Hindu
expressions of grief. The government suppressed the RSS, the Muslim National Guards, and the Khaksars,
with some 200,000 arrests. Gandhi's death and funeral linked the distant state
with the Indian people and made more understood the need to suppress religious
parties during the transition to independence for the Indian people.
Ashes
By Hindu tradition the ashes were to
be spread on a river. Gandhi's ashes were poured into urns which were sent
across India for memorial services. Most were immersed at the Sangam at Allahabad on 12 February 1948, but some were secretly taken away. In
1997, Tushar Gandhi immersed the contents of one urn, found in a bank vault and
reclaimed through the courts, at the Sangam at Allahabad. Some of Gandhi's ashes were scattered at the source of the
Nile River near Jinja, Uganda, and a memorial plaque marks the event. On 30
January 2008, the contents of another urn were immersed at Girgaum Chowpatty. Another urn is at the palace
of the Aga Khan
in Pune (where Gandhi had been imprisoned from 1942 to 1944) and
another in the Self-Realization Fellowship Lake Shrine in Los Angeles.
Principles,
practices and beliefs
Gandhism designates the ideas and principles Gandhi promoted. Of
central importance is nonviolent resistance. A Gandhian can mean either an individual who follows, or a specific
philosophy which is attributed to, Gandhism. M.M. Sankhdher argues that Gandhism is not a systematic
position in metaphysics or in political philosophy. Rather, it is a political
creed, an economic doctrine, a religious outlook, a moral precept, and
especially, a humanitarian world view. It is an effort not to systematize
wisdom but to transform society and is based on an undying faith in the
goodness of human nature. However Gandhi himself did not approve of the notion of
"Gandhism", as he explained in 1936:
There is no such thing as "Gandhism", and I do not
want to leave any sect after me. I do not claim to have originated any new
principle or doctrine. I have simply tried in my own way to apply the eternal
truths to our daily life and problems...The opinions I have formed and the
conclusions I have arrived at are not final. I may change them tomorrow. I have
nothing new to teach the world. Truth and non-violence are as old as the hills.
Influences
Historian R.B. Cribb argues that
Gandhi's thought evolved over time, with his early ideas becoming the core or
scaffolding for his mature philosophy. In London he committed himself to
truthfulness, temperance, chastity, and vegetarianism. His return to India to
work as a lawyer was a failure, so he went to South Africa for a quarter
century, where he absorbed ideas from many sources, most of them non-Indian. Gandhi grew up in an eclectic religious atmosphere and
throughout his life searched for insights from many religious traditions. He was exposed to Jain
ideas through his mother who was in contact with Jain monks. Themes from
Jainism that Gandhi absorbed included asceticism; compassion for all forms of
life; the importance of vows for self-discipline; vegetarianism; fasting for
self-purification; mutual tolerance among people of different creeds; and
"syadvad", the idea that all views of truth are partial, a doctrine
that lies at the root of Satyagraha. He received much of his influence from Jainism
particularly during his younger years.
Gandhi's London experience provided
a solid philosophical base focused on truthfulness, temperance, chastity, and
vegetarianism. When he returned to India in 1891, his outlook was parochial and
he could not make a living as a lawyer. This challenged his belief that practicality
and morality necessarily coincided. By moving in 1893 to South Africa he found
a solution to this problem and developed the central concepts of his mature
philosophy. N. A. Toothi felt that Gandhi was influenced by the reforms and
teachings of Swaminarayan, stating "Close parallels do exist in programs of
social reform based on to non-violence, truth-telling, cleanliness, temperance
and upliftment of the masses." Vallabhbhai Patel, who grew up in a Swaminarayan
household was attracted to Gandhi due to this
aspect of Gandhi's doctrine.
Gandhi's ethical thinking was
heavily influenced by a handful of books, which he repeatedly meditated upon.
They included especially Plato's Apology and John Ruskin's Unto this Last (1862) (both of which he translated into his native
Gujarati); William
Salter's Ethical Religion (1889);
Henry David Thoreau's On the Duty of Civil Disobedience (1847); Leo Tolstoy's The Kingdom of God Is Within You (1893). Ruskin inspired his decision to live an austere
life on a commune, at first on the Phoenix Farm in Natal and then on the
Tolstoy Farm just outside Johannesburg, South Africa.
Balkrishna Gokhale argues that
Gandhi took his philosophy of history from Hinduism and Jainism, supplemented
by selected Christian traditions and ideas of Tolstoy and Ruskin. Hinduism
provided central concepts of God's role in history, of man as the battleground
of forces of virtue and sin, and of the potential of love as an historical
force. From Jainism, Gandhi took the idea of applying nonviolence to human
situations and the theory that Absolute Reality can be comprehended only
relatively in human affairs.
Historian Howard Spodek argues for
the importance of the culture of Gujarat in shaping Gandhi's methods. Spodek
finds that some of Gandhi's most effective methods such as fasting,
nonco-operation and appeals to the justice and compassion of the rulers were
learned as a youth in Gujarat. Later on, the financial, cultural,
organizational and geographical support needed to bring his campaigns to a
national audience were drawn from Ahmedabad and Gujarat, his Indian residence
1915–1930.
Tolstoy
In 1908 Leo Tolstoy wrote A Letter to a Hindu, which said that only by using love
as a weapon through passive resistance could the Indian people overthrow colonial rule. In 1909,
Gandhi wrote to Tolstoy seeking advice and permission to republish A Letter
to a Hindu in Gujarati. Tolstoy responded and the two continued a
correspondence until Tolstoy's death in 1910. The letters concern practical and
theological applications of non-violence. Gandhi saw himself a disciple of Tolstoy, for they agreed
regarding opposition to state authority and colonialism; both hated violence
and preached non-resistance. However, they differed sharply on political
strategy. Gandhi called for political involvement; he was a nationalist and was
prepared to use nonviolent force. He was also willing to compromise. It was at Tolstoy Farm where Gandhi and Hermann Kallenbach systematically trained their disciples in the philosophy of
nonviolence.
Truth
and Satyagraha
Gandhi dedicated his life to the
wider purpose of discovering truth, or Satya.
He tried to achieve this by learning from his own mistakes and conducting
experiments on himself. He called his autobiography The Story of My Experiments with Truth.
Bruce Watson argues that Gandhi
based Satyagraha on the Vedantic ideal of self-realization, and notes it also
contains Jain and Buddhist notions of nonviolence, vegetarianism, the avoidance
of killing, and 'agape' (universal love). Gandhi also borrowed
Christian-Islamic ideas of equality, the brotherhood of man, and the concept of
turning the other cheek.
Gandhi stated that the most
important battle to fight was overcoming his own demons, fears, and
insecurities. Gandhi summarised his beliefs first when he said "God is
Truth". He would later change this statement to "Truth is God".
Thus, satya (truth) in Gandhi's philosophy is "God".
The essence of Satyagraha (a name Gandhi invented meaning "adherence to
truth") is that it seeks to eliminate antagonisms without harming
the antagonists themselves and seeks to transform or "purify" it to a
higher level. A euphemism sometimes used for Satyagraha is that it is a
"silent force" or a "soul force" (a term also used by
Martin Luther King Jr. during his famous "I Have a Dream" speech). It arms the individual with moral power
rather than physical power. Satyagraha is also termed a "universal
force", as it essentially "makes no distinction between kinsmen and
strangers, young and old, man and woman, friend and foe."
Gandhi wrote: "There must be no
impatience, no barbarity, no insolence, no undue pressure. If we want to
cultivate a true spirit of democracy, we cannot afford to be intolerant.
Intolerance betrays want of faith in one's cause." Civil disobedience and non-co-operation as practised under Satyagraha are based on the "law of
suffering", a doctrine that the endurance of suffering is a means to
an end. This end usually implies a moral upliftment or progress of an
individual or society. Therefore, non-co-operation in Satyagraha is in fact a
means to secure the co-operation of the opponent consistently with truth and justice.
Nonviolence
Although Gandhi was not the
originator of the principle of non-violence, he was the first to apply it in
the political field on a large scale. The concept of nonviolence (ahimsa) and nonresistance has a long history in Indian religious thought and has had
many revivals in Hindu, Buddhist, Jain, Jewish and Christian contexts. Gandhi
explains his philosophy and way of life in his autobiography The Story of My Experiments with Truth. Some of his other remarks were widely quoted, such as
"An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind." "There are many causes that I am prepared to die for
but no causes that I am prepared to kill for." Gandhi realised later that this level of nonviolence
required incredible faith and courage, which he believed everyone did not
possess. He therefore advised that everyone need not keep to nonviolence,
especially if it were used as a cover for cowardice, saying, "where there
is only a choice between cowardice and violence, I would advise violence."
Gandhi thus came under some
political fire for his criticism of those who attempted to achieve independence
through more violent means. His refusal to protest against the hanging of Bhagat Singh, Sukhdev, Udham Singh and Rajguru were sources of condemnation among some parties.
Of this criticism, Gandhi stated,
"There was a time when people listened to me because I showed them how to
give fight to the British without arms when they had no arms [...] but today I
am told that my non-violence can be of no avail against the [Hindu–Moslem
riots] and, therefore, people should arm themselves for self-defense."
Gandhi's views came under heavy
criticism in Britain when it was under attack from Nazi Germany, and later when the Holocaust
was revealed. He told the British people in 1940, "I would like you to lay
down the arms you have as being useless for saving you or humanity. You will
invite Herr Hitler and Signor Mussolini to take what they want of the countries
you call your possessions... If these gentlemen choose to occupy your homes,
you will vacate them. If they do not give you free passage out, you will allow
yourselves, man, woman, and child, to be slaughtered, but you will refuse to
owe allegiance to them."
In a post-war interview in 1946, he
said, "Hitler killed five million Jews. It is
the greatest crime of our time. But the Jews should have offered themselves to
the butcher's knife. They should have thrown themselves into the sea from
cliffs... It would have aroused the world and the people of Germany... As it is
they succumbed anyway in their millions." Gandhi believed this act of "collective suicide",
in response to the Holocaust, "would have been heroism".
Muslims
One of the Gandhi's major
strategies, first in South Africa and then in India, was uniting Muslims and
Hindus to work together in opposition to British imperialism. In 1919–22 he won
strong Muslim support for his leadership in the Khilafat Movement to support the historic Ottoman Caliphate. By 1924 that Muslim support had largely evaporated.
Jews
In 1931, he suggested that while he
could understand the desire of European Jews to emigrate to Palestine, he
opposed any movement that supported British colonialism or violence. Muslims throughout India and the Middle East
strongly opposed the Zionist plan for a Jewish state in Palestine, and Gandhi
(and Congress) supported the Muslims in this regard. By the 1930s all major
political groups in India opposed a Jewish state in Palestine.
This led to discussions concerning
the persecution of the Jews in Germany and the emigration of Jews
from Europe to Palestine, which
Gandhi framed through the lens of Satyagraha. In 1937, Gandhi discussed Zionism
with his close Jewish friend Hermann Kallenbach. He said Zionism was not the right answer to the Jewish
problem and instead recommended Satyagraha. Gandhi thought the
Zionists in Palestine represented European imperialism and used violence to
achieve their goals; he argued that "the Jews should disclaim any
intention of realizing their aspiration under the protection of arms and should
rely wholly on the goodwill of Arabs. No exception can possibly be taken to the
natural desire of the Jews to found a home in Palestine. But they must wait for
its fulfillment till Arab opinion is ripe for it." In 1938, Gandhi stated that his "sympathies are all
with the Jews. I have known them intimately in South Africa. Some of them
became life-long companions." Philosopher Martin Buber was highly critical of Gandhi's approach and in 1939 wrote
an open letter to him on the subject. Gandhi reiterated his stance on the use
of Satyagraha in Palestine in 1947.
Vegetarianism
and food
Stephen Hay argues that Gandhi in
London looked into numerous religious and intellectual currents. He especially
appreciated how the theosophical
movement encouraged a religious eclecticism
and an antipathy to atheism. Hay says the vegetarian movement had the greatest
impact for it was Gandhi's point of entry into other reformist agendas of the
time. The idea of vegetarianism is deeply ingrained in Hindu and
Jain traditions in India, especially in his native Gujarat. Gandhi was close to the chairman of the London Vegetarian
Society, Dr. Josiah Oldfield, and corresponded with Henry Stephens Salt, a vegetarian campaigner. Gandhi became a strict vegetarian. He wrote the book The Moral Basis of Vegetarianism
and wrote for the London Vegetarian Society's publication. Gandhi was somewhat of a food faddist taking
his own goat to travels so he could always have fresh milk.
Gandhi noted in his autobiography
that vegetarianism was the beginning of his deep commitment to Brahmacharya; without total control of the palate, his success in
Brahmacharya would likely falter. "You wish to know what the marks of a
man are who wants to realize Truth which is God", he wrote. "He must
reduce himself to zero and have perfect control over all his senses-beginning
with the palate or tongue."
Fasting
Gandhi used fasting
as a political device, often threatening suicide unless demands were met.
Congress publicised the fasts as a political action that generated widespread
sympathy. In response the government tried to manipulate news coverage to
minimise his challenge to the Raj. He fasted in 1932 to protest the voting
scheme for separate political representation for Dalits; Gandhi did not want
them segregated. The government stopped the London press from showing
photographs of his emaciated body, because it would elicit sympathy. Gandhi's
1943 hunger strike took place during a two-year prison term for the
anticolonial Quit India movement. The government called on nutritional experts
to demystify his action, and again no photos were allowed. However his final
fast in 1948, after India was independent, was lauded by the British press and
this time did include full-length photos.
Alter argues that Gandhi's fixation
on diet and celibacy were much deeper than exercises in self-discipline.
Rather, his beliefs regarding health offered a critique of both the traditional
Hindu system of ayurvedic medicine and Western concepts. This challenge was
integral to his deeper challenge to tradition and modernity, as health and
nonviolence became part of the same ethics.
Celibacy
and experiments with celibacy (Bramhacharya)
In 1906 Gandhi, although married and
a father, vowed to abstain from sexual relations. In the 1940s, in his
mid-seventies, he brought his grandniece Manubehn to sleep naked in his bed as
part of a spiritual experiment in which Gandhi could test himself as a
"brahmachari." Several other young women and girls also sometimes
shared his bed as part of his experiments. Gandhi's behaviour was widely discussed and criticised by
family members and leading politicians, including Nehru. Some members of his
staff resigned, including two editors of his newspaper who left after refusing
to print parts of Gandhi's sermons dealing with his sleeping arrangements. But
Gandhi said that if he wouldn't let Manu sleep with her, it would be a sign of
weakness.
Gandhi discussed his experiment with
friends and relations; most disagreed and the experiment ceased in 1947. Religious studies scholar Veena Howard argues that Gandhi
made "creative use":130 of his
celibacy and his authority as a mahatma "to reinterpret religious
norms and confront unjust social and religious conventions relegating women to
lower status.":130 According
to Howard, Gandhi "developed his discourse as a religious renouncer within
India's traditions to confront repressive social and religious customs
regarding women and to bring them into the public sphere, during a time when
the discourse on celibacy was typically imbued with masculine rhetoric and
misogynist inferences.... his writings show a consistent evolution of his
thought toward creating an equal playing field for members of both sexes and
even elevating women to a higher plane—all through his discourse and unorthodox
practice of brahmacharya.":137
Nai
Talim, basic education
Gandhi's educational policies
reflected Nai Talim ('Basic Education for all'), a spiritual principle
which states that knowledge and work are not separate. It was a reaction
against the British educational system and colonialism in general, which had
the negative effect of making Indian children alienated and career-based; it
promoted disdain for manual work, the development of a new elite class, and the
increasing problems of industrialisation and urbanisation. The three pillars of
Gandhi's pedagogy were its focus on the lifelong character of education,
its social character and its form as a holistic process. For
Gandhi, education is 'the moral development of the person', a process that is
by definition 'lifelong'.
Nai Talim evolved out of the
spiritually oriented education program at Tolstoy Farm in South Africa, and
Gandhi's work at the ashram at Sevagram after 1937. After 1947 the Nehru government's vision of an
industrialised, centrally planned economy had scant place for Gandhi's
village-oriented approach.
Swaraj,
self-rule
Rudolph argues that after a false
start in trying to emulate the English in an attempt to overcome his timidity,
Gandhi discovered the inner courage he was seeking by helping his countrymen in
South Africa. The new courage consisted of observing the traditional Bengali
way of "self-suffering" and, in finding his own courage, he was
enabled also to point out the way of 'Satyagraha' and 'ahimsa' to the whole of
India. Gandhi's writings expressed four meanings of freedom: as
India's national independence; as individual political freedom; as group
freedom from poverty; and as the capacity for personal self-rule.
Gandhi was a self-described philosophical
anarchist, and his vision of India meant an India without an
underlying government. He once said that "the ideally nonviolent state would
be an ordered anarchy." While political systems are largely hierarchical, with each
layer of authority from the individual to the central government have
increasing levels of authority over the layer below, Gandhi believed that
society should be the exact opposite, where nothing is done without the consent
of anyone, down to the individual. His idea was that true self-rule in a
country means that every person rules his or herself and that there is no state
which enforces laws upon the people.
This would be achieved over time
with nonviolent conflict mediation, as power is divested from layers of
hierarchical authorities, ultimately to the individual, which would come to
embody the ethic of nonviolence. Rather than a system where rights are enforced
by a higher authority, people are self-governed by mutual responsibilities. On
returning from South Africa, when Gandhi received a letter asking for his
participation in writing a world charter for human rights, he responded saying,
"in my experience, it is far more important to have a charter for human
duties."
A free India did not mean merely
transferring the established British administrative structure into Indian
hands. He warned, "you would make India English. And when it becomes
English, it will be called not Hindustan but Englishtan. This is not the Swaraj
I want." Tewari argues that Gandhi saw democracy as more than a
system of government; it meant promoting both individuality and the
self-discipline of the community. Democracy was a moral system that distributed
power and assisted the development of every social class, especially the
lowest. It meant settling disputes in a nonviolent manner; it required freedom
of thought and expression. For Gandhi, democracy was a way of life.
Gandhian
economics
A free India for Gandhi meant the
flourishing of thousands of self-sufficient small communities who rule
themselves without hindering others. Gandhian economics focused on the need for
economic self-sufficiency at the village level. His policy of "sarvodaya" called for ending poverty through improved agriculture and
small-scale cottage industries in every village. Gandhi challenged Nehru and the modernizers in the late
1930s who called for rapid industrialisation on the Soviet model; Gandhi
denounced that as dehumanising and contrary to the needs of the villages where
the great majority of the people lived. After Gandhi's death Nehru led India to large-scale
planning that emphasised modernisation and heavy industry, while modernising
agriculture through irrigation. Historian Kuruvilla Pandikattu says "it was Nehru's vision, not Gandhi's, that was
eventually preferred by the Indian State." After Gandhi's death activists inspired by his vision
promoted their opposition to industrialisation through the teachings of Gandhian economics.
Literary
works
Gandhi was a prolific writer. One of
Gandhi's earliest publications, Hind Swaraj, published in Gujarati in
1909, is recognised[by whom?] as the intellectual blueprint of India's freedom movement.
The book was translated into English the next year, with a copyright legend
that read "No Rights Reserved". For decades he edited several newspapers including Harijan in Gujarati, in Hindi and in
the English language; Indian Opinion while in South Africa and, Young India, in English, and Navajivan, a Gujarati monthly, on his
return to India. Later, Navajivan was also published in Hindi. In addition, he
wrote letters almost every day to individuals and newspapers.
Gandhi also wrote several books
including his autobiography, The Story of My Experiments with Truth (Gujarātī "સત્યના પ્રયોગો અથવા આત્મકથા"), of which
he bought the entire first edition to make sure it was reprinted. His other autobiographies included: Satyagraha in South
Africa about his struggle there, Hind Swaraj or Indian Home Rule, a political pamphlet, and a paraphrase in Gujarati of John Ruskin's Unto This Last. This last essay can be considered his programme on
economics. He also wrote extensively on vegetarianism, diet and health,
religion, social reforms, etc. Gandhi usually wrote in Gujarati, though he also
revised the Hindi and English translations of his books.
Gandhi's complete works were
published by the Indian government under the name The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi in the 1960s. The writings comprise about 50,000 pages
published in about a hundred volumes. In 2000, a revised edition of the
complete works sparked a controversy, as it constituted large number of errors
and omissions. The Indian government later withdrew the revised edition.
Legacy
and depictions in popular culture
The word Mahatma, while often mistaken for Gandhi's given name in the West,
is taken from the Sanskrit
words maha (meaning Great) and atma (meaning Soul).
Rabindranath Tagore is said to have accorded the title to Gandhi. In his autobiography, Gandhi nevertheless explains that he
never valued the title, and was often pained by it.
Followers
and international influence
In his early years, the former President
of South Africa Nelson Mandela was a follower of the non-violent resistance philosophy of
Gandhi. Bhana and Vahed commented on these events as "Gandhi
inspired succeeding generations of South African activists seeking to end White
rule. This legacy connects him to Nelson Mandela...in a sense Mandela completed what Gandhi started."
Gandhi's life and teachings inspired
many who specifically referred to Gandhi as their mentor or who dedicated their
lives to spreading Gandhi's ideas. In Europe, Romain Rolland was the first to discuss Gandhi in his 1924 book Mahatma
Gandhi, and Brazilian anarchist and feminist Maria Lacerda de
Moura wrote about Gandhi in her work on
pacifism. In 1931, notable European physicist Albert Einstein exchanged written letters with Gandhi, and called him
"a role model for the generations to come" in a later writing about
him. Einstein said of Gandhi:
Mahatma Gandhi's life achievement
stands unique in political history. He has invented a completely new and humane
means for the liberation war of an oppressed country, and practised it with
greatest energy and devotion. The moral influence he had on the consciously
thinking human being of the entire civilized world will probably be much more
lasting than it seems in our time with its overestimation of brutal violent
forces. Because lasting will only be the work of such statesmen who wake up and
strengthen the moral power of their people through their example and
educational works. We may all be happy and grateful that destiny gifted us with
such an enlightened contemporary, a role model for the generations to come.
Generations to come will scarce
believe that such a one as this walked the earth in flesh and blood.
Lanza del Vasto went to India in 1936 intending to live with Gandhi; he
later returned to Europe to spread Gandhi's philosophy and founded the Community of the
Ark in 1948 (modelled after Gandhi's
ashrams). Madeleine Slade (known as "Mirabehn") was the daughter of a
British admiral who spent much of her adult life in India as a devotee of
Gandhi.
I am mindful that I might not be
standing before you today, as President of the United States, had it not been
for Gandhi and the message he shared with America and the world.
Obama in September 2009 said that
his biggest inspiration came from Mahatma Gandhi. His reply was in response to
the question 'Who was the one person, dead or live, that you would choose to
dine with?'. He continued that "He's somebody I find a lot of inspiration
in. He inspired Dr. King with his message of nonviolence. He ended up doing so
much and changed the world just by the power of his ethics."
Time Magazine named The 14th Dalai Lama, Lech Wałęsa, Martin Luther King, Cesar Chavez, Aung San Suu Kyi, Benigno Aquino, Jr., Desmond Tutu, and Nelson Mandela as Children of Gandhi and his spiritual heirs to
non-violence. The Mahatma Gandhi
District in Houston,
Texas, United States, an ethnic Indian enclave, is officially named after
Gandhi.
Global
holidays
Awards
Gandhi did not receive the Nobel Peace Prize, although he was nominated five times between 1937 and
1948, including the first-ever nomination by the American Friends Service Committee, though he made the short list only twice, in 1937 and 1947. Decades later, the Nobel Committee publicly declared its
regret for the omission, and admitted to deeply divided nationalistic opinion
denying the award. Gandhi was nominated in 1948 but was assassinated before
nominations closed. That year, the committee chose not to award the peace prize
stating that "there was no suitable living candidate" and later
research shows that the possibility of awarding the prize posthumously to
Gandhi was discussed and that the reference to no suitable living candidate was
to Gandhi. When the 14th Dalai Lama was awarded the Prize in 1989, the chairman of the
committee said that this was "in part a tribute to the memory of Mahatma
Gandhi."
World
Farm Animals' Day
Gandhi's birthday is chosen as a
commemoration for the billions of non-human animals that are slaughtered by the
human farming industry each year. The practice started in 1983
Film
and literature
Anti-Gandhi themes have also been
showcased through films and plays. The 1995 Marathi play Gandhi Virudh
Gandhi explored the relationship between Gandhi and his son Harilal. The
2007 film, Gandhi, My Father was inspired on the same theme. The 1989 Marathi play Me
Nathuram Godse Boltoy and the
1997 Hindi play Gandhi Ambedkar criticised Gandhi and his principles.
Several biographers have undertaken
the task of describing Gandhi's life. Among them are D. G. Tendulkar with his Mahatma.
Life of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi in eight volumes, and Pyarelal
and Sushila Nayyar with their Mahatma Gandhi in 10 volumes. There is
another documentary, Mahatma: Life of Gandhi, 1869–1948, which is 14 chapters and six hours long. The 2010 biography, Great Soul: Mahatma Gandhi and His Struggle
With India by Joseph Lelyveld contained controversial material speculating about Gandhi's
sexual life. Lelyveld, however, stated that the press coverage
"grossly distort[s]" the overall message of the book.
Current
impact within India
India, with its rapid economic
modernisation and urbanisation, has rejected Gandhi's economics but accepted much of his politics and continues to revere
his memory. Reporter Jim Yardley notes that, "modern India is hardly a
Gandhian nation, if it ever was one. His vision of a village-dominated economy
was shunted aside during his lifetime as rural romanticism, and his call for a
national ethos of personal austerity and nonviolence has proved antithetical to
the goals of an aspiring economic and military power." By contrast Gandhi
is "given full credit for India's political identity as a tolerant,
secular democracy."
