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Father Of The Nation : Mahatma Gandhi |
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Born
into a modest Gujarati family, Mohandas Karamchand
Gandhi
was the fifth child of Karamchand and Putliba. He
was born on October 2, 1869, in Porbandar, where
his father was Dewan. As the youngest child, he
was mischievous. As a youth, he was an average student
who was very shy and unable to speak. He says he
ran home from school to avoid befriending and talking
to other students During his childhood, Mohan became
a victim of peer pressure. He experimented with
smoking with his older brother. Both would collect
the stubs after their uncle had extinguished his
cigarette, remove the tobacco from them and roll
a cigarettes for themselves. |
This did not last long because Mohan found it discomforting
and distasteful. Then he experimented with meat-eating
with a Muslim friend who convinced Mohan that the
only reason why the English were so tall and powerful
and able to rule over India was because they ate
meat. Unless Indians became meat-eaters, India would
never become free was his argument. For almost a
year, meat-eating became a clandestine affair which
entailed lies, deception and even stealing. He had
to find the money to pay for the food-which meant
stealing from home; he had to make excuses for not
eating at home-which meant lying and deception.
Soon, this became intolerable, and Mohan made a
confession to his father.
Karamchand was unwell and, therefore, resting in
bed. Mohan did not have the courage to tell him
about his clandestine escapades, so he wrote a confession
and handed it over to his father to read. Tears
welled up in his father's eyes; he embraced Mohan,
and both of them cried. Mohan writes in his autobiography
that it felt as though their tears washed away the
sin of deception that he had committed. He decided
never again to indulge in such acts.
Mohan was married at the age of 13, since child
marriages were prevalent then. His bride was Kastur,
the daughter of Gokuldas Makanji, the Mayor of Porbandar.
She was also 13 years old, and she taught Mohan
his first lesson in non-violence. Mohan had no idea
what the role of a husband should be, so he bought
some pamphlets, which were written by male chauvinists
and suggested that an Indian husband must lay down
the rules for the wife to follow. Thus, Mohan laid
down the first rule when he told Kastur,
"Henceforth, you will not go out of this house
without my permission."
Kastur heard him quietly. She did not retort or
say anything. A few days later, Mohan realized that
she still flouted his rule and went out of the house
to the temple and to the market and sometimes visiting
friends and relatives. He confronted her that evening.
"How dare you disobey my orders?" he barked
at her.
Once again, very calmly and without loosing her
cool, Kastur asked: "Who is senior in this
house? Are you superior to your mother? Should I
tell her that I will not go out with her until you
give me permission? If that is what you want let
me know." She was so calm and collected that
Gandhi had no answer. He never questioned her again.
It is a lesson for all of us to learn. When we face
such situations we retort and react angrily making
the situation worse and sometimes leading to the
breaking of the relationship. But calmly, with common
sense, one can achieve the same results.
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a Dewan, his father was a very generous person,
and his income was spent on helping the poor and
the needy. The family lived reasonably well, but
there were no savings. When his father died, the
family found itself in financial difficulties. By
then, the British had entrenched themselves in India
and controlled the affairs of the states making
it difficult for a person to inherit his father's
job. In the old days in India, a son usually took
over when the father retired or died. The British,
however, wanted people who were "qualified"
for the job, so none of the sons could become Dewan
of Porbandar after Karamchand's death. |
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The family faced severe economic problems after
Karamchand's death in 1885. The brothers-Laxmidas
and Karsandas-did not have jobs, and there was no
hope of any of them inheriting the title of Dewan.
The older brothers learned to write legal briefs
and earned a little to sustain the large family.
None of them were educated beyond elementary school,
so the burden of resurrecting the family fortunes
fell on Mohan. Although his mother and other family
elders could not contemplate his going abroad for
further studies, the advice of more liberal counselors
was that Mohan must go to England and study law.
With the British entrenched in India, they were
going to demand academic qualifications for all
jobs.
Reluctantly, and after many promises, Mohan was
allowed to go to England. He not only studied law
but came in close touch with many eminent philosophers
and thinkers and spent many hours a day in discussions.
He was able to absorb a great deal from them and
it was this group which contained George Bernard
Shaw and others who one day asked Mohan to read
with them the Bhagwad Gita and explain it to them.
Mohan was ashamed that he had never read the scripture
himself and did not know Sanskrit to be able to
read the original. Instead, he read with them Edwin
Arnold's English translation of the Gita-The Song
Celestial-which revealed to him the richness of
Hindu scriptures.
Mohan was impressed not only by the reading of the
Gita but by the "friendly" study that
this group of Englishmen were trying to make of
other scriptures. Mohan's motto in life, "A
friendly study of all scriptures is the sacred duty
of every individual." was born in England during
this educational tour. He studied all the religions
of the world and found there was a great deal in
each one of them for all of us to absorb in our
own lives. His respect for different religions and
willingness to study them with an open mind is what
broadened his perspective and enriched his mind. |
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He
returned from England in 1891 very much a "brown
sahib." He tried to introduce his western
habits in his traditional home in Porbandar and,
indeed, spent so much time and energy in this
pursuit that he forgot that he had to set up a
legal practice and start earning to support the
family. Weeks passed and once again it was Kastur
who opened his eyes to his responsibilities when
she gently chided him for his futile attempts
to westernize the family rather than earning money
to support it.For someone as shy and timid as
Mohan, setting up a legal practice was not easy.
He was not successful in Porbandar, so he went
to Bombay and met with no success there either.
He tried to get a job as a school teacher to teach
English but was astounded to learn that he did
not have the requisite qualifications to teach
English, only to practice law in English
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After struggling for several months, he decided
to go back to Porbandar and do what his brothers
were doing- write legal briefs. His brothers were
very disappointed, especially since the family
had taken enormous loans to send Mohan to England
to study. How would they repay the loans if Mohan
was going to end up writing briefs?
Laxmidas had a Muslim friend, Dada Abdullah, who
had gone to South Africa and made a lot of money
as a trader. He now had a legal case with another
Muslim trader which had been going on for a long
time without resolution. Both traders had white,
English-speaking lawyers, and since neither of
them could speak English, communication was very
poor. Dada Abdullah heard about Mohan through
his brother and invited Mohan to come to South
Africa on a one-year contract to work as an interpreter
for him.
Mohan
once again left India in 1893 to go to another
new part of the world to try his luck. The urgency
of finding a job and making money was impressed
upon him, and he was conscious of his responsibilities,
but he was also conscious of his "status"
in life as an England-trained Barrister-at-Law.
Consequently, a week after his arrival, when it
was time for Mohan to go to Pretoria to attend
the case in the Supreme Court, Mohan decided he
must travel by first class. Anything lower than
that would be undignified. He ordered his ticket
by mail.
There were so many coincidences in Mohan's life
that seemed to nudge him towards a transformation
from a mere Mohan to Gandhiji. Had he not gone
to England, had he not been exposed to English
intellectuals, had he not studied law, had he
not been a failure in India, had he become a school
teacher, had he not accepted the invitation to
South Africa, had he not had that false sense
of dignity and, above all, and had South African
whites not had aggravating racial prejudices,
we would not be writing or reading about Gandhi
today. It was the cumulative effect of all these
and many other little coincidences that conspired
to give us the "Apostle of Peace".
The transformative experience was when he encountered
a white co-passenger who boarded the train in
Pietermaritzburg, who seeing a "black"
Mohan sitting in a first class compartment, reacted
with a total lack of dignity. Mohan was picked
up and thrown off the train for refusing to vacate
the first class compartment. This humiliation,
Gandhi wrote later, first caused him to react
in anger with a desire to respond violently. He
saw the futility of such action and rejected it.
The next thought was to leave South Africa and
go back to India where he felt he could live in
greater dignity and honor but rejected that also
because he felt that it was not appropriate to
run away from a problem. Besides, I feel that
at the back of his mind was the overriding question,
"What will I tell my wife and family? That
I have failed once again?"
The
third thought, which occurred to him as the dawn
was breaking over Pietermaritzburg on that fateful
day, was to seek justice through non-violent action.
This is the point at which "satyagraha"
was born. He used it effectively in South Africa
for 22 years and won many concessions for his
fellow Indians. The government, however, reneged
on these concessions after Mohan left South Africa
in 1915. There are those who wonder why Mohan
did not fight the cause of the African natives
of South Africa. Some historians have uncharitably
labeled Gandhiji as a "racist", but
I think they miss a very important point.
Gandhiji was unfamiliar with South Africa and
the conditions and the language of the native
Africans. He was also equally unfamiliar with
the philosophy of non-violence which was being
evolved one campaign at a time. It was hard enough
for him to convince his own people about this
philosophy without having to translate it for
the native Africans who were known for their militancy.
Much later, in 1939, when he was much wiser and
more confident about his philosophy of satyagraha,
he told a delegation of African American leaders
led by Dr. Howard Thurman that he had to prove
the success of his philosophy to his own people
in India before bringing it to the United States.
This was in response to Dr. Thurman's invitation
to Gandhiji to lead the civil rights movement
in the United States.
If
he was so reluctant to enlarge the scope of his
philosophy in 1939, how could he consider getting
the native Africans involved thirty years earlier?
I think it was more his sense of prudence than
his prejudice that kept him away from dealing
with the native African problems. In 1906 he witnessed
the "Zulu War" closely as a Red Cross
volunteer caring for the injured and the dead,
mostly Zulus. He writes about this experience
with total disgust. He had witnessed what was
conventional war at the time and knew that there
were certain rules that the soldiers observed.
In the Zulu war he saw the British flouting all
decency and decorum and massacring the Zulus mercilessly.
They were hunted down like animals and butchered
by the British. Until this event he was an admirer
of western civilization. Now a crack had been
formed, and this widened into a gulf after his
visit to England in 1909 to plead the case of
the Indians in South Africa. When he found the
British politicians dismissing everything he had
to say with contempt, he was filled with a total
revulsion for western civilization
On his journey back from London to Cape Town-about
15 days by ship--he was overcome by a desire to
write his first book "Hind Swaraj" formulating
a plan for independent India. The obsession was
so great that he began writing on the ship stationary
with a pencil. The thoughts were coming so furiously
that he could not stop writing. When his right
hand began to ache, he switched to writing with
his left. The book was completed before he reached
Cape Town and became distinguished for its anti-western
civilization message. He asked India to reject
western civilization completely because it had
nothing worthwhile to offer. He entered a period
of exclusivism.
In 1915, Gandhiji decided he would gain nothing
for Indians outside India as long as Indians within
India remained subjects of British Imperialism.
They must be liberated first for Indians elsewhere
to gain any respect or equality. Thus, he decided
to move to India and explore ways in which he
could participate in the freedom struggle.
He
entrusted his work in South Africa and the Phoenix
Settlement Ashram that he started in 1903 to the
care of Mr. Albert West and Mr. Henry Polak, two
British friends who had worked with him closely
in South Africa. The whole family left South Africa
in 1914 with Gandhiji, Kasturba and Hermann Kallenbach,
and another Jewish South African friend going
to England and the rest of the family sailing
for India. Gandhiji wanted to help with the war
effort in England, but soon after his arrival,
he was struck by pneumonia and almost bed-ridden.
For a while Kasturba nursed him and participated
in sewing uniforms for English soldiers, but when
the doctors realized the British winter was not
going to help Gandhiji overcome his ailment, they
suggested he leave for India
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Kallenbach
wanted to accompany them to India, but as a German
Jew he was not given a visa by the British and so
he had to return to South Africa. Gandhiji and Kasturba
arrived in India and were given a welcome they had
not anticipated. Gandhiji was not aware that his
reputation had preceded him. He became a national
leader on arrival. Gopalkrishna Gokhale, Gandhiji's
political mentor in India, advised Gandhiji to spend
a year traveling around India learning about the
problems and making contact with the people. After
his travels, he started an ashram at Bochraj in
Gujarat and later was induced to visit Champaran
in Bihar.The emissary of the poor and exploited
peasants of Champaran was so persistent that Gandhiji
could not refuse him.When Gandhiji went there and
saw the conditions, he was shocked beyond belief
and launched a legal campaign that forced the British
farmers to abandon their exploitation and give relief
to the peasants. |
It was his first significant and major victory in
India achieved through non-violence. This incidence
catapulted Gandhiji to the national scene.
In 1919 he launched a national campaign against
the Rowlatt Act which was designed by the British
to oppress and suppress the Indians and their desire
for independence. The movement generated some violence
in parts of the country, especially in the north.
In Punjab some misguided youth attacked a British
school teacher and pushed her around. The British
government appointed General Dyer as the military
governor of the State of Punjab with the authority
to ruthlessly curb all defiance of authority. He
imposed martial law, prohibiting the assembly of
more than five people and suspending all civil liberties
in the state.
On April 13, 1919, more than ten thousand men, women
and children assembled in the Jallianwala bagh in
the heart of the city of Amritsar to non-violently
protest against the martial law. General Dyer was
unwilling to tolerate such an act of defiance. He
brought in his troops, blocked off the only exit
from the walled ground and ordered the troops to
shoot into the crowd. Within an hour 386 men, women
and children lay dead and 1605 were critically injured.
These were the British figures of casualties while
the India figures are very different. The Indians
place the number of dead beyond 1,000. However,
General Dyer followed with more draconian laws like
commanding all Indians to crawl on their bellies
when passing the street where the English school
teacher was assaulted. Anyone who refused would
be flogged to death. He also ordered that the injured
in the firing should not be attended to by anyone
for the next 72 hours, even if they died. This incident
raised so much anger in India that a violent revolution
could very easily have resulted, but Gandhiji stepped
in to calm the people. He said we can not be to
the British as they have been to us. It will not
make us any different from them. The civilized thing
to do is not to ever stoop down to the level of
the oppressor, but to try at all times to raise
the oppressors to new heights of awareness. This
is the point at which Gandhiji reverted back to
inclusivity. He urged Indians to remember that we
must not only liberate ourselves politically but
also liberate ourselves spiritually. Swaraj, he
said, is not just external freedom; it is also internal
freedom. Aldous Huxley, the eminent British historian,
is perhaps the only one who has recognized the fact
that in liberating India non-violently, Gandhiji
also liberated the British from their own imperialism.
In other words, the non-violent campaign in India
elevated the British to a new awareness of themselves.
However, after the 1919 campaign, the next major
campaign was the Salt March in 1930. There were
many smaller campaigns in between. The Salt March
once again focused the attention of the world on
India's struggle for freedom. Instead of arousing
derision or indifference as most violent freedom
struggles around the world do, the Indian struggle
evoked world sympathy. Suffering has a tendency
to do that. The British were lacksadasical about
this campaign. They did not think that the defiance
of the tax on salt would arouse such emotions all
over India and the world. They were not prepared
for the consequences. The whole nation stood up
in defiance of the British, and as some historians
put it, another nail was hammered into the British
coffin. Again what followed was smaller campaigns
at regional levels until 1942, when the Congress
passed the "Quit India" resolution. This
campaign again roused national consciousness and
the jails were filled to the brim. Gandhiji and
his party were imprisoned in Aga Khan Palace near
Pune. It was not a palace in the accepted sense,
and only a part of it was cordoned off and used
as a jail. Kasturba died in prison in 1944. This
was a great blow for Gandhiji.
Throughout his campaign for freedom, Gandhiji was
concerned about the divisions in India which were
exacerbated by the British who followed the "Divide
and Rule" policy. There was the serious division
between Hindus and Muslims and within the Hindus
between the various castes. Short of leading a major
revolution to bring about unity, Gandhiji did everything
he could to break down the barriers and build bridges.
He realized that political freedom from the British
would be meaningless so long as we hated each other
and were willing to kill because of our prejudices.
Through fasts, through education, through example,
through preaching he tried his best to teach the
people to respect and appreciate each other |
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1935, Gandhiji realized the Indian National Congress
had no intentions of pursuing his policy of non-violence
after independence. He resigned his membership.
The Congress, however, was unwilling to let go
of his leadership of the freedom struggle. In
the forties when independence became a possibility,
the British opposed partition of the country to
create Pakistan. Gandhiji was against this, but
the Congress was inclined to accept it. When Gandhiji
proposed allowing the Muslim League to form the
interim government to placate its fears of Hindu
domination, the Congress Party leadership threatened
a civil war.
The Congress leadership claimed the people would
not accept this plan and there would be civil
war. The question is were the leaders right in
presuming how the people would react or could
they have supported Gandhi in explaining to the
people the wisdom of remaining one country and
giving the plan a fair opportunity to prove its
efficacy? There is the underlying feeling that
the leadership was not willing to accept the plan
so why take it to the people at all. At this point
Gandhi gave up discussing the partition of the
country and left it to the leaders and the British
to do what they felt was right. The rest is history.
The country was partitioned; there was a civil
war which left both countries with a legacy of
hate that will take centuries to heal. Was the
price worth it? Could we have paid the same price
for a unified country? Would the long-term results
have been different? These are questions that
can not be answered.
Bapu lost his desire to live. Until this point
whenever anyone asked him how long he would like
to live, he would say with a smile: I would like
to live for 125 years because there is so much
I need to accomplish. He had a zest for life and
a mission that he wanted to see fulfilled. By
1946, this came to a sad end and he began speaking
of death. Yet, he never showed outwardly the despondency
that he must have felt within. He still continued
to work, and he continued to guide people in their
work for social and economic resurgence of India.
He even went to Noakhali in Bengal that became
East Pakistan, where rioting was at its worst
on the eve of partition. Hindus and Muslims were
literally butchering each other and some of the
worst acts of inhumanity took place in this area.
He went with a handful of helpers and brought
about peace and sanity in the area. An accomplishment
that was recognized by Lord Mountbatten when he
wrote his biography was that Gandhi brought peace
all by himself in East Pakistan while the Indian
Army had to kill and crush many thousands in West
Pakistan before peace was accomplished.
The assassination of Gandhiji was ironically engineered
by the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) because
it felt Gandhiji had agreed to the creation of
Pakistan. It had made an avowed and ambitious
program to reunite its country. Yet, had it not
been for its militancy during the 1946/47 negotiations,
India may have been one country. The RSS is to
shoulder the entire blame for creating an atmosphere
of violence and revenge in the country that made
it impossible for sanity to prevail.
Having accepted partition, the Congress leadership
tacitly accepted the consequences of partition.
The bloodshed, the loss of lives and property
on both sides were to be expected. No one was
going to be uprooted from places where he/she
had lived for generations with a smile and move
to another place. For the Congress leadership
to then succumb to militant Hindu demand that
the cash assets due to Pakistan be confiscated
to compensate the Hindus who lost their lives
and property was unethical to say the least. They
were playing populist politics without considering
the long term consequences of their action. Gandhiji
said if my country is to embark on its new and
independent life on a blatantly immoral act then
I would prefer death. He fasted and forced the
government to release the money to Pakistan. Had
the government kept the money as the RSS demanded,
there would have been a worse civil war than the
country had witnessed and India would have had
no moral grounds to stand on when the international
community judged the situation. We had lost our
senses then but had we held onto the money, we
would have lost our souls also.
Within the country, in the bureaucracy and in
the government, there was not much enthusiasm
for Gandhiji's life. Secretly, everyone was interested
in making him a martyr. A martyred Gandhi was
more beneficial to the rulers than a living Gandhi.
The bureaucracy had already experienced and enjoyed
a princely lifestyle under the British which they
were unwilling to give up. The politicians were
eager to be participants in such a life. Gandhiji
opposed this wholeheartedly, and had he lived
long enough, he would most certainly have pressured
the government to adopt a more simple lifestyle.
He often said the government of independent India
must reflect the poverty of the nation. The politicians
and the bureaucrats, on the other hand, were eager
to replace the British and maintain the oppressive
and opulent structure created by the British.
Gandhiji
was assasinated on January 30, 1949 at Delhi,
India.
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