Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi

Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi in Bombay, 1944.

Born	2 October 1869 Porbandar,kathiawar Agency,British India
Died	30 January 1948 (aged 78) New Delhi, Union of India
Cause of death	Assassination
Resting place	Rajghat in New Delhi
Nationality	Indian
Other names	Mahatma Gandhi, Bapu
AIMA mater	University College London
Known for	Prominent Figure of Indian Independence Movement Propounding the philosophy ofSatyagraha and Ahimsa
Religious beliefs	Hinduism
Spouse(s)	Kasturba Gandhi
Children	Harilal Manilal Ramdas Devdas
Parents	Putlibai Gandhi (Mother) Karamchand Gandhi (Father)
Signature

Mahatma Gandhi

After one year of a none too successful law practice, Gandhi decided to accept an offer from an Indian businessman in South Africa, Dada Abdulla, to join him as a legal adviser. Unbeknown to him, this was to become an exceedingly lengthy stay, and altogether Gandhi was to stay in South Africa for over twenty years. The Indians who had been living in South Africa were without political rights, and were generally known by the derogatory name of 'coolies'. Gandhi himself came to an awareness of the frightening force and fury of European racism, and how far Indians were from being considered full human beings, when he when thrown out of a first-class railway compartment car, though he held a first-class ticket, at Pietemaritzburg. From this political awakening Gandhi was to emerge as the leader of the Indian community, and it is in South Africa that he first coined the term satyagraha to signify his theory and practice of non-violent resistance. Gandhi was to describe himself preeminently as a votary or seeker of satya (truth), which could not be attained other than through ahimsa (non-violence, love) and brahmacharya(celibacy, striving towards God). Gandhi conceived of his own life as a series of experiments to forge the use of satyagraha in such a manner as to make the oppressor and the oppressed alike recognize their common bonding and humanity: as he recognized, freedom is only freedom when it is indivisible. In his book Satyagraha in South Africa he was to detail the struggles of the Indians to claim their rights, and their resistance to oppressive legislation and executive measures, such as the imposition of a poll tax on them, or the declaration by the government that all non-Christian marriages were to be construed as invalid. In 1909, on a trip back to India, Gandhi authored a short treatise entitledHind Swaraj or Indian Home Rule, where he all but initiated the critique, not only of industrial civilization, but of modernity in all its aspects.

Gandhi returned to India in early 1915, and was never to leave the country again except for a short trip that took him to Europe in 1931. Though he was not completely unknown in India, Gandhi followed the advice of his political mentor, Gokhale, and took it upon himself to acquire a familiarity with Indian conditions. He traveled widely for one year. Over the next few years, he was to become involved in numerous local struggles, such as at Champaran in Bihar, where workers on indigo plantations complained of oppressive working conditions, and at Ahmedabad, where a dispute had broken out between management and workers at textile mills. His interventions earned Gandhi a considerable reputation, and his rapid ascendancy to the helm of nationalist politics is signified by his leadership of the opposition to repressive legislation (known as the "Rowlatt Acts") in 1919. His saintliness was not uncommon, except in someone like him who immersed himself in politics, and by this time he had earned from no less a person than Rabindranath Tagore, India's most well-known writer, the title of Mahatma, or 'Great Soul'. When 'disturbances' broke out in the Punjab, leading to the massacre of a large crowd of unarmed Indians at the Jallianwala Bagh in Amritsar and other atrocities, Gandhi wrote the report of the Punjab Congress Inquiry Committee. Over the next two years, Gandhi initiated the non-cooperation movement, which called upon Indians to withdraw from British institutions, to return honors conferred by the British, and to learn the art of self-reliance; though the British administration was at places paralyzed, the movement was suspended in February 1922 when a score of Indian policemen were brutally killed by a large crowd at Chauri Chaura, a small market town in the United Provinces. Gandhi himself was arrested shortly thereafter, tried on charges of sedition, and sentenced to imprisonment for six years. At The Great Trial, as it is known to his biographers, Gandhi delivered a masterful indictment of British rule.

Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi was born in the town of Porbander in the state of what is now Gujarat on 2 October 1869. He had his schooling in nearby Rajkot, where his father served as the adviser or prime minister to the local ruler. Though India was then under British rule, over 500 kingdoms, principalities, and states were allowed autonomy in domestic and internal affairs: these were the so-called 'native states'. Rajkot was one such state.

Gandhi later recorded the early years of his life in his extraordinary autobiography, The Story of My Experimentswith Truth. His father died before Gandhi could finish his schooling, and at thirteen he was married to Kasturba  [or Kasturbai], who was even younger. In 1888 Gandhi set sail for England, where he had decided to pursue a degree in law. Though his elders objected, Gandhi could not be prevented from leaving; and it is said that his mother, a devout woman, made him promise that he would keep away from wine, women, and meat during his stay abroad. Gandhi left behind his son Harilal, then a few months old.

In London, Gandhi encountered theosophists, vegetarians, and others who were disenchanted not only with industrialism, but with the legacy of Enlightenment thought. They themselves represented the fringe elements of English society. Gandhi was powerfully attracted to them, as he was to the texts of the major religious traditions; and ironically it is in London that he was introduced to the Bhagavad Gita. Here, too, Gandhi showed determination and single-minded pursuit of his purpose, and accomplished his objective of finishing his degree from the Inner Temple. He was called to the bar in 1891, and even enrolled in the High Court of London; but later that year he left for India.

Mahatma Gandhi

For the next few years, Gandhi would be engaged mainly in the constructive reform of Indian society. He had vowed upon undertaking the salt march that he would not return to Sabarmati Ashram in Ahmedabad, where he had made his home, if India did not attain its independence, and in the mid-1930s he established himself in a remote village, in the dead center of India, by the name of Segaon [known as Sevagram]. It is to this obscure village, which was without electricity or running water, that India's political leaders made their way to engage in discussions with Gandhi about the future of the independence movement, and it is here that he received visitors such as Margaret Sanger, the well-known American proponent of birth-control. Gandhi also continued to travel throughout the country, taking him wherever his services were required.

One such visit was to the Northwest Frontier, where he had in the imposing Pathan, Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan (known by the endearing term of "Frontier Gandhi", and at other times as Badshah[King] Khan), a fervent disciple. At the outset of World War II, Gandhi and the Congress leadership assumed a position of neutrality: while clearly critical of fascism, they could not find it in themselves to support British imperialism. Gandhi was opposed by Subhas Chandra Bose, who had served as President of the Congress, and who took to the view that Britain's moment of weakness was India's moment of opportunity. When Bose ran for President of the Congress against Gandhi's wishes and triumphed against Gandhi's own candidate, he found that Gandhi still exercised influence over the Congress Working Committee, and that it was near impossible to run the Congress if the cooperation of Gandhi and his followers could not be procured. Bose tendered his resignation, and shortly thereafter was to make a dramatic escape from India to find support among the Japanese and the Nazis for his plans to liberate India.

In 1942, Gandhi issued the last call for independence from British rule. On the grounds of what is now known as August Kranti Maidan, he delivered a stirring speech, asking every Indian to lay down their life, if necessary, in the cause of freedom. He gave them this mantra: '. The response of the British government was to place Gandhi under arrest, and virtually the entire Congress leadership was to find itself behind bars, not to be released until after the conclusion of the war.

A few months after Gandhi and Kasturba had been placed in confinement in the Aga Khan's Palace in Pune, Kasturba passed away: this was a terrible blow to Gandhi, following closely on the heels of the death of his private secretary of many years, the gifted Mahadev Desai. In the period from 1942 to 1945, the Muslim League, which represented the interest of certain Muslims and by now advocated the creation of a separate homeland for Muslims, increasingly gained the attention of the British, and supported them in their war effort. The new government that came to power in Britain under Clement Atlee was committed to the independence of India, and negotiations for India's future began in earnest. Sensing that the political leaders were now craving for power, Gandhi largely distanced himself from the negotiations. He declared his opposition to the vivisection of India. It is generally conceded, even by his detractors, that the last years of his life were in some respects his finest. He walked from village to village in riot-torn Noakhali, where Hindus were being killed in retaliation for the killing of Muslims in Bihar, and nursed the wounded and consoled the widowed; and in Calcutta he came to constitute, in the famous words of the last viceroy, Mountbatten, a "one-man boundary force" between Hindus and Muslims. The ferocious fighting in Calcutta came to a halt, almost entirely on account of Gandhi's efforts, and even his critics were wont to speak of the Gandhi's 'miracle of Calcutta'. When the moment of freedom came, on 15 August 1947, Gandhi was nowhere to be seen in the capital, though Nehru and the entire Constituent Assembly were to salute him as the architect of Indian independence, as the 'father of the nation'.

Owing to his poor health, Gandhi was released from prison in 1925. Over the following years, he worked hard to preserve Hindu-Muslim relations, and in 1924 he observed, from his prison cell, a 21-day fast when Hindu-Muslim riots broke out at Kohat, a military barracks on the Northwest Frontier. This was to be of his many major public fasts, and in 1932 he was to commence the so-called Epic Fast unto death, since he thought of "separate electorates" for the oppressed class of what were then calleduntouchables (or Harijans in Gandhi's vocabulary, and dalits in today's language) as a retrograde measure meant to produce permanent divisions within Hindu society. Gandhi earned the hostility of Ambedkar, the leader of the untouchables, but few doubted that Gandhi was genuinely interested in removing the serious disabilities from which they suffered, just as no one doubt that Gandhi never accepted the argument that Hindus and Muslims constituted two separate elements in Indian society. These were some of the concerns most prominent in Gandhi's mind, but he was also to initiate a constructive programme for social reform. Gandhi had ideas -- mostly sound -- on every subject, from hygiene and nutrition to education and labor, and he relentlessly pursued his ideas in one of the many newspapers which he founded. Indeed, were Gandhi known for nothing else in India, he would still be remembered as one of the principal figures in the history of Indian journalism.

In early 1930, as the nationalist movement was revived, the Indian National Congress, the preeminent body of nationalist opinion, declared that it would now be satisfied with nothing short of complete independence (purna swaraj). Once the clarion call had been issued, it was perforce necessary to launch a movement of resistance against British rule. On March 2, Gandhi addressed a letter to the Viceroy, Lord Irwin, informing him that unless Indian demands were met, he would be compelled to break the "salt laws". Predictably, his letter was received with bewildered amusement, and accordingly Gandhi set off, on the early morning of March 12, with a small group of followers towards Dandi on the sea. They arrived there on April 5th: Gandhi picked up a small lump of natural salt, and so gave the signal to hundreds of thousands of people to similarly defy the law, since the British exercised a monopoly on the production and sale of salt. This was the beginning of the civil disobedience movement: Gandhi himself was arrested, and thousands of others were also hauled into jail. It is to break this deadlock that Irwin agreed to hold talks with Gandhi, and subsequently the British agreed to hold a Round Table Conference in London to negotiate the possible terms of Indian independence. Gandhi went to London in 1931 and met some of his admirers in Europe, but the negotiations proved inconclusive. On his return to India, he was once again arrested.

Mahatma Gandhi

The last few months of Gandhi's life were to be spent mainly in the capital city of Delhi. There he divided his time between the 'Bhangi colony', where the sweepers and the lowest of the low stayed, and Birla House, the residence of one of the wealthiest men in India and one of the benefactors of Gandhi's ashrams. Hindu and Sikh refugees had streamed into the capital from what had become Pakistan, and there was much resentment, which easily translated into violence, against Muslims. It was partly in an attempt to put an end to the killings in Delhi, and more generally to the bloodshed following the partition, which may have taken the lives of as many as 1 million people, besides causing the dislocation of no fewer than 11 million, that Gandhi was to commence the last fast unto death of his life. The fast was terminated when representatives of all the communities signed a statement that they were prepared to live in "perfect amity", and that the lives, property, and faith of the Muslims would be safeguarded. A few days later, a bomb exploded in Birla House where Gandhi was holding his evening prayers, but it caused no injuries. However, his assassin, a Marathi Chitpavan Brahmin by the name of Nathuram Godse, was not so easily deterred. Gandhi, quite characteristically, refused additional security, and no one could defy his wish to be allowed to move around unhindered. In the early evening hours of 30 January 1948, Gandhi met with India's Deputy Prime Minister and his close associate in the freedom struggle, Vallabhai Patel, and then proceeded to his prayers.

That evening, as Gandhi's time-piece, which hung from one of the folds of his dhoti [loin-cloth], was to reveal to him, he was uncharacteristically late to his prayers, and he fretted about his inability to be punctual. At 10 minutes past 5 o'clock, with one hand each on the shoulders of Abha and Manu, who were known as his 'walking sticks', Gandhi commenced his walk towards the garden where the prayer meeting was held. As he was about to mount the steps of the podium, Gandhi folded his hands and greeted his audience with a namaskar; at that moment, a young man came up to him and roughly pushed aside Manu. Nathuram Godse bent down in the gesture of an obeisance, took a revolver out of his pocket, and shot Gandhi three times in his chest. Bloodstains appeared over Gandhi's white woolen shawl; his hands still folded in a greeting, Gandhi blessed his assassin: He Ram! He Ram!

As Gandhi fell, his faithful time-piece struck the ground, and the hands of the watch came to a standstill. They showed, as they had done before, the precise time: 5:12 P.M.

HISTORY & POLITICS

"The Path shown by Bapu is the solution to the present problems". Mary I. Vanvahati/Gandhiserver , 7th class, S.N. Kansagara School, Rajkot, India. Prize winner in the running inter-school drawing competition "GANDHI AS I SEE HIM", Rajkot, India, 1991, organized by Gandhi Information Center, Germany.

n the conventional narrative, Indian history begins with the birth of the Indus Valley Civilization in such sites as Mohenjo-Daro, Harappa, and Lothal, followed by the coming of the Aryans. These two phases are usually described as the pre-Vedic and Vedic periods. It is in the Vedic period that Hinduism first arose, though some elements of Hinduism are clearly drawn from the Indus Valley civilization. In the fourth century BCE, large parts of India were united under the emperor Ashoka; he also converted to Buddhism, and it is in his reign that Buddhism first spread to other parts of Asia. It is during the time of the Mauryas that Hinduism first began to take the shape that fundamentally informs the religion down to the present day, though popular or Puranic Hindism is generally dated to around the beginning of the Christian Era. Successor states were more fragmented. Islam first came to India in the eighth century, and by the eleventh century had firmly established itself in India as a political force; the North Indian dynasties of the Lodhis, Tughlaqs, and numerous others, whose remains are visible in Delhi and scattered elsewhere around North India, were finally succeeded by the Mughal empire, under which India once again achieved a large measure of political unity. These are certainly the generally accepted contours of Indian history before the advent of colonialism, though specialists are all inclined to write this history with particular emphases and accents.

The European presence in India dates to the sixteenth century, and it is in the very early part of the eighteenth century that the Mughal empire began to disintegrate, paving the way for regional states. In the contest for supremacy, the English emerged victors, their rule marked by the conquests at the battlefields of Plassey and Buxar. The Rebellion of 1857-58, which sought to restore Indian supremacy, was crushed; and with the subsequent crowning of Victoria as Empress of India, the incorporation of India into the empire was complete. By the early part of the twentieth century, a nationalist movement had emerged; and by 1919-20, Mohandas Karamchand ('Mahatma') Gandhi had emerged as, if not the virtually undisputed leader of this movement, certainly its most well-known and formidable architect. Successive campaigns had the effect of driving the British out of India in 1947, but not before they had partitioned it, and carved out the Muslim-majority state of Pakistan -- later itself dismembered into Pakistan and Bangladesh..

The first prime minister of independent India was Jawaharlal Nehru, who held office from 1947 until his death in 1964. Apart from a short period of two years from 1975-77, when an internal emergency was imposed by then-Prime Minister Indira Gandhi and constitutional liberties were suspended, India has been a thriving parliamentary democracy. For a capsule political history of India in the post-1947 period, readers are invited to turn to the “Independent indai” section of this site, where they will also find other specialized articles, as well as the “Current affairs” section of MANAS, where readers will be able to find articles on selected political and social phenomena of recent years.

Mahatma Gandhi

Mahatma Gandhi was born as Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi on 2nd October 1869. He was the most popular as well as the most influential political and spiritual leaders of India. His contribution to the freedom struggle of India is priceless and the country owes its independence, partly, to this great man. The Satyagraha movement, which led to India's independence, was founded by Mahatma Gandhi only. In India, Gandhi is known as the 'Father of the Nation' and his birthday is celebrated as a national holiday. Read on to explore the life history, story and biography of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi:



Early Life:Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi was born in the Porbandar city of Gujarat, to Karamchand Gandhi, the diwan of Porbandar, and his wife, Putlibai. Since his mother was a Hindu of the Pranami Vaishnava order, Gandhi learned the tenets of non-injury to living beings, vegetarianism, fasting, mutual tolerance, etc, at a very tender age. Mohandas was married at the age of 13 to Kasturba Makhanji and had four sons. He passed the matriculation exam at Samaldas College of Bhavanagar. In the year 1888, Gandhi went to University College of London to study as a barrister. 
He came back to India after being called to the bar of England and Wales by Inner Temple. In 1893, he accepted a yearlong contract from an Indian firm to a post in Natal, South Africa. There, he faced racial discrimination directed at blacks and Indians. Such incidents provoked him to work towards social activism.

Participation in Indian Independence Movement:Gopal Krishna Gokhale, a leader of the Congress Party, introduced Mahatma Gandhi to the Indian issues, Indian politics and the Indian people. Gandhi participated in the following movements related to India's freedom struggle: 
Champaran and Kheda Satyagraha:The Champaran Agitation and Kheda Satyagraha of 1918 was the first major success of Mahatma Gandhi in his struggle towards India's freedom. The reason for the agitation was the levy of an oppressive tax by the British, which they insisted on increasing further. He organized his supporters as well as volunteers to protest against this atrocity and also began leading the clean up of villages, building of schools and hospitals as well as encouraging the village leadership to condemn the numerous social evils affecting the society. Mahatma Gandhi was successful in signing an agreement with the British, wherein the poor farmers were granted more compensation and control over farming. 
Non-cooperation Movement and Swaraj:Non-cooperation Movement of Mahatma Gandhi was one of his prime fights against the British. The massacre at the Jallianwala Bagh of Punjab was what instigated him to take this step. After the gruesome incident, he focused himself entirely on obtaining complete autonomy for the country as well as the control of all Indian government institutions. Soon, this movement turned into Swaraj (complete individual, spiritual and political independence). His association with the Indian National Congress (INC) was further strengthened in December 1921, when he was made the executive authority of the party. 
Under Mahatma Gandhi, INC was restructured, accepting the goal of Swaraj, having open membership, forming a hierarchy of committees, and so on. He urged Indian citizens to boycott imported goods, British educational institutions, law courts, government employment, and the like. Non-cooperation became very popular and started spreading through the length and breadth of India. However, the violent clash in Chauri Chaura town of Uttar Pradesh, in February 1922, led to a sudden end of this movement. Gandhi was arrested on 10th March 1922 and was tried for sedition. He was sentenced to six years imprisonment, but served for only two years in prison.

Problems in the Indian National Congress:Indian National Congress began to fall apart without the inspiring leadership of Mahatma Gandhi. The party split up into two groups, one led by Chitta Ranjan Das and Motilal Nehru and the other led by Chakravarti Rajagopalachari and Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel. Even the basis of the non-violence campaign, the cooperation amongst Hindus and Muslims, began to break down. 
Salt Satyagraha and Dandi March:During the period of 1920s, Mahatma Gandhi concentrated on resolving the wedge between the Swaraj Party and the Indian National Congress. Around 1928, Gandhi again started focusing on Indian freedom struggle. In 1927, British had appointed Sir John Simon as the head of a new constitutional reform commission. There was not even a single Indian in the commission. Agitated by this, Gandhi passed a resolution at the Calcutta Congress in December 1928, calling on the British government to grant India dominion status. In case of non-compliance with this demand, the British were to face a new campaign of non-violence, having its goal as complete independence for the country. The resolution was rejected by the British. 
The flag of India was unfurled in Lahore by the members of the INC on 31st December 1929. January 26, 1930 was celebrated as the Independence Day of India. Soon, British government levied a tax on salt and Salt Satyagraha was launched in March 1930, as an opposition to this move. Mahatma Gandhi started the Dandi March with his followers in March, going from Ahmedabad to Dandi on foot, to make salt himself. The campaign became so successful that British ended up arresting over 60,000 people who participated in the March. Gandhi-Irwin Pact was signed in March 1931, where the British Government set all political prisoners free as an exchange for the suspension of the civil disobedience movement.

Quit India Movement:As the World War II progressed, Mahatma Gandhi intensified his protests for the complete independence of the Indian subcontinent. He drafted a resolution calling for the British to Quit India. The 'Quit India Movement' or the 'Bharat Chhodo Andolan' was the most aggressive revolt of the INC, with the aim of gaining complete exit of the British from India. Gandhi was arrested on 9th August 1942 and held for two years in the Aga Khan Palace in Pune. There, he lost his secretary, Mahadev Desai and his wife, Kasturba. The Quit India Movement came to an end by the end of 1943, when the British gave hints that complete power would be transferred to the people of India.
Freedom and Partition of India:The independence cum partition proposal offered by the British Cabinet Mission in 1946 was accepted by the Congress, inspite of being advised otherwise by Mahatma Gandhi. Sardar Patel convinced Gandhi that it was the only way to avoid civil war and he reluctantly gave his consent. After India's independence, Gandhi focused on peace and unity of Hindus and Muslims. He launched his last fast-unto-death in Delhi, asking for all communal violence to be stopped and the payment of Rs. 55 crores, as per the Partition Council agreement, to be made to Pakistan. Ultimately, all the political leaders conceded to his wishes and he broke his fast by sipping orange juice. 
Assassination:
The inspiring life of Mahatma Gandhi came to an end on 30th January 1948, when he was shot by Nathuram Godse. Nathuram was a Hindu radical, who held Gandhi responsible for weakening India by ensuring the partition payment to Pakistan. Godse and his co-conspirator, Narayan Apte, were later tried and convicted. They were executed on 15th November 1949.

Gandhi's PrinciplesMahatma followed as well as preached the following principles throughout his life:

• Truth
• Nonviolence
• Vegetarianism
• Brahmacharya (Celibacy)
• Simplicity
• Faith in God

Mohandas Gandhi (1869 - 1948)

Known as 'Mahatma' (great soul), Gandhi was the leader of the Indian nationalist movement against British rule, and is widely considered the father of his country. His doctrine of non-violent protest to achieve political and social progress has been hugely influential.

Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi was born on 2 October 1869 in Porbandar in Gujarat. After university, he went to London to train as a barrister. He returned to India in 1891 and in 1893 accepted a job at an Indian law firm in Durban, South Africa. Gandhi was appalled by the treatment of Indian immigrants there, and joined the struggle to obtain basic rights for them. During his 20 years in South Africa he was sent to prison many times. Influenced primarily by Hinduism, but also by elements of Jainism and Christianity as well as writers including Tolstoy and Thoreau, Gandhi developed the satyagraha('devotion to truth'), a new non-violent way to redress wrongs. In 1914, the South African government conceded to many of Gandhi's demands.

Gandhi returned to India shortly afterwards. In 1919, British plans to intern people suspected of sedition - the Rowlatt Acts - prompted Gandhi to announce a newsatyagraha which attracted millions of followers. A demonstration against the acts resulted in the Amritsar Massacre by British troops. By 1920, Gandhi was a dominant figure in Indian politics. He transformed the Indian National Congress, and his programme of peaceful non-cooperation with the British included boycotts of British goods and institutions, leading to arrests of thousands.

In 1922, Gandhi himself was sentenced to six years' imprisonment. He was released after two years and withdrew from politics, devoting himself to trying to improve Hindu-Muslim relations, which had worsened. In 1930, Gandhi proclaimed a new campaign of civil disobedience in protest at a tax on salt, leading thousands on a 'March to the Sea' to symbolically make their own salt from seawater.

In 1931, Gandhi attended the Round Table Conference in London, as the sole representative of the Indian National Congress, but resigned from the party in 1934 in protest at its use of non-violence as a political expedient. He was replaced as leader by Jawaharlal Nehru.

In 1945, the British government began negotiations which culminated in the Mountbatten Plan of June 1947, and the formation of the two new independent states of India and Pakistan, divided along religious lines. Massive inter-communal violence marred the months before and after independence. Gandhi was opposed to partition, and now fasted in an attempt to bring calm in Calcutta and Delhi. On 30 January 1948, he was assassinated in Delhi by a Hindu fanatic.

Janauary 30, 1948

The twentieth century’s most famous apostle of non-violence himself met a violent end. Mohandas Mahatma (‘the great soul’) Gandhi, who had taken a leading role in spearheading the campaign for independence from Britain, hailed the partition of the sub-continent into the separate independent states of India and Pakistan in August 1947 as ‘the noblest act of the British nation’. He was, though, horrified by the violence that broke out between Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs; and the eviction of thousands from their homes in the run-up to Independence Day, August 15th, 1947, and undertook a fast to the death, a tactic he had employed before, to shame those who provoked and took part in the strife. Messages of support came from around the world, including Pakistan, where Jinnah’s new government commended his concern for peace and harmony. There were Hindus, however, who thought that Gandhi’s insistence on non-violence and non-retaliation prevented them from defending themselves against attack. Ominous cries of ‘Let Gandhi die!’ were heard in Delhi, where Gandhi was occupying a mansion called Birla Lodge.

On January 13th, beginning what would prove to be his last fast, the Mahatma said: ‘Death for me would be a glorious deliverance rather than that I should be a helpless witness of the destruction of India, Hinduism, Sikhism and Islam’, and explained that his dream was for the Hindus, Sikhs, Parsis, Christians and Muslims of ....

Gandhi -- A Select Bibliographic Guide

A minimal familiarity with the outlines of Gandhi's life might be acquired by consulting any one of the following biographies:  Geoffrey Ashe, Gandhi (New York, 1969); Judith Brown,Gandhi:  Prisoner of Hope (Yale, 1990): Louis Fischer, The Life of Mahatma Gandhi (New York, 1950); Dhananjay Keer,Mahatma Gandhi:  Political Saint and Unarmed Prophet(Bombay, 1973); B. R. Nanda, Mahatma Gandhi:  A Biography(1st ed., 1958; expanded edition, New Delhi:  Oxford UP, 1981); and Robert Payne, The Life and Death of Mahatma Gandhi(Dutton, 1969).  This list does not indicate my endorsement of any particular biography, and you can pick up some other biography of your choice.  There are very short biographies of Gandhi as well, some of considerable merit, such as George Woodcock’s little study, Mohandas Gandhi, for the Modern Masters series (New York:  Viking Press, 1971), Catherine Clement’s Gandhi:  Father of a Nation (London:  Thames & Hudson, 1996); Bhikhu Parekh’sGandhi (Oxford University Press, 1997); and Krishna Kripalani’sGandhi:  A Life (1968; reprint ed., New Delhi:  National Book Trust, 1982)  In 1997, on the 50^th anniversary of Indian independence, a number of new studies of Gandhi’s life were released, but the more recent biographies of Gandhi are not demonstrably better than previous ones.  For a more comprehensive account, see the 8-volume biography by D. G. Tendulkar, Mahatma:  Life of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi(New Delhi, 1951), which has the advantage of reproducing many of Gandhi's speeches and writings, often in their entirety, and the 4 volumes of Pyarelal's biography, The Early Phase and The Last Phase (Ahmedabad, various years).  But Tendulkar has few insights into Gandhi’s life and thinking and is predominantly a chronicler.

Reference Material and Scholarly Studies:  A Brief Note

Constant use should be made of The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, 100 volumes (Delhi:  Government of India, Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, Publications Division, 1951-1995; this includes the supplementary volumes).  Quite handy iis Index of Subjects to the Collected Works (1988).   The three-volume anthology edited by Raghavan Iyer, The Moral and

Political Writings of Mahatma Gandhi (New York and Delhi: Oxford UP, 1989) is not only more manageable but is superbly edited, and except for specialists seeking to write on Gandhi at length, will suffice as a representative and thoughtful selection of Gandhi’s voluminous writings.  There are, besides, literally hundreds of anthologies of Gandhi’s writings, and in his own lifetime Navajivan Press as well as other publishers brought out collections of Gandhi’s writings on particular subjects, such as nature cure, Hindu-Muslim relations, village reconstruction, non-violence, and so on.  For a small sample, see the following booklets (and in some cases small books) of Gandhi’s thoughts on particular subjects released by Navajivan:  The Moral Basis of Vegetarianism (1959); Woman’s Role in Society (1959);Trusteeship (1960); Medium of Instruction (1954); Bapu and Children (1962); Bread Labour [The Gospel of Work] (1960); and The Message of the Gita (1959).  Among the more creative anthologies, the following readily come to mind:  Pushpa Joshi, ed.,Gandhi on Women (Ahmedabad:  Navajivan Publishing House, 1998, in association with Centre for Women’s Development Studies, New Delhi; cf. the selections found in Gandhi to the Women, ed. Anand Hingorani [Delhi, 1941]); Nehru on Gandhi(New York:  John Day Company, 1942); Gandhi on Non-Violence, ed with introduction by Thomas Merton (New York:  New Directions paperback, 1964 -- this is a thoughtful albeit much too brief introduction to the subject); What is Hinduism? (New Delhi:  National Book Trust for Indian Council for Historical Research, 1994).  An extremely useful survey on the anthologizing of Gandhi is to be found in Stephen Hay, “Anthologies Compiled from the Writings, Speeches, Letters, and Recorded Conversations of M. K. Gandhi”, Journal of the American Oriental Society 110, no. 4 (October-December 1990), pp. 667-76.

 There are numerous bibliographies on Gandhi, but all are severely dated. Among thousands of scholarly monographs on Gandhi, the following may be consulted with some profit and pleasure -- some are available in newer editions or reprints, even if not mentioned below:

Alter, Joseph S.  Gandhi’s Body:  Sex, Diet, and the Politics of Nationalism. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2000.

Bondurant, Joan.  Conquest of Violence: The Gandhian Philosophy of Conflict.  Rev. ed., Berkeley:  University of California Press, 1971.

Borman, William.  Gandhi and Non-Violence.  New York:  State University of New York Press, 1986.

Chatterjee, Margaret.  Gandhi’s Religious Thought.  University of Notre Dame Press, 1983.

Dalton, Dennis.  Mahatma Gandhi:  Nonviolent Power in Action.  New York:  Columbia University Press,

1993.

Dhavan, Gopinath.  The Political Philosophy of Mahatma Gandhi.  Bombay, 1946; reprint, Delhi,1990.Extremely good for the ‘grammar’ of satyagraha.

Erikson, Erik H.  Gandhi’s Truth:  On the Origins of Militant Nonviolence.  New York: W. W. Norton, 1969.  Psychoanalytic interpretation.

Gandhi’s Not History Vinay Lal

First published in Hindustan Times (24 August 2006), p. 10. Also published in Satyagraha 100 Years, 1906-2006: In Pursuit of Truth (Durban: Charles Stewart Mott Foundation, 2006), pp. 29-33.

In the immediate aftermath of the ferocious fighting that raged along the border between Lebanon and Israel for close to a month, and as the streets of Baghdad are daily strewn with the remains of bodies of innocent children and civilians, the 100th anniversary of one of the most significant events of recent human history is not likely to be remembered. In 1906, an Indian-born lawyer in South Africa, Mohandas Gandhi, not yet the Mahatma, encountered the draft Asiatic Law Amendment Ordinance proposed by the Transvaal Government in the August 22nd issue of the government gazette, and at once decided that this legislation would have to be opposed. He saw, Gandhi later wrote, nothing “except hatred of Indians” in the proposed legislation, which, if passed, “would spell absolute ruin for the Indians in South Africa.” The Ordinance required all Indians in the Transvaal region of South Africa, eight years and older, to report to the Registrar of Asiatics and obtain, upon the submission of a complete set of fingerprints, a certificate which would then have to be produced upon demand. The Ordinance proposed stiff penalties, including deportation, for Indians who failed to comply with the terms of the Ordinance.

Fingerprints were then demanded only from criminals, and the subjection of women to such a requirement had no other objective but the humiliation of Indians. Gandhi understood well that the Ordinance effectively criminalized the entire community and must be challenged. He mobilized the Indians, who had first arrived in South Africa as indentured laborers in 1860, to offer resistance. At a meeting held in Johannesburg, 3000 Indians took an oath not to submit to a degrading and discriminatory piece of legislation, and Gandhi spoke at length on the obligation to never repudiate a pledge. Thus was born satyagraha, or non-violent resistance, and over the course of the next four decades, first in South Africa and then in India where Gandhi spent the last three decades of his life, he endeavored to perfect it, offering satyagraha not only to the British but to the world as a form of ethical politics and as a consummate lifestyle. Many in Gandhi’s own lifetime doubted its efficacy, and some claimed that satyagraha could only have succeeded against an allegedly gentlemanly opponent such as the British; many more have since claimed that the unspeakable cruelties of the twentieth century render nonviolent resistance into an effete if noble idea, and that though the world loves romantics there is little use for them in real life.

India’s resounding experiment with democracy, for all its shortcomings and the one major relapse of the mid-1970s, when an internal emergency was imposed and constitutional safeguards suspended, may owe much more to Gandhi than is commonly conceded. However, South Africa, which Gandhi claimed as his second home and which he left for good in 1914, may present a more complex case of the assessment of his legacy. The most pressing charge against Gandhi is that he did little to improve the situation of black Africans and did not draw them into the struggle against racism and the ideology of white supremacy. By what right Gandhi could have claimed to act as a spokesperson for black and colored Africans is a question that the critics have not adequately addressed. The Natal Indian Congress, in the founding of which in 1894 Gandhi had a hand, became the model for the African National Congress (ANC), and it is equally striking that black South African nationalists, from Chief Albert Luthuli to Nelson Mandela, have been forthright in pronouncing Gandhi as having exercised an incalculable influence on their thinking and on the moral tenor of the struggle against apartheid. The word satyagraha is derived from satya (truth) and agraha (firmness), and it is not implausible that the Truth and Reconciliation Commission was not only post-apartheid South Africa’s homage to Gandhi but a way of extending satyagraha into the twenty-first century.

If one of the first principles of Gandhian thinking is that a moral politics rests upon consideration of means rather than ends, then we are not even called upon to assess the consequences or efficacy of embracing nonviolent resistance and, more broadly, the entire worldview associated with satyagraha. The advocates of nonviolent resistance who are dismissed as woolly-headed idealists should, on the contrary, be more aggressive in requiring the proponents of violence to demonstrate that violence can produce enduring good. Just how far we have traveled in the last one hundred years is transparent from the ease with which fingerprinting, once demanded only of criminals, has now been normalized in most societies as part of the surveillance regime of the modern nation-state. There was some slight indignation when the Unites States, shortly after 9/11, began to require fingerprints from every adult visitor, but what was once seen as a form of oppression is now viewed as a routine activity. One of the least appreciated aspects of Gandhi’s worldview is his construal of deception, secrecy, and perpetration of falsehoods as forms of violence. The advocate of satyagraha may no more resort to secrecy than to violence, and it is remarkable that, before undertaking his famous salt satyagraha of 1930, Gandhi addressed a letter to the Viceroy, Lord Irwin, informing him of his plans to resist an iniquitous piece of legislation and inviting Irwin to arrest him. Gandhi would have seen a long thread that not only ties the secret surveillance of American citizens and residents to American aggression in Iraq and the brutal culture of violence amidst which we are now living, but that knots together terrorists and their antagonists in mutual admiration for nefarious secrecy and violence. At the 100th anniversary of satyagraha, even a modicum of reflection on the debased state of our politics might assist in recuperating a place for nonviolent resistance.