Leader of India, Mohandas K. Gandhi, more commonly known as Mahatma (meaning Great Soul) and also called Bapu (father) in India. November 1942 - Wallace Kirkland Mohandas Gandhi is considered the father of the Indian independence movement. Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi was born, 1869, in Porbandar, India, into an Hindu privileged merchant caste. Married at age 13, Gandhi left India 5 years later, without his wife and newborn son, in order to study to become a barrister (lawyer) in London. He first employed nonviolent civil disobedience as an expatriate lawyer in South Africa, in the resident Indian communitys struggle for civil rights. Despite arriving on a year’s contract, Gandhi spent the next 21 years living in South Africa, and railed against the injustice of racial segregation. It was there that he created his concept of satyagraha, a non-violent way of protesting against injustices. Later on, many civil rights leaders, including Martin Luther King Jr. or Nelson Mandela, used Gandhis concept of non-violent protest as a model for their own struggles. Back in India in 1915, he became the leader of the Indian nationalist movement campaigning for home rule or Swaraj. His fame spread, and he became widely referred to as ‘Mahatma’. Gandhis obvious virtue, simplistic lifestyle, and minimal dress endeared him to the people. He spent his remaining years working diligently to both remove British rule from India as well as to better the lives of Indias poorest classes. During the first years of the Second World War, Gandhi’s mission to achieve independence from Britain reached its zenith: he saw no reason why Indians should fight for British sovereignty, in other parts of the world, when they were subjugated at home, which led to the worst instances of civil uprising under his direction, through his ‘Quit India’ movement. As a result, he was arrested on 9th August 1942, and held for two years at the Aga Khan Palace in Pune. His 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, on 15th August 1947, Britain granted independence, but the British Indian Empire was partitioned into two dominions, a Hindu-majority India and Muslim Pakistan. Keenly recognising the need for political unity, Gandhi spent the next few months working tirelessly for Hindu-Muslim peace, fearing the build-up of animosity between the two fledgling states. On 30th January 1948, whilst Gandhi was on his way to a prayer meeting at Birla House in Delhi, an Hindu radical named Nathuram Godse managed to get close enough to him in the crowd to be able to shoot him three times in the chest, at point-blank range. When news of Gandhi’s death reached the various strongholds of Hindu radicalism, in Pune and other areas throughout India, there was reputedly celebration in the streets. Sweets were distributed publicly, as at a festival. The rest of the world was horrified by the death of a man nominated five times for the Nobel Peace Prize but who never received it. His birthday, 2nd October, is celebrated as a National Holiday in India every year.
Posted on: Wed, 19 Mar 2014 12:37:49 +0000
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