Mahatma Gandhi
¤ A Great Legend Also Known As
The Father Of Nations
Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, better known as Mahatma Gandhi and the
Father of the Indian Nation, was born on the 2nd October, 1869. The
day is a national holiday marked by a series of cultural events
organised each year to commemorate the birth of one of India’s
greatest political beacons. On this day, bhajans, or devotional songs
are sung at his samadhi, or memorial, in Delhi called Raj Ghat. The
key figures of contemporary Indian politics take time off from their
usually packed schedules to visit his memorial and silently go over
the Mahatma’s life and its impact on the destiny of India.
¤ Gandhiji Also Knowan As Father of India
For the average Indian, it could be just another holiday. But the
average Indian lives in a country where every town and city has at
least one road, one market, one statue and one park named after
Gandhi. The average Indian has written essays on the Mahatma in
school, and pored over his contribution to India’s independence
in History classes. While most historical personalities in India’s
checkered history, no matter how dynamic, could inspire only a
fraction of the population, Gandhi connected with Indians at their own
level, their caste, creed, sex or status notwithstanding, and was
aptly christened bapu or father. To strike a cord in the heart of an
average Indian, when the average Indian is classified as a Brahmin,
Kshatriya or Shudra, (levels of castes in Hinduism established as
early as the pre-Vedic era), or is a Tamilian, Punjabi or Marathi, a
speck in a nation that spouts at least 17 different languages, is no
mean feat. Perhaps no other historical figure in India has
enjoyed such a rare distinction. This was Gandhi’s forte, alone.
This is not to say that hagiographers could be summoned, and Gandhi
is above criticism. In fact, the man attracted criticism, and
continues to do so, like a bee is drawn to honey. But few would have
beheld the man and his philosophy, without yielding both a reaction.
Gandhi hardly needs an introduction. A voluminous literature has gone
into studying the man who became the Mahatma or ‘great soul’.
His personal writings add up to ninety large volumes.
¤ A Brief History
Born in 1869, in Porbandar in the state of Gujarat into a Vaishya
(merchant class) family, Gandhi was married at the age of 13 to
Kasturba. He was an average student who studied law in England from
1888 to 1891. Before leaving India, his mother made him promise that
he would abstain from meat, alcohol and sex. The years passed soon and
Gandhi was back in Mumbai. It was time for his first and only case as
a lawyer in India, and the man stood ineptly tongue-tied in court. The
writing was on the wall, and Gandhi lost the case. His uncles packed
him off to South Africa in 1893 to work for an Indian merchant
involved in a civil suit.
¤ The Beginning of Struggle In Africa
The turning point in Gandhi's life begin in South Africa. He found
himself in the midst of an intimidated and oppressed Indian community
that was the butt of racial discrimination. Only too aware of his own
shortcomings, Gandhi struggled to overcome his personal inhibitions,
and worked towards uniting the South African Indians to protest
against discrimination and racial bias. After a few brief spells in
prison, he succeeded in getting the local governance to relax its laws
for the first time in 1908, then again in 1914.
He withdrew his children from a regular school and established a farm
at Phoenix in 1904 where he endeavored to build a community based on
the combined philosophies of John Ruskin, Leo Tolstoy and Henry
Thoreau whom he called a true American. Around the same time, he
started a correspondence with Tolstoy. In 1906 he took a vow of
celibacy. He lived in South Africa for 20 years and it would not be
out of line to believe that the nature of his work in South Africa
inspired him to achieve the near impossible back home, where Gandhi
was already a name to reckon with.
¤ Gandhi's Fight For Indian Freedom
He finally returned to India in 1915. Instead of breezing into Indian
politics, he thought it necessary to travel across India, and had the
first adult up-close-and-personal experience of his country. What he
saw was an India crippled by poverty and ignorance, and the apathetic
handling of the country’s affairs by the British. Appalled by an
abject India, he set up the Sabarmati Ashram near Ahmedabad and went
on to live there in quest of his Holy Grail. But peace was hard to
come by when his country folk were at the mercy of feudal lords, and
colonisation as a phenomenon was rearing its ugly head in various
pockets of the world. His quintessential need to see the world at
peace spearheaded him into the whirlpool of politics, after which
there was, of course, no looking back. and the once tongue-tied lawyer
would kindle a nation’s imagination and shape its history.
¤ The Swadeshi Movement
That he was an ace economist, theologian, politician and sociologist
is evident from his mastery and handling of each of these branches of
knowledge. and his dialogue with the Indians and the British was based
on a personal discourse that emerged at the crossroad of these
disciplines. With an unparalleled understanding of the needs, wants
and beliefs of the neglected and forgotten Indians, 80% of whom lived
in villages, Gandhi was ready to make a difference. The Swadeshi
Movement that exhorted the people of India to wear
khadi (home-spun cotton)
and shun European goods as the first step towards self-reliance, is
just one of the numerous revolutions he engineered successfully. But
the remarkable quality about Gandhi, and perhaps the reason of his
sorrow, was that in spite of his obvious practical good sense, he
ached for the ideal. His standards proved to be, more often than not,
too high for the world around him.
¤ A Great Philosopher
He increasingly tended towards asceticism, and believed in Thoreau’s
philosophy of complete self-reliance and the dignity of labour,
wearing a khadi loincloth and a shawl that he had woven himself. The
spinning wheel that he worked on religiously every day is profoundly
symbolic of the Mahatma and his beliefs to this day. Deeply aggrieved
by the unyielding caste system in his country, he worked all his life
for the upliftment of the ones he called Harijans (Children of God).
His innate belief in the goodness in life and the spirituality
enshrined in each human being was unshakable. He dreamt of a free and
self-reliant India, where Christians, Hindus, Muslims and Harijans
would live in harmony and work towards a better world.
Perhaps the most profound of his philosophies was his quest for
truth, an untainted non-sectarian truth, universal in appeal. He found
this aspect in ahmisa, roughly translated as non-violence. He believed
in and practised ahimsa in thoughts, words, and actions that sprung
from a love for mankind that lay beyond the continent of calculations
and rewards – a personal philosophy inspired by the Bhagavad Gita
considered as perhaps the most lucid representation of Hinduism, and
by many as the most sacred book of the Hindus.
¤ End of The Legendary Hero
Gandhi led the Congress for a period of 25 years, and during this
time the party truly came to represent united India’s struggle
for freedom. Gandhi’s charisma caught the imagination of
millions. Villagers and city dwellers, men, women and children rallied
behind the Congress as it led India’s march towards freedom from
the British. Freedom came, but at a price. A nation was partitioned to
yield a Hindu-dominated India and a Muslim-dominated Pakistan. Gandhi
opposed the partition that left millions dead, mutilated and homeless,
bitterly till the end. By upholding the cause of the Muslims and
Harijans, he alienated himself from the Hindu majority. and on January
30th 1948, in an India that was finally free, a Brahman
named Nathuram Godse walked right upto Gandhi and shot him at
point-blank range.
Both India and Pakistan continue to be plagued by the repercussions
of partition till this day. That Gandhi was assassinated by a man who
regarded him as a saint but could not live with his ideals, and that
Gandhi hankered after the ideal in a practical world far-removed from
ideality, shall forever remain a paradox. |
