Who was Gandhi?
WHAP-Duez-Atascocita High
CH 23: Decolonization
Who was Gandhi?
Gandhi, Mohandas Karamchand
(1869–1948) (pron. moh-HAHN-dahs GAHN-dee)
Usually referred to by his nickname: “Mahatma” (Great Soul)
Gandhi: Political leader & undoubted spiritual leader of the Indian drive for independence from Great Britain.
Employing nonviolent civil disobedience, Gandhi led India to independence & inspired movements for civil rights & freedom across the world.
Honorific: Mahatma - applied to him 1st in 1914 in South Africa - is now used worldwide.
He is also called Bapu (Gujarati: endearment for "father", "papa") in India.
Who was Gandhi?
Gandhi was born in the province of Gujarat in western India to a pious Hindu family of the Vaisya, or business, caste.
Married at 13, had only a mediocre record as a student, & eagerly embraced an opportunity to study law in England at 18.
Returned as a shy & not so very successful lawyer.
Who was Gandhi?
1893: Accepted a job with an Indian firm in South Africa, where a substantial number of Indians had migrated as indentured laborers.
Personally experienced overt racism for the first time & as a result soon became involved in organizing Indians, mostly Muslims, to protest that country’s policies of racial segregation.
First employed nonviolent civil disobedience in the resident Indian community's struggle for civil rights in South Africa.
Who was Gandhi?
While in South Africa:
Developed a concept of India that included Hindus & Muslims alike.
Pioneered strategies of resistance that he would later apply in India itself.
His emerging political philosophy:
Satyagraha (truth force)
Confrontational, though non-violent, approach to political action.
Who was Gandhi?
"Nonviolence means conscious suffering. It does not mean meek submission to the will of the evil-doer, but it means the pitting of one’s whole soul against the will of the tyrant…
It is possible for a single individual to defy the whole might of an unjust empire to save his honour, his religion, his soul."
Who was Gandhi?
Mahatma Gandhi walked barefoot most of the time, which produced an impressive set of calluses on his feet.
He also ate very little, which made him rather frail & with his odd diet, he suffered from bad breath. This made him…
(Oh, man, this is so bad, that it's good...)
A super calloused
fragile mystic
hexed by halitosis.
(Sorry about that)
Indian National Congress (INC) 1885
Association of English-educated Indians.
Lawyers, journalists, teachers, businessmen: Drawn mostly from regionally prominent high-caste Hindu families
Represented the beginning of a new kind of political protest, quite different from the rebellions, banditry, & refusal to pay taxes that had periodically erupted in the rural areas of colonial India.
INC was largely an urban phenomenon & quite moderate in its demands.
Indian National Congress (INC) 1885
Initially, INC were well-educated members that did not seek to overthrow British rule; rather hoped to gain greater inclusion within political, military, & business life of British India.
From such positions of influence, they argued, they could better protect the interests of India than could their foreign-born rulers.
Indian National Congress (INC) 1885
British mocked their claim to speak for ordinary Indians, referring to them as “babus,” a derogatory term that implied a semi literate native.
By the 1920s & 30s:
Periodic mass campaigns drew support from an extraordinarily wide spectrum of Indians:
Peasants & the urban poor, intellectuals & artisans, capitalists & socialists, Hindus & Muslims.
Women protesting British Imperialism in India, 1930
“India is being ground down,” he argued, “not under the English heel, but under that of modern civilization”
Focused upon modern world’s: Competitiveness, its materialism, its warlike tendencies, its abandonment of religion.
Almost alone among nationalist leaders in India or elsewhere, Gandhi opposed a modern industrial future for his country, seeking instead a society of harmonious self-sufficient villages drawing on ancient Indian principles of duty and morality.
Gandhi & the Untouchables
He did not call for social revolution but sought the moral transformation of individuals.
He worked to raise the status of India’s untouchables (the lowest and most ritually polluting groups within the caste hierarchy), although he launched no attack on caste in general & accepted support from businessmen & their socialist critics alike.
His critique of India’s situation went far beyond colonial rule. Attacked not just colonial rule but also mistreatment of India’s untouchables & the evils of modernization.
Some Negative Response to Gandhi:
British responded with periodic repression as well as concessions that allowed greater Indian role.
Gandhi’s conduct & actions—his simple & unpretentious lifestyle, his support of Muslims, his frequent reference to Hindu religious themes—appealed widely in India & transformed the INC into a mass org.
Growing Muslim/Hindu Divide
1906: Creation of All-India Muslim League
Some Hindu politicians defined nationalist struggle in religious terms
The Partition of India, 1947
Gandhi & Muhammad Ali Jinnah 1944
Muhammad Ali Jinnah, head of the Muslim League, argued that regions of India with a Muslim majority should be a separate state.
Colonial India became independent in 1947 as 2 countries: Muslim Pakistan & Mostly Hindu India governed by a secular state.
Dividing colonial India in this fashion was horrendously painful.
Gandhi: Desperately tried to stem mounting tide of violence in India’s villages, refused to attend the independence celebrations.
Pakistan: The land of the pure
Partition to Genocide
In the riots which preceded the partition in the Punjab region alone, ~500,000 people were killed in retributive genocide.
UNHCR estimates 14 million Hindus, Sikhs & Muslims were displaced during the partition; Largest mass migration in human history.
Some critics allege that British haste led to increased cruelties during the Partition.
Great triumph of independence secured from the powerful British Empire, shadowed by an equally great tragedy:
Violence of partition
As people were forced to move from Pakistan to India or India to Pakistan, many on both sides sought retribution & murderous revenge.
What was an important effect of the independence of the Indian subcontinent after British rule?
A. New Indian factories destroyed traditional cottage industries.
B. Religious differences led to the division of the colony into India and Pakistan.
C. The subcontinent was divided between communists and non-communists
D. Indian rulers introduced apartheid, a policy of racial segregation.
What was an important effect of the independence of the Indian subcontinent after British rule?
A. New Indian factories destroyed traditional cottage industries.
B. Religious differences led to the division of the colony into India and Pakistan.
C. The subcontinent was divided between communists and non-communists
D. Indian rulers introduced apartheid, a policy of racial segregation.
Assassination of Gandhi, 1948
Gandhi was on his way to address a prayer meeting, when his assassin, Nathuram Godse, fired 3 bullets from a 9mm pistol into his chest at point-blank range.
Godse was a Hindu nationalist: Links to extremist Hindu Mahasabha, who held Gandhi guilty of favoring Pakistan & strongly opposed the doctrine of nonviolence.
“Friends and comrades, the light has gone out of our lives, and there is darkness everywhere, and I don't 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.
—Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru's address to the nation
“As I read, I became deeply fascinated by his campaigns of nonviolent resistance. As I delved deeper into the philosophy of Gandhi, my skepticism concerning the power of love gradually diminished, and I came to see for the first time its potency in the area of social reform.”
Left: Martin Luther King Jr. & students arrested in 1960 after conducting sit-ins at Rich's Department Store in Atlanta, Ga.