Biography of Mohandas Gandhi

and

Concepts Gandhi gave us

2015

Biography

Mohandas Gandhi

Early Life / Background

• Born in Porbandar, India

• Born on October 2, 1869

• Father was Diwan (Prime

Minister) of Porbander

• Porbander was a small state

in the Kathiawar Agency of

British India

Early Life / Background Continued

• Mother was Putlibai

• Grew up with the Jain

traditions

• Jainism has ancient

traditions - vegetarianism,

religious tolerance,

fasting, and compassion

Life As a Teenager

• Married Kasturbai

Makhanji at 13 years

old

• This was an arranged

child marriage

• Had 4 sons with

Kasturbai Makhanji

Education

• Average student in school

• Went to England in 1888 to

study law at Univ. of London,

became a barrister

• Barristers are special kinds of

lawyers that have more direct

contact with clients.

Journey to South Africa

• Traveled to South Africa

in 1893

• Treated very unfairly by

European people

• Thrown off train and

beaten by driver

• Gandhi began to

question Indian status in

the British Empire

South Africa

• Stayed in Africa longer to

assist Indians in opposing

a bill that did not let them

vote

• Helped found Natal Indian

Congress in 1894

• This was a political force

South Africa

• Adopted satyagraha

• This means “devotion to the

truth”

• Told Indians to defy the law

and suffer through

punishments instead of

resisting

• Satyagraha began to mature

Accusations of Racism

• In one report, Gandhi said

that Kaffirs are dirty and

troublesome

• He also said the white race

should be the predominant

race in South Africa

• This lead people to the idea

that he was racist

The Zulu War of 1906 • Britain declared war on the

Zulus in 1906

• Zulus killed two British officers

after introduction of poll tax

• Gandhi encouraged Britain to

allow Indians to be recruited

• Indians allowed to treat

wounded soldiers

Role in World War I

• Invited by Viceroy to War Conference in Delhi in 1918

• Invited to show support to Empire and to recruit Indians for war

• Attempted to recruit combatants

• “Appeal for Enlistment” in 1918

• Gandhi told Viceroy’s secretary that he will not hurt anybody

Role in World War I

• “To bring about such a state

of things we should have the

ability to defend ourselves,

that is, the ability to bear

arms and to use them…If

we want to learn the use of

arms with the greatest

possible dispatch, it is our

duty to enlist ourselves in

the army.” (Gandhi: “Appeal

for Enlistment”)

Kheda

• Gandhi began to

clean up villages in

Kheda

• Villages were dirty

and full of crime and

alcoholism

• Built schools and

hospitals and

encouraged people to

work together to stop

conflicts and crimes

Kheda Continued • Arrested by police on

charges of creating unrest

• People protested outside jail until Gandhi’s release

• Led protests against landlords signed an agreement

• It granted farmers more control over their farming and cancelled collections until they were more wealthy

• Gandhi named “Father of the nation”

Resistance Against Britain • Used non-cooperation

and non-violence against Britain

• Spoke about how violence was evil and was not the solution to anything

• Sought to complete self government and control Indian government institutions

• Turned into Swaraj, or individual and spiritual political independence

Resistance Against Britain • Urged Indians to

wear khadi instead of

British clothes

• Urged people to

boycott education

and law

• Also urged people to

forsake British titles

and honors

• These ideas achieved

widespread success

and increased

peoples’ will to resist

Resistance Against Britain

• Gandhi called off

campaign in 1922 out

of fear of violence

erupting

• Gandhi was arrested

on March 10, 1922 and

tried for sedition

• Sentenced to six years

in jail

• Released for an

appendicitis operation

after 2 years

Resistance Against Britain

• Indian National

Congress split into two

factions without Gandhi

• One faction favored

participation in the

legislatures

• Other faction opposed

this

• Hindu and Muslim

cooperation for non-

violence breaking down

The Salt March

• Spent a lot of time trying to resolve the conflicts between the Swaraj and Indian National Congress

• British boycotted commission by Indian political parties

• Gandhi threatened British with another non-cooperation campaign

The Salt March

• The British did not respond

to the threat

• January 26, 1930 was

celebrated as India’s

Independence Day

• Gandhi started new

Satyagraha against the tax

on salt in 1930

• Marched with thousands of

other Indians for 241 miles

from Ahmedabad to Dandi

to make salt himself

The Salt March • Britain responded by

imprisoning over 60,000

people

• Gandhi-Irwin Pact was

signed in 1931

• This freed all prisoners in

return for suspension of

civil disobedience

movement

• Gandhi invited to attend

Round Table Conference in

London to represent Indian

National Congress

After the Salt March

• Gandhi arrested and British

failed to isolate him from his

followers

• Government granted

untouchables separate

electorates under constitution

• Gandhi protested and forced

government to come up with a

better arrangement

• Gandhi started a new

campaign to help the

untouchables lead better lives

After the Salt March Continued

• In 1934, Gandhi was

almost assassinated

three times

• Gandhi resigned from

party membership

because his popularity

would stifle the

membership

• Also, this helped Gandhi

avoid being a target for

Raj propaganda

Return to Politics in 1936 • Wanted a total focus on winning

independence

• Allowed Congress to adopt socialism

• Had an argument with President

Subhas Bose

• Bose did not commit to democracy

and had little faith in non-violence

• Bose left Congress after Gandhi

announced of Bose’s abandonment

of his principals to the All-India

leaders

World War II

• Gandhi declared that India could not be a party to a war fought for democratic freedom when India had none

• Gandhi started to write a resolution called “Quit India” for Britain

• Many people believed not helping Britain was unethical

• Gandhi would not support the war unless India was granted independence

Arrest During World War II • Arrested in Bombay on

August 9, 1942

• Suffered two painful losses in prison

• His secretary, Mahadev Desai died of a heart attack

• Wife, Kasturba died after being imprisoned for 18 months

• Gandhi released at the end of the war for failing health due to a malaria attack

• Britain indicated that India would be given power

India’s Freedom and Partition • Gandhi was opposed to

partition

• This opposition caused Hindus and Muslims to criticize Gandhi

• Gandhi was condemned for undermining Muslim rights

• He was accused of turning a blind eye to atrocities against Hindus and for the creation of Pakistan

• Some people even said he caused India to divide

Freedom and Partition Continued

• Gandhi opposed any

partition that planned to

divide India

• Congress approved the

partition plan to prevent

a Hindu-Muslim war

• Gandhi was eventually

forced to let the partition

be approved to avoid

war

Struggle and Pakistan

• Worked with Hindus and Muslims to keep peace

• Gandhi saddened when Muslims voted for Pakistan and Muslims and Hindus could not agree with each other

• Gandhi protested that money should be donated to restore homes in Pakistan

• After much debate, the Government agreed to pay Pakistan since Gandhi refused to change his mind

Assassination

• Gandhi was shot by

Nathuram Godse on

January 30, 1948 during

his nightly walk

• Godse and his

conspirator were

convicted and executed

on November 15, 1949

• Gandhi’s ashes were

poured into urns and

sent across India for

memorial services

• Gandhi’s memorial is

located at Raj Ghat in

Pune, India

Literary Works • Edited newspapers including

the Harijan, Hindi, Indian Opinion, and Young India

• Wrote autobiography: “An Autobiography of My Experiments With Truth”

• A political pamphlet: “Hind Swaraj or Indian Home Rule”

• Also paraphrased John Ruskin’s Unto This Last

• Gandhi’s complete works were published in the 1960’s and revised in 2000

Concepts Gandhi gave us

SATYA AHIMSA SARVODAYA

Concepts Gandhi gave us

• SWARAJ

• SWADESHI

• SATYA

• SATYAGRAHA

• SARVODAYA

M. K. Gandhi - 1909

• The only motive is to serve my country, to

find out the Truth, and to follow it. If,

therefore my views are proved to be wrong, I

shall have no hesitation in rejecting them.

• If they are proved to be right, I would

naturally wish, for the sake of the

Motherland, that others should adopt them.

Hind Swaraj- A foundational text

• In ‘Hind Swaraj’ Gandhi combined rejection of the

liberative contribution of modernity with an attempt

to integrate these positive elements with a

liberating re-interpretation of tradition.

• With his critique from within the tradition, Gandhi

becomes the great synthesiser of contraries within

and across traditions.

Ancient-Indian vs Modern-West

• For Gandhi civilisation was by definition a moral

enterprise: "Civilisation is that mode of conduct

which points out to man the path of duty“

• Unacceptable were the two points - ‘might is right’

and the ‘survival of the fittest’.

• Also, colonial imperialism, industrial capitalism,

and rationalist materialism.

Swaraj

• Swaraj as ‘self rule’ and as ‘self-government’

• The first as self-control, rule over oneself,

was the foundation for the second, self-

government. In this second sense, local

self ~government was what Gandhi really

had in mind.

• Gandhi very decidedly gives priority to self-

rule over self-government, and to both over

political independence, swatantrata.

Indian cultural Values

• Gandhi’s Hind Swaraj presents us with an

idealised version of Indian culture that is

completely counterpunctal to the ‘Modern West’.

• Here we pick out three seminal themes:

• Swaraj (Self rule),

• Swadeshi (Self governance) and

• Satya (Truth).

Swaraj is not mere replacing of the English

• Essential to both meanings swaraj, was a sense of

self-respect that is precisely Gandhi’s answer to

colonial rule.

• For Gandhi freedom in its most fundamental sense

had to mean freedom for self-realisation. But it

had to be a freedom for all, for the toiling masses,

and the privileged classes, and most importantly

for the least and last Indian.

• For Gandhi real rights are legitimated by duties they flow

from, for both are founded on satya and dharma.

• The modern theory of rights reverses this priority and

founds rights on the dignity and freedom of the

individual.

• But comprehensive morality can never be adequately

articulated or correctly grasped in terms of rights alone.

Swadeshi: as a means for swaraj

• It is this commitment of the individual to his

‘desh’ that was Gandhi’s Indian alternative

to western nationalism.

• The village Gandhi idealised was not just a

geographic place, or a statistic, or a social

class.

• It was an event, a dream, a happening, a

culture.

• As he used "the term ‘village’ implied not

an entity, but a set of values"

Satya

• SATYA: Truthfulness, honesty,

transparency, accountability, expanding

conscience, awareness and responsibility;

justice with compassion; taking

responsibility for past mistakes; pluralism;

• understanding of the multiplicity of truth;

humility and respect for others’ truths;

holding on to relative truth but continuing

quest for further truth; attempting to arrive

at a consensus on key issues; quest for

truth.

Sarvodaya

• Sarvodaya is upliftment or welfare of all.

• Gandhi first encountered this noble notion in the book

titled ‘Unto This Last’ by John Ruskin, in 1904.

• The impact of this reading was powerful that it proved

to be a life changing experience for Gandhi.

• He was determined to change his life in accordance

with the ideals of the book.

Ruskin’s ideology was based on three fundamental

tenets;

• That the good of the individual is contained in the

good of all.

• That a lawyer’s work has the same value as the

barber's in as much as all have the same right of

earning their livelihood from their work.

• That a life of labor, i.e., the life of the tiller of the

soil and the handicraftsman is the life worth living

Sarvodaya was a social ideology in its fundamental

form. Emancipation of disparity between social

classes was its objective. and it could be best

implemented by political will and state machinery.

It would affect in letter and spirit the singular

objective of Sarvodaya; inclusive growth and

progress. For Gandhi and for India, this meant

grassroot level uplift which began from the villages

and from the most deprived classes.

Sarvodaya requires

• Purity of means and ends; welfare of all

and welfare of last first.

• Peaceful resolution of conflicts,

constructive work to build up a nonviolent

world order,

• Relief and rehabilitation work; removing

structural (indirect) violence.

Satyagraha and Passive Resistance

Satyagraha was a combination of reason,

morality and politics.

Gandhi defined ‘passive resistance’ as he

called it then as "a method of securing rights

by personal suffering“.

It appealed to the opponent’s head, heart

and interests.

Nonviolent struggle for freedom

• Gandhi was the first leader to bring non-violence

to centre stage in the struggle for freedom with the

British.

• He was well aware that adopting "methods of

violence to drive out the English" would be a

"suicidal policy".

• Hind Swaraj was precisely intended to stymie such

a soul-destroying venture.

Gandhi’s Hinduism.

Thus one remarkable re- interpretations

of Hinduism that Gandhi effected was

that of the Gita.

This text intended to persuade a

reluctant warrior on the legitimacy and

even the necessity of joining the battle.

Gandhi reworks its ‘nishkama karma’ to

become the basis of his ahimsa and

satyagraha!

Gandhi as a global thinker

• An ecological understanding now requires a new and deep realisation of our interdependence. We have only one earth, we must learn to share and care.

• Thus, with regard to the economy and polity, Gandhi would have the village as his world.

• With regard to culture and religion, it was the world that was his village! Surely, here we have a viable example of thinking globally and acting locally.

Gandhi : Faith & Reason

• For Gandhi, "individuality" must be "oriented to self-realisation through self-knowledge... in a network of interdependence and harmony

informed by ahimsa“

• Nor was this to be an interdependence of dominant-subservient relationships so prevalent in our local communities and global societies.

• His Swadeshi envisaged a more personalised and communitarian society on a human scale.

Gandhi would have asked us to believe in

• Dignity of manual labor; Attention to Sanitation.

• The good of the individual is contained in the good

of all.

• Each can and should serve society by his own

labor and profession in the field of his choice.

• There is no colonialism today, it is for us bear

responsibility for improving our village, city and

India.

Gandhi wanted education to help India move

away from the Western concept of progress,

towards a different form of development

more suited to its needs and more viable, for

the world as a whole. True education is that

which trains all the three abilities, spiritual,

intellectual, and economic, simultaneously.

Gandhian strategy for confronting terrorism

• Stop an act of violence in its tracks. The

effort to do so should be nonviolent but

forceful.

• Address the issues; Maintain the moral high

ground.

• Gandhi insisted on means that are

consistent with the moral goals of those

engaged in the conflict.

• A violent posture adopted by public

authorities could lead to a civil order based

on coercion.

Thus a nonviolent response to terrorism is already

an element of political discourse. It is not a new

idea, but rather a strand of public thinking that

deserves attention and, Gandhi might argue,

one that warrants respect. As a pragmatic idealist,

Gandhi would be pleased to know that nonviolent

approaches to terrorism were taken seriously not

only because invariably they were the right thing to

do, but also because they have worked.

People Influenced by Gandhi

• Martin Luther King, Jr.

and James Lawson were

influenced by Gandhi

• Albert Einstein

exchanged written letters

with Gandhi in 1931

• Former vice-president Al

Gore was influenced by

Gandhi

• Also, current president

Barack Obama says

Gandhi is a major

influence on his life

Holidays and Awards • Gandhi Jayanti is celebrated

every October 2 in India

• On January 30, schools and many countries celebrate the School Day of Non-violence and Peace

• Man of the Year in 1930

• Runner-up to Einstein as person of the century

• Mahatma Gandhi Peace Prize awarded to distinguished social workers

• Nominated five times for Nobel Peace Prize

Gandhi in Modern Culture

• “Gandhi” was a film in 1982

• Gandhi is the main theme in

the 2006 Bollywood film,

“Lage Raho Munna Bhai”

• The 2007 film, “Gandhi, My

Father” tells about the

relationship between Gandhi

and Harilal

• The 1996 film, “The Making

of the Mahatma” documents

Gandhi’s twenty-one years in

South Africa

Thanks to Matt Evans

Movie Clip/Works Cited • http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gandhi

• http://www.mkgandhi.org/ • http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_LS9FUwupaPM/SDKAY2LA-

fI/AAAAAAAAAHo/SOFvwfvZv38/s320/john_0911_gandhi-1.jpg&imgrefurl=http://photonparadise.blogspot.com/2008/05/mohandas-karamchand-gandhi-1869-1948.html&usg=__Ct9EyGKqO2-GMf9E2lUlvW2cSck=&h=320&w=115&sz=9&hl=en&start=11&itbs=1&tbnid=LKzXAwRWZa-bVM:&tbnh=118&tbnw=42&prev=/images%3Fq%3DGandhi%2BZulu%2Bwar%26hl%3Den%26sa%3DX%26gbv%3D2%26tbs%3Disch:1

• http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/southasia/History/Gandhi/gandhi.html

• http://www.lucidcafe.com/library/95oct/mkgandhi.html

• http://www.quotationspage.com/quotes/Mahatma_Gandhi/

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wel0wt9lSLM&feature=related