Mahatma Gandhi: the Apostle of Peace and Non-Violence

(BY VIKAS AGNIHOTRI)

“Generations to come will scarce believe that such a one as this ever in flesh and blood walked upon this earth."

Albert Einstein

Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, venerated as Mahatma Gandhi, was born in Porbandar, a coastal town, near Rajkot in the Saurashtra region (Gujarat), on October 2, 1869.

After his formal education, Gandhiji went to England for further studies and became a Bar-at-Law and practised for a while in the famous Inner Temple,London. After returning home, he set up practice and moved to Durban to defend one of his clients. There he was aghast to experience the ill-treatment meted out to fellow Indians, merely because of the subjugation of their native land by the British. When he himself was thrown out the first class compartment by a whiteman, Gandhiji made up his mind to resist this whiteman's arroagance. By that time he had already been influenced by the civil disobedience theory adumbrated by Thoreau. As a child he had witnessed a street play highlighting the trials and tribulations of Prahalada under his tyrannical father. Gandhiji saw Prahalada's struggle as a manifestation of the individual against the all-powerful state. With this background Gandhiji launched his famous non-violent 'Satyagraha' against the British, and succeeded to a great extent. The South African experience was hailed all over, particularly in India. When he returned home, a tumultuous reception was accorded to him and he addressed meetings of intellectuals and the common people alike on the efficacy of Satyagraha.

Lokmanya Bal Ganghadhar Tilak appreciated Gandhiji's efforts and the liberal politician, Gopal Krishna Gokhale, advised Gandhiji to tour the length of the country to understand the people's mind before taking up leadership. Gandhiji obeyed his `guru'. The countrywide tour strengthened his sinews to launch the famous Non-Cooperation Movement in 1920 to protest against the Rowlatt Act

and the 1919 massacre of innocent people in the Jalianwalla Bagh, Amritsar. After the exit of Tilak, Gandhiji filled the political vacuum effectively. He presided over the Belgaum session of the Indian National Congress, and gave a shape to the Non-Cooperation Movement at its Nagpur session.

From then on, Gandhiji mobilized the people by his constant touch with masses and the `Harijans' weekly. All his battles against the rulers were through non-violent popular movements. In fact, he called off the Non-Cooperation Movement after violence broke out in Chauri Chaura (Bihar) as part of the agitation. He conducted in a non-violent ambience all his subsequent agitations like the famous march to Dandi to break the Salt Law in 1930, the subsequent Individual Satyagraha and the ultimate Quit-India Movement in1942.

Alongside the ongoing political struggle, Gandhiji fought against social evils like untouchability, propagated the need for self-sufficient villages and promoted Khadi against the mill-made cloth imported from Lancashire. He was a strong votary of Hindu-Muslim unity. Qaid-e-Azam Jinnah's insistence that Muslims are a separate nation hurt Gandhiji and pleaded in vain against partition of the sub-continent. When freedom dawned splitting the country into India and Pakistan, he became a disillusioned man and chose to move to Naokhali in Bengal, to reduce the communal tension caused by cross-border migration of Hindus and Muslims from West Bengal and East Pakistan.

Gandhiji's was a versatile personality. He led an ascetic life and established his ashrams at Sabarmati, radiating simple living and high thinking. A crusader upholding manual labour, he was unhappy with the machine replacing man in several areas. Whatever he did as a patriot, journalist, authorhis magnum opus is 'My Experiments with Truth'---and social reformer, he excelled and had the uncanny knack of reaching the common man.

It is indeed an irony of fate that such an apostle of peace and non-violence was felled by a misguided assassin's bullets in the Birla House in Delhi on January 30, 1948. As aptly announced in a voice choked with grief and emotion by Jawaharlal Nehru, before the Constituent Assembly soon after the tragedy: "The Light is out''.

Gandhi would want anyone who reads his words to undertake similar “experiments with truth” in their own lives, in persuit of new discoveries in the field of nonviolence, so that a new day of peace with justice will soon dawn and we can all rejoice to see God face to face. May his hope and pray come true.