(1869–1948) Leader of the Indian
National Congress, one of the architects
of the struggle for Indian independence,
and one of the best-known Indians in
history. Gandhi was born in Gujarat,
where his father was a minister to one of
the native princes. Shortly after Gandhi’s
father died, the British ousted the ruling
prince for mismanagement, and the
family lost their position. Gandhi was
sent to London to study law, and during
this time he came into contact with a
variety of new ideas that would strongly
influence his future. Ironically, one of
these influences was the Bhagavad Gita,
an important Hindu religious text from
which he drew continuing inspiration in
his later life. After returning to India in
1891, Gandhi failed in his attempt to set
up a law practice in Bombay, and he
went back to Gujarat. In 1894 Gandhi
traveled to South Africa to do some
work for a Muslim trading firm. He
intended to be gone only a short time,
but ended up staying in South Africa for
twenty years. During this time he discovered his true calling, political
activism. This was sparked by his own
experience of racial discrimination—
being thrown out of a railway car
reserved for “whites only”—and was
fueled by the social, political, and legal
disadvantages suffered by South Africa’s
40,000 Indians, most of whom were illiterate agricultural workers. During his
time in South Africa, Gandhi developed
and refined his basic tactics: mass noncooperation, nonviolent resistance, willingness to face imprisonment, and
skillful use of the print media to influence public opinion. In 1914 he
returned to India, where he soon
became one of the leading figures in the
struggle against the British—first for
home rule, and finally for outright independence.
Gandhi’s deeply held moral principles shaped his entire career. He saw his
political activism not as a vehicle for
personal advancement, but as a means
for selfless action for the welfare of the
world. This stress on selfless action drew
heavily on the message of the Bhagavad
Gita, in which the god Krishna recommends a similar path to his friend and
devotee (bhakta), Arjuna. Throughout
his life Gandhi remained committed to
nonviolence. Gandhi felt strongly that
the nature of any goal would be influenced by the means by which it had
been attained. Another of his fundamental principles was truth, as seen in
his insistence that evil and injustice had
to be resisted, even by violence when all
other means had failed. A third essential
tenet was self-control, which he considered the prerequisite to leading others.
His commitment to his principles gave
him the strength to endure imprisonment, injury, and more than thirty years
of struggle with the British government;
it also moved him to campaign against
many other injustices, particularly the
notion of untouchability.
When independence finally arrived
in 1947 it was tainted by the partition of
British India into India and Pakistan,
fueled in part by Muslim concerns about
their minority status in an independent
Hindu India. The partition sparked a
massive exodus, in which fifteen million
people migrated from one country to
the other. It also sparked unspeakable
communal violence, in which an estimated one million people died. Despite
his best efforts, Gandhi was unable to
prevent partition or to create good relations between the two countries. Within
six months of independence, Gandhi
was assassinated by Nathuram Godse, a
Hindu nationalist who felt that Gandhi
was being too soft on Pakistan.
Gandhi had critics and opponents
throughout his career, many of whom
felt that he did not deserve the sainthood that people attributed to him.
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Gandhi, Mohandas K.
Mohandas K. Gandhi in 1931.
Among his critics were B. R. Ambedkar,
who felt that Gandhi had used the
untouchables as pawns in negotiations
with the British because he opposed
letting the untouchables separate from
the larger body politic. His critics also
included Subhash Chandra Bose, who
advocated an armed struggle against
the British, and Vinayak Damodar
Savarkar, a Hindu nationalist who was
Godse’s inspiration. For further information see Mohandas K. Gandhi, An
Autobiography, 1993; Louis Fischer,
Gandhi, 1954; Mark Juergensmeyer,
“Saint Gandhi,” in John Stratton Hawley
(ed.), Saints and Virtues, 1987; and
Sudhir Kakar, “Gandhi and Women,” in
Intimate Relations, 1990.