Mahatma Gandhi (1869-1948: India)
Mohandas Gandhi (known as “Mahatma” or “Great-Souled” Gandhi) was one of the world’s most recognized peace-makers. He created an understanding of the power of non-violence, of resisting the enemy not with a show of force, but through the will to suffer and go without food, employment or material goods. Gandhi represented the value of living simply; he embraced manual labor and renounced worldly riches and sensual pleasure. This rejection of activities that promote self-aggrandizement, he believed, freed people to have the courage to do what is right, to seek justice and equality for all races and classes.
As a young man, Gandhi did not reveal any inclinations toward becoming an activist. The youngest son of his father’s fourth wife, he was not particularly successful in school, and when he finished studying the law, first in India and then for three years in London, he was not able to find a job when he returned. Somewhat desperate, he took an offer in 1891 to work in a law firm in British-controlled Natal (in what is present-day South Africa), intending to spend one year there. Instead he stayed 23 years. The discrimination and the “for- Europeans-only” policies that he and his fellow Indians experienced transformed him into a political activist and campaigner.
Through his struggles with the government he developed his philosophy of satyagraha, “devotion to truth,” redressing wrongs through inviting rather than inflicting suffering, resisting force without anger or hatred.
Although Gandhi supported the British when the Boers invaded Natal, and again during World War I following his return to India in 1914, throughout his life Gandhi was a serious thorn in the side of the British government, achieving Indian independence of British rule in 1947 through political boycotts, personal imprisonment, and publicized fasts that undermined the moral stance of British power.
Although some of the campaigns Gandhi led ended in acts of destruction and violence, it was never through his advocacy; he remained faithful to non-violence and urged peaceful protest. When independence was established by partitioning the subcontinent into India (Hindu) and Pakistan (Muslim)—a decision Gandhi soundly opposed—he worked to bring factions together, participating in two influential fasts, one in 1947 to stop rioting in Calcutta and another in 1948 to urge a truce in Delhi. Caught in the middle of bitter oppositions, Gandhi had enemies on both sides. He was assassinated by a young Hindu fanatic a few days after the truce in Delhi had been declared.
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Nelson Mandela have both been viewed as heirs to Gandhi’s philosophical method of non-violence, using it successfully in their own political struggles.
The Story of My Experiments with Truth, Introduction, Mahatma Gandhi
© 2002 The Official Mahatma Gandhi eArchive & Reference Library
“Gandhi's Human Touch,” Madhu Dandavate
©Jayaprakash Foundation, 1997
Professor Madhu Dandavate delivered on "Gandhi's Human Touch" before a distinguished audience at the packed School of Social Sciences Auditorium of the Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, on 22 November 1996, under the auspices of the Jayaprakash Foundation, to commemorate the late Shri Jayaprakash Narayan.
Gandhi: Four Photographs
Mahatma Gandhi Foundation India © 2002 The official Mahatma Gandhi eArchive & Reference Library
Photograph 1: Peace Pilgrim, the Mahatma walks through the riot ravaged Noakhali district of West Bengal. Mountbatten called him a “one man peace-keeping force”, August 1941.
Photograph 2: Enroute to Noakhali in 1946-1947, the Mahatma talks to people at the station.
Photograph 3: The Mahatma crosses the swamps of East Bengal to bring peace to Noakhali, 1947.
Photograph 4: An ailing Mahatma during one of his many fasts.
Men of Our Time: Gandhi
Video: 38 minutes
United Learning (1989). Retrieved May 18, 2006, from unitedstreaming
Mohandas K. Gandhi was a simple man who pioneered the use of passive resistance. This program examines what kind of man he was, and why he was so committed to nonviolence.
