Mohandas Gandhi

Margit Falkensteiner

Mohandas´ childhood

Mohandas Karamchad Gandhi (which was his real name) was born on October 2nd, 1869 in Porbandar, a small seatown in Gurajat (Western India). The Gandhis were Hindus and belonged to the Bania caste, the second higest caste in Hinduism. Mohandas´ father was prime minister of Gurajat. His mother was very religious and he had two older brothers. When Mohandas was seven years old, his family moved to Rajkot, where his father became a member of the Rajasthenic Court. There he went to primary school and later to high school. He never was a good student, but he didn´t copy his work from other students. Gandhi was a shy boy and tried to avoid any company.

Mohandas as a teenager

In India it´s custom to marry quite early and parents have the right to choose the partners for the children. Mohandas was married to Kasturbai Makanji when both were 13 years old. Later he criticized his father for having married him as a child. Nevertheless, he loved his wife, but he was a quite jealous husband.

Hindus aren´t allowed to eat meat, because their religion forbids that, like drinking alcohol. Mohandas thought, that the Britains ruled over the Indians because they were meat eaters, which made them stronger. He wanted to get as strong as those Britains were, because he couldn´t stand being oppressed by them. So he began eating meat for about a year, without his parents knowing it. But then he stopped and never ate meat again.

Mahandas Gandhi in England

Gandhi passed his matriculation exam in 1887. In September he went to England to study law in London. During this time his wife was pregnant and gave birth to their first son Harilal.

First of all Gandhi wanted to become an English gentleman. Therefore he took lessons in French, dancing and elocution, but soon he stopped these things.

After a year he changed his life. Up to that time he had lived with a family, but then he rented a small room on his own, because he didn´t want to get an English gentlemen anymore.

He opened a vegetarian club, but it only existed a few months. Later he was elected to the Executive Committee of the Vegetarian Society. Gandhi could talk to single persons quite well, but he was too shy to talk to the committee.

Gandhi occupied himself with different religions. He read the Gita (the most important book of Hinduism) and the bible, in which he liked the ''Seromon on the Moun'' best.

Mohandas passed his examinations, was called to the Bar and enrolled in the High Court in June 1891. Then he went back to India, where he found out, that his mother had died.

Gandhi as legal advisor in South Africa

Gandhi got a job as a lawyer in Bombay, but he wasn´t succesful in it. He didn´t know the Indian law and in his first case he was so nervous, that he couldn´t speak a word. Another lawyer had to finish his work. So he went to Rajkot to set up his own office. In 1892 Gandhi´s second son Manilal was born.

In 1893 an Indian business man offered Gandhi a job in South Africa, lasting for one year. He went by ship, train and bus to Pretoria, which is the capital of South Africa, where he worked.

South Africa was ruled by the Britons, and Indians, who lived there, were discriminated by the law. They had to travel third class, if they wanted to go by train or bus; they were not allowed to walk on public foothpaths; they might not move out of doors after nine o´clock p.m. without a permit; and they had no franchise.

Gandhi organized several meetings of all the Indians in Pretoria. He told them to work together in order to change their lives. They should be clean and honest, because the South Africans blamed them to be dirty and dishonest. At these meetings Gandhi delivered his first public speeches, and he wasn´t nervous. He was a different man to the lawyer who couldn´t speak in the law court in Bombay.

Gandhi´s job in South Africa

After one year Gandhi wanted to return to India, but he couldn´t, because the Indians in South Africa needed him. So he stayed there to help them. He moved to Durban (which is in the Natal Province), where he founded the Natal Indian Congress in 1894. He organized the resistance of the Indians against the discriminatory laws.

Indians could go to South Africa as slaves for five years. If they decided to stay longer, they were slaves forever, or they had to pay a yearly poll tax of    25, which hardly anyone could afford. Gandhi achieved, that the tax was reduced to 3.

In 1896 Gandhi went back to India for six months to fetch his wife and children.

Back in South Africa, Gandhi founded a school and a hospital. In 1897 Gandhi´s wife Kasturbai gave birth to her third son Ramdas, and three years later Davadas was born.

In the Boer War Gandhi and his companions fetched wounded British soilders from the field and nursed them.

In 1901 Gandhi returned to India, promising to come back to South Africa, if the people there would need him. He got luxurious gifts from Natal Indians, but instead of keeping them, he gave them to the Indian community.

The Congress met at Calcutta in 1901. Gandhi offered his services to the Congress office in order to gain some experience, and so he got a job as a Congress secretary. Soon Gandhi got a message from South Africa, telling him, that he should come there, because Mr Chamberlain, the British prime minister, was going to visit Africa. So he again went there with his family, but the Asian department didn´t allow him to represent the Indians in South Africa, because they didn´t regard him as a domiciled Indian.

1904 Gandhi founded ''The Indian Opinion'', a weekly newspaper for Indians in South Africa, which was written in four languages: English, Gujarati, Tamil and Hindi.

Gandhi changed his life

In 1914 Gandhi changed his life. He founded the Phoenix settlement, a cooperative colony for Indians, near Durban. The members tried to be independent, so they planted fruit trees and even baked bread on their own. Gandhi began to wash his clothes and to his cut his hair on his own. He also helped Kasturbai to do the housework, and his wife didn´t understand that,  because they easily would have been able to afford a servant.

Gandhi also trained to controll himself, and so he changed from an irescible person into a peaceful man. At the age of 37 he became a Bramachari. Bramacharies have no sexual intercourses, they cut down eating, stirs of emotion and talking, and they lead a simple life. Gandhi only wore the clothes of the lowest Hindu caste, even if he met important people, and he only travelled by thrid class anymore.

From 1906 to 1913 Gandhi led a campaign, that fought for the rights of Indians in South Africa. He undertook a series of challenges for which he was imprisoned several times.

In the Zulu Rebellion he formed an Indian Ambulance Corp and nursed wounded Zulus.

In 1914 Gandhi went to England with his family and a companion in order to meet a friend.  During this journey the First World War, in which Gandhi helped the Britons with amblance work, broke out.

Gandhi had achieved quite a lot in South Africa. The poll tax was abolished in the end, and the Indians were better off than 20 years before.

Gandhi´s work in India

In 1914 Gandhi went back to India, and in 1915 he founded the Satyagraha Ashram in Ahmadabad, Gujarat, which was like the Phoenix settlement in South Africa. Gandhi supported the Indians, who needed him, and he also helped untouchables there.

In Champaran he helped the ryots, who weren´t fairly treated by the indigo planters, and founded primary schools in six villages.

In Ahmadabad labouring conditions were bad, and the wages were low. The situation for mill-hands was worst, and so Gandhi advised them to strike. After about three weeks he said, that he wouldn´t touch any food till the mill-hands have reached a settlement with the mill-owners.

Three days later the strike was called off, and a settlement was reached.

In the Kheda disrict the crops failed, and so people were unable to pay the assessment. Gandhi achived that the rich people had to pay their tax, while it was suspended for the poor ones.

The fight against the Rowlatt Acts

In 1919 the Parliament set up the Rowlatt Acts, which allowed the police to imprision victims of persecution without any trial. Gandhi told the Indians to fight against these Acts, but without any weapons.

In Amistrar 400 Indians were killed by British soilders in a demonstration against the Rowlatt Acts. Gandhi required the whole country to observe a general strike on April 6th, 1919. He told all Indians not to work and not to go to school on that day, but to observe the day as one of fasting and prayer. Shops, offices, factories and schools were closed on that day. During public processions proscribed books, written by Gandhi, were sold. Again lots of Indians were killed. Gandhi blamed himself for the violence during these two demonstrations. But with the strike on April 6th he achieved, that the Rowlatt Acts were never actually used.

The strike against this law was the first big act of civil disobedience in India. The police wanted to arrest Gandhi, but they were afraid of the Indians, because they would have rebelled, and so they let him go.

Gandhi in the Indian National Congress

Gandhi became a member of the Indian National Congress, where he fought for the Hindu-Muslem unity, and the removal of untouchability. He told the Indians to spin, to weave and to make their own clothes in order to get work for poor people, and to become independent from British textile industry. He himself spinned half an hour every day.

In 1922 Gandhi organized a strike against a tax in Gurajat. British police men illtreated Indians, and so they burnt down a police station. Several people died and Gandhi was sentenced to prision for six years, from where he was released in 1924 because of his bad health. In prision he read a lot of books, studied two Indian languages and began to write down the story of his life.

After his release from prison Gandhi travelled throughout India preaching the cardinal tenets of his doctrine: Hindu-Moslem unity, the abolition of untouchability and the promotion of hand-spinning. He began to be known as Mahatma - the great soul.

In 1925 he became president of the Indian National Congress.

The salt march

In 1930 Mahatma proclaimed a new campaign of civil disobedience, telling the Indian population to refuse paying taxes, especially the tax on salt. The campaign was a march, in which thousands of Indians followed Gandhi from Ahmedabad to the Arabian sea, where they made salt by evaporating sea water.

This campaign was also a strike against the British monopoly on salt. Once more the Indian leader was arrested, but he was released in 1931. Gandhi halted the campaign after the Britons made concessions to his demands.

Gandhi as president of the INC

In 1931 Gandhi represented the Indian National Congress at a conference in London, but he wasn´t successful there.

In 1932 Gandhi began new civil-disobedience campaigns against British rules. Arrested twice, he fasted several times for long periods; these fasts were effective measures against the British, because a revolution might have broken out in India, if he had died. In September 1932, while Gandhi was in prison, he undertook a fast to death to improve the status of the Hindu untouchables.

In 1934 Gandhi resigned his leadership of the congress, but he still remained a powerful influence. The limited home rule, granted by the Britions in 1934, could not be implented without Gandhi´s approval.

Gandhi travelled througout India, teaching Ahimsa (non-violence) and demanding eradiction of untouchability.

The Independence of India

In 1939, when the Second World War broke out, the Indian National Congress and Gandhi demanded a declaration of war aims and their application to India. As a reaction to the unsatisfactory response from the Britons, they decided not to support Britain in the war, unless complete and immediate independence would have been granted to the country. The Britons refused that and offered compromises, which were rejected by the Indians.

Gandhi resumed his leadership from 1940 to 1941. He made propaganda against the war. For that he was interned in 1942, but the Britons released him two years later because of his failing health.

In 1944 the Indian struggle for independence was in its final stage. The British government agreed to Indian´s independence on the condition, that the two contending national groups, the Muslim League and the Indian National Congress, should resolve their differences.

Gandhi stood against the partition of India until he realized its inevitability. So on Independence Day, August 15th, 1947, India was devided into India (the Hindu state) and Pakistan (the state for the Muslims). Gandhi refused to celebrate and spent this day fasting and in prayer.

Religious fights broke out, because nevertheless Hindus stayed in Pakistan, and Muslims still lived in India. Ryots engulfed in Calcutta. Gandhi fasted until thedisturbances were ceased.

In January 1948 Gandhi fasted for the Muslims in India.

On January the 30th, 1948 Gandhi was assassinated by a fanatic Hindu on the way to his evening prayer.

Gandhi´s personality

Gandhi was a saint and a politician.

He lived a spiritual and ascetic life of prayer, fasting and meditation.

All his life he held to two fundamental principles, a belief in Ahimsa (non-violence) and the concept of

truth (Satya).

Sources:

- M. K. GANDHI: An Autobiography or The Story of My Experiments with Truth

- DONN BYRNE: Gandhi - His Life Was The Message

- INTERNET

- LEXICONS