Mahatma Gandhi

¤ A Great Legend Also Known As The

Father Of Nations

Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, better known as

Mahatma Gandhi and the Father of the Indian
Nation, was born on the 2nd October, 1869. The
day is a national holiday marked by a series of
cultural events organised each year to
commemorate the birth of one of India’s
greatest political beacons. On this day, bhajans, or devotional songs are sung
at his samadhi, or memorial, in Delhi called Raj Ghat. The key figures of
contemporary Indian politics take time off from their usually packed
schedules to visit his memorial and silently go over the Mahatma’s life and its
impact on the destiny of India.

¤ Gandhiji Also Knowan As Father of India

For the average Indian, it could be just another holiday. But the average
Indian lives in a country where every town and city has at least one road, one
market, one statue and one park named after Gandhi. The average Indian
has written essays on the Mahatma in school, and pored over his contribution
to India’s independence in History classes. While most historical personalities
in India’s checkered history, no matter how dynamic, could inspire only a
fraction of the population, Gandhi connected with Indians at their own level,
their caste, creed, sex or status notwithstanding, and was aptly christened
bapu or father. To strike a cord in the heart of an average Indian, when the
average Indian is classified as a Brahmin, Kshatriya or Shudra, (levels of
castes in Hinduism established as early as the pre-Vedic era), or is a
Tamilian, Punjabi or Marathi, a speck in a nation that spouts at least 17
different languages, is no mean feat. Perhaps no other historical figure in
India has enjoyed such a rare distinction. This was Gandhi’s forte, alone.

This is not to say that hagiographers could be summoned, and Gandhi is

above criticism. In fact, the man attracted criticism, and continues to do so,
like a bee is drawn to honey. But few would have beheld the man and his
philosophy, without yielding both a reaction.

Gandhi hardly needs an introduction. A voluminous literature has gone into

studying the man who became the Mahatma or ‘great soul’. His personal
writings add up to ninety large volumes.
¤ A Brief History

Born in 1869, in Porbandar in the state of Gujarat into a Vaishya (merchant

class) family, Gandhi was married at the age of 13 to Kasturba. He was an
average student who studied law in England from 1888 to 1891. Before
leaving India, his mother made him promise that he would abstain from
meat, alcohol and sex. The years passed soon and Gandhi was back in
Mumbai. It was time for his first and only case as a lawyer in India, and the
man stood ineptly tongue-tied in court. The writing was on the wall, and
Gandhi lost the case. His uncles packed him off to South Africa in 1893 to
work for an Indian merchant involved in a civil suit.

¤ The Beginning of Struggle In Africa

The turning point in Gandhi's life begin in South Africa. He found himself in
the midst of an intimidated and oppressed Indian community that was the
butt of racial discrimination. Only too aware of his own shortcomings, Gandhi
struggled to overcome his personal inhibitions, and worked towards uniting
the South African Indians to protest against discrimination and racial bias.
After a few brief spells in prison, he succeeded in getting the local governance
to relax its laws for the first time in 1908, then again in 1914.

He withdrew his children from a regular school and established a farm at

Phoenix in 1904 where he endeavored to build a community based on the
combined philosophies of John Ruskin, Leo Tolstoy and Henry Thoreau whom
he called a true American. Around the same time, he started a
correspondence with Tolstoy. In 1906 he took a vow of celibacy. He lived in
South Africa for 20 years and it would not be out of line to believe that the
nature of his work in South Africa inspired him to achieve the near impossible
back home, where Gandhi was already a name to reckon with.

¤ Gandhi's Fight For Indian Freedom

He finally returned to India in 1915. Instead of breezing into Indian politics,

he thought it necessary to travel across India, and had the first adult up-
close-and-personal experience of his country. What he saw was an India
crippled by poverty and ignorance, and the apathetic handling of the
country’s affairs by the British. Appalled by an abject India, he set up the
Sabarmati Ashram near Ahmedabad and went on to live there in quest of his
Holy Grail. But peace was hard to come by when his country folk were at the
mercy of feudal lords, and colonisation as a phenomenon was rearing its ugly
head in various pockets of the world. His quintessential need to see the world
at peace spearheaded him into the whirlpool of politics, after which there was,
of course, no looking back. and the once tongue-tied lawyer would kindle a
nation’s imagination and shape its history.

¤ The Swadeshi Movement

That he was an ace economist, theologian, politician and sociologist is evident

from his mastery and handling of each of these branches of knowledge. and
his dialogue with the Indians and the British was based on a personal
discourse that emerged at the crossroad of these disciplines. With an
unparalleled understanding of the needs, wants and beliefs of the neglected
and forgotten Indians, 80% of whom lived in villages, Gandhi was ready to
make a difference. The Swadeshi Movement that exhorted the people of India
to wear khadi (home-spun cotton) and shun European goods as the first step
towards self-reliance, is just one of the numerous revolutions he engineered
successfully. But the remarkable quality about Gandhi, and perhaps the
reason of his sorrow, was that in spite of his obvious practical good sense, he
ached for the ideal. His standards proved to be, more often than not, too high
for the world around him.

¤ A Great Philosopher

He increasingly tended towards asceticism, and believed in Thoreau’s

philosophy of complete self-reliance and the dignity of labour, wearing a
khadi loincloth and a shawl that he had woven himself. The spinning wheel
that he worked on religiously every day is profoundly symbolic of the
Mahatma and his beliefs to this day. Deeply aggrieved by the unyielding caste
system in his country, he worked all his life for the upliftment of the ones he
called Harijans (Children of God). His innate belief in the goodness in life and
the spirituality enshrined in each human being was unshakable. He dreamt of
a free and self-reliant India, where Christians, Hindus, Muslims and Harijans
would live in harmony and work towards a better world.

Perhaps the most profound of his philosophies was his quest for truth, an
untainted non-sectarian truth, universal in appeal. He found this aspect in
ahmisa, roughly translated as non-violence. He believed in and practised
ahimsa in thoughts, words, and actions that sprung from a love for mankind
that lay beyond the continent of calculations and rewards – a personal
philosophy inspired by the Bhagavad Gita considered as perhaps the most
lucid representation of Hinduism, and by many as the most sacred book of
the Hindus.

¤ End of The Legendary Hero

Gandhi led the Congress for a period of 25 years, and during this time the
party truly came to represent united India’s struggle for freedom. Gandhi’s
charisma caught the imagination of millions. Villagers and city dwellers, men,
women and children rallied behind the Congress as it led India’s march
towards freedom from the British. Freedom came, but at a price. A nation was
partitioned to yield a Hindu-dominated India and a Muslim-dominated
Pakistan. Gandhi opposed the partition that left millions dead, mutilated and
homeless, bitterly till the end. By upholding the cause of the Muslims and
Harijans, he alienated himself from the Hindu majority. and on January
30th 1948, in an India that was finally free, a Brahman named Nathuram
Godse walked right upto Gandhi and shot him at point-blank range.

Both India and Pakistan continue to be plagued by the repercussions of

partition till this day. That Gandhi was assassinated by a man who regarded
him as a saint but could not live with his ideals, and that Gandhi hankered
after the ideal in a practical world far-removed from ideality, shall forever
remain a paradox.