Gandhi Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi was born in Porbandar, India, on October 2, 1869. His father was a prime minister in the prince’s court. His mother was a devout woman who taught her children about their religion. The family’s religion was a combination of Hinduism and Jainism. Gandhi grew up believing in karma — the idea that to keep a soul clean, one should pray, be disciplined, honest, have few possessions, and harm no one. When Gandhi was thirteen years old, he was married in the Hindu tradition. His wife was Kasturbai Makanji, a beautiful thirteen-year-old girl who possessed qualities of patience, strength, courage. Gandhi was a small, shy boy, afraid of many things, including ghosts, serpents, and the dark. His wife laughed lovingly at her husband, who had to sleep with the lights on. Gandhi felt different from other people and was a weak student. He barely graduated from high school and failed classes in college. In 1888, at his uncle’s urging, Gandhi left his wife at home and went to London to study the law. For a long time he felt completely alone, a foreigner in a strange country. To make himself feel more secure, Gandhi transformed himself into an English gentleman. He lived in fancy rooms and wore fancy clothes. He learned to speak perfect English, took violin lessons, and even learned to dance the fox-trot. But Gandhi was not happy. He felt a wide gap between his inner and outer selves and, recalling his Jain upbringing, he tried to live a simpler life. He gave up his fancy rooms, cooked his own meals, walked everywhere instead of taking public transportation, and joined the Vegetarian Society of London. His self-reliance made him much happier, although he was still awkward and shy. Gandhi finally passed his law exams and, three years after arriving in London, he sailed back home to India. When Gandhi got home, he learned his mother had died. Determined to succeed, Gandhi set up a law practice in Bombay. But his awkward shyness prevented him from speaking in public, and he was humiliated. Gandhi’s brother knew of a law firm in South Africa that needed a lawyer, and so, in 1893, Gandhi and his wife left India. Not only was Gandhi again a foreigner in a strange country, but he experienced racism firsthand. The color of his skin marked him for contempt and some physical abuse at the hands of white South Africans. The legal work was hard. Rather than quit the work and leave an unfriendly country, Gandhi decided to change HIMSELF so he could master any challenges. Through his powers of self-determination and concentration, Gandhi achieved his goals and realized “the true practice of law is to find the better side of human nature and enter men’s hearts” He began to look on every difficulty as an opportunity for service to others. This was to be the secret of his success for the rest of his life. One winter night, Gandhi was travelling in the first-class section of a train on a business trip. A white male passenger insisted Gandhi sit back in third class. Gandhi refused, and a steward threw Gandhi off the train. In the cold, in the dark, in the middle of nowhere, Gandhi reflected on the deep and painful disease of prejudice. Soon after his experience on the train, Gandhi created the theory of satyagraha, or the force of love. He wrote, “The force of love by peace always wins over violence.” He determined to root out the disease of prejudice, but never to yield to violence and never to use violence against others. He vowed to bring the peace of Heaven to Earth. At the turn of the twentieth century, South Africa was divided into separate British colonies: Cape Colony, Natal, Orange Free State, and the Transvaal. On August 22, 1906, the government of the Transvaal passed the Black Act, which deprived black and Indian people of their civil rights. In response, Gandhi formed his first nonviolent mass resistance movement. Over five hundred people participated in this movement of civil disobedience. Gandhi and his followers worked for the rights of black and Indian people. They also worked for the rights of women. Gandhi did legal work for free and helped people in desperate living conditions. He nursed sick people abandoned during a plague, bandaged lepers, and comforted the dying. “These people are my brothers and sisters,” Gandhi said. “Their suffering is my suffering. The whole world is my family.” Gandhi believed deeply in the words of one of the Hindu holy books, the Bhagavad-Gīta. He meditated several times a day and diminished his selfish desires by loving others and loving the “Lord of Love.” He tried to avoid any angry feelings so as not to cloud his judgment. By believing in the power of love and treating everyone as his family, Gandhi discovered he was no longer shy and no longer afraid of anything. Gandhi and his followers worked to accept the good and bad in life, to meet challenges with humility and calm, and to bring harmony to the world. With his wife and four sons, Gandhi returned to India in 1915. As soon as he could, he began the struggle for India’s independence. He wanted to rid India of its hierarchical and prejudiced caste system that placed priests at the highest social level, princes and soldiers at the next level, laborers at a third level, and the poor—the “untouchables”—at the fourth and lowest level. Gandhi called those people at the lowest level the “children of God” and was determined to liberate them. Gandhi also worked to rid India of British oppression. For three hundred years, several thousand British people ruled over 300 million Indian people. Gandhi spoke to millions of people, asking them to practice the selfless love of satyagraha. Indians ceased to cooperate with the British and many were jailed. Many spun their own cloth so they wouldn’t have to purchase British-made cloth. The white homespun cloth, called KHADI, was worn by millions of people and became the symbol of Indian independence. The British government was furious about India’s noncooperation, and in 1919, during the Amritsar massacre, British soldiers killed 379 innocent people and wounded over one thousand. Gandhi led a HARTAL, or nationwide strike, and the entire country of India was essentially shut down. Gandhi’s nonviolent satyagraha campaign marched on, encouraged by Gandhi’s words: “Nonviolence acts continuously, silently, and ceaselessly till it has transformed the diseased mass into a healthy one.” In 1922, the British imprisoned Gandhi for preaching nonviolence, defying British rule, and writing anti-British pamphlets. He was in prison for two years, but the satyagraha movement was secure. British imperialism in India was threatened, and Gandhi was happy. He did not consider being in jail a hardship but something of which to be proud. He felt that to suffer bravely for a higher ideal was the guiding force that would make every man and woman in India free. In hot, tropical countries like India, salt is an essential part of everyone’s diet. British law in India forbade Indians from making their own salt and levied a hefty tax to be paid on salt. In 1930, Gandhi led the Salt March. Accompanied by seventy-eight people, Gandhi began to walk from Sabarmati to Dandi, a town on the ocean over 200 miles away. By the time Gandhi reached Dandi and picked up a pinch of sea salt in symbolic defiance of British rule, he had been joined by hundreds of thousands of people. The British government was forced to acknowledge that it was beginning to lose its stronghold on India. After leading the Salt March and other such defiant acts, Gandhi felt the imperial British chains weakening from around the Indian people and there was much rejoicing. Gandhi’s followers named him “Mahatma,” which means “great soul.” British government did not give up their hold on India easily, however, and Gandhi was imprisoned after his Salt March. To put more pressure on the British, he decided to stop eating, or to “fast.” It was a powerful and nonviolent way of threatening the British government. The British did not want to be responsible for Gandhi’s death, so after six days the government agreed to a pact to protect the civil rights of the “untouchables.” This kind of social change, brought about by peaceful means, was Gandhi’s great victory. In 1944, Gandhi’s wife died. Not only had she been a steadfast supporter of her husband, but she was his beloved soul mate. Gandhi mourned her loss deeply. During World War II, Indians of Hindu faith and Indians of Muslim faith began to fight a civil war over differences of culture and religion. Massacres, bloodshed, and destruction tore at the countryside. During this time of great chaos and suffering, Gandhi walked barefoot through remote ravaged villages, preaching his message of nonviolence. In August 12, 1947, India finally won its independence from British rule. But the country was divided into two separate, countries: Hindu India to the south, led by Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, and Muslim Pakistan to the north, led by the Governor General of Pakistan and President of the Muslim League, Muhammad Ali Jinnah. Gandhi did not celebrate India’s independence. He went on a fast to remind Hindus and Muslims of the importance of showing patience, understanding, and forgiveness in the face of opposition. He yearned for his people to overcome hatred with love. Just as the satyagraha movement enabled India to overcome British rule, Gandhi trusted the movement would unify the factions that now divided India. But such unification was not to be. The seventy-eight-year-old Gandhi almost died during his fast. He was weak, but he continued to speak to his followers. Because Gandhi taught and expressed the brotherhood of people of all religions, he was hated by those Hindus and Muslims who believed their own religion was the only true religion. On the evening of January 30, 1948, as Gandhi walked to a prayer meeting where thousands of people awaited him, a Hindu man named Nathuram Godse fired a gun at his heart. Gandhi fell. His last words were those of compassion and love: “RAMA, BAMA, RAMA.” (“I forgive you, I love you, I bless you”). Mahatma Gandhi was cremated in New Delhi. Millions of people in India and around the world grieved for this great messenger of peace. At his death, Gandhi owned only a few possessions: two spoons, two pots, three monkeys, three books, one pocket watch, one pair of eyeglasses, one tin bowl (a souvenir from prison), one desk set, two pairs of sandals, and his KHADI. Gandhi’s ashes were mixed with rose petals and scattered by his family at the junction of three great Indian rivers—the Ganges, the Jumna, and the Sarasvati. It is written in Gandhi’s beloved Bhagavad-Gīta that “to be united with the Lord of Love … is the supreme state. [If one] attain[s] to this, [one will] pass from death to immortality.” Mahatma Gandhi’s insatiable love of humankind guided his life, changed the lives of millions, and surely made him immortal. Demi Gandhi New York, Margaret K. McElderry Books, 2001 ______________________________________
Posted on: Mon, 01 Sep 2014 01:22:13 +0000
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