MAHATMA GANDHI : Relevance in the 21st Century

“Whenever you are confronted with an opponent, Conquer him with love.”

Mahatma Gandhi left us long ago but his life and values continue to inspire humanity transcending national and international boundaries. Today he is recognized by the world as compelling social innovator, who established the values of truth and non-violence in human life. His experiments with truth and non-violence not only helped India but also countries in Asia and Africa to free themselves from the clutches of European powers without bloodshed.

He was born in a middle class vaishnav family to Putlibai and Karamchand Gandhi on 2nd october, 1869 at Porbandar. His mother was a traditional Indian woman, deeply religious and devoted to her family, these qualities left an indelible mark of the life of Gandhi. At the age of 13, he married Kasturba. Later he went to England for studies and changed his dress to suit the requirement of that country. After his return to India ,he passed through the difficult phase as a beginner in the profession of law and as a lawyer he went to South Africa to help his client.

GANDHI’S EXPERIENCE IN SOUTH AFRICA:

In 1893, he went to south Africa to handle the case of his client Dada Abdullah. The twenty-five years that he spent in South Africa was the most formative period of his life. The challenges, trial and oppurtunities that he experienced there helped to mould his personality in a unique way and he became the most charismatic leader of the twentieth century.

Curiously, it was an accident that provided the impulse for Gandhi’s visit to South Africa in 1893. It was at this time that Dada Abdullah, an Indian merchant in Natal, offered to engage him for a civil suit in that country. The contract was for a year and the remuneration was £ 105. He accepted the offer. when he landed in Durban, unpleasant surprises waited for him.In a Durban court he was ordered by the European magistrate to take off his turban. He refused and left the courtroom. A week later, when he was on his way to Pretoria, he was unceremoniously thrown out of the first-class carriage at Maritzburg station. It was a bitterly cold night as he crept into the unlit waiting room of the railway station and brooded over what had happened. His client had given him no warning of the humiliating conditions under which Indian lived in South Africa. 

GANDHI’S REACTION TO IT:

This incident was one of the most creative experience of his life. He resolved not to accept injustice as part of the natural or unnatural order in South Africa. He would reason, he would plead, he would resist, but he would not be a willing victim of racial arrogance. The timidity which had dogged him as a student in England and as a lawyer in India vanished. In June 1894 when he was ready to sail back to India after the end of the Contract, he glanced through the local newspaper ‘The Natal Mercury’ and learnt that the Natal Legislative Assembly was considering a bill to deprive Indians of the right to vote. He deferred his return to India. In July 1894, when he was barely twenty-five, he blossomed overnight into a proficient political campaigner.

He drafted petitions to the Natal Legislature and the British government and had them signed by hundred of his compatriots. He failed to prevent the passage of the disfranchisement bill, but he succeeded in drawing the attention of the public and the press in Natal, India and England to the Natal Indians’ grievances.

Formation of Natal Indian Congress took place in 1893. In these early years of his political apprenticeship, he formulated his own code of conduct for a politician. As it Secretary, his strategy was two-fold:

1. To infuse spirit of solidarity between the muslim merchants and their hindu and parsi clerks & Natal born Indian christians.
2. He formulated his own code of conduct for a politician. He did not spare his own people, he was not only the stoutest champion of Natal Indians, but also their severest critic.

Two years later, he raised an Indian ambulance corps during the Boer War: a fine but vain gesture to the British. After the was, as a token of gratitude, he was conferred the title of ‘Kaisar-i-hind’(which he renounced after The Jallianwala Bagh Massacre).The partnership of Boers and Britons grew in new regime for the preservation of white supremacy. Gandhi told the British High Commissioner in South Africa that Indians did not want political power, but wish to live side with other British subjects in peace , amity, dignity and self-respect. This is precisely what the Boers and Britons did not want. General Smuts later declared that the South African government had made up its mind to make it a white man’s country.

SATYAGRAHA IN SOUTH AFRICA

In 1906, the Transvaal government published a particularly humiliating ordinance for the registration of its Indian citizens. The Indians held a mass protest meeting at Johannesburg and under Gandhi’s leadership took a pledge to defy the ordinance if it became law and to suffer all the penalties resulting from their defiance. Thus was born Satyagraha, a new method of redressing wrongs and fighting oppression without hatred and without violence.

• The satyagraha struggle in South Africa lasted eight years. 
• Hundreds of Indians chose to sacrifice their livelihood and liberty rather than submit to law .
• In 1913, hundreds of Indians including women, went to jail and thousands of Indian labourers, who had struck work in the mines braced imprisonment, flogging, and even shooting. It was a terrible ordeal for the Indians, but it was also a bad advertisement for the rulers of South Africa.

Under pressure from world opinion , the Government of India and the British government, the South African government concluded in 1914 what came to be known as the Gandhi-Smuts agreement. Not all the the Indian grievances were redressed, but the first dent had been made in the armour of racial discrimination and Gandhi was able to return to India.

GANDHI’S EXPERIENCE IN SOUTH AFRICA:

1. Masses have the immense capacity to participate and sacrifice for the cause that moved them.
2. Realisation that leaders have to take unpopular decisions at time.
3. He was able to unite Indians from different classes and religions under his leadership.
4. He evolved his own leadership style and techniques of struggle.
5. He was able to lay down his own code of conduct, whether as a lawyer, journalist, or political leader. His ethical and spiritual idiom puzzled not only his opponents, but most of his contemporaries in the Indian political elite.
6. It was as the author and sole practitioner of Satyagraha that Gandhi was to enter indian political stage and dominate it for thirty years.

The book that became Gandhi’s bond with Hinduism as well as the greatest influence on him was the Bhagavad Gita. It was from it that he imbibed the ideal of aparigraha (non-possession) which set him on the road to voluntary poverty. The ideals of service without self and of ‘action without attachment’ enlarged his vision and equipped him with an extraordinary stamina for his public life. He learnt to transcend the barriers of race, caste, creed, and class. He simplified his life, sank his savings in public work, and finally gave up his lucrative legal practice. His private life gradually shaded into public life and he snapped the ties of money, property, and family life, which hold back most men and women from fearlessly following the dictates of their conscience. 

GANDHI’S RETURN TO INDIA:

On 9th January, 1915 Gandhiji returned back to India. This day is celebrated as Prawasi Bhartiya Diwas in India since 2003.

After his long stay in South Africa and his activism against the racist policy of the British, Gandhi had earned the reputation as a nationalist, theorist and organiser. Gopal Krishna Gokhale, a senior leader of the Indian National Congress, invited Gandhi to join India’s struggle for independence against the British Rule. Gokhale thoroughly guided Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi about the prevailing political situation in India and also the social issues of the time. He then joined the Indian National Congress and before taking over the leadership in 1920, headed many agitations which he named Satyagraha.