Henrik nanasi biography of mahatma gandhi
Mahatma Gandhi
Indian independence activist (–)
"Gandhi" redirects here. For other uses, see Gandhi (disambiguation).
Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi[c] (2&#;October &#;&#; 30&#;January ) was an Indian lawyer, anti-colonial nationalist, and political ethicist who employed nonviolent resistance to lead the successful campaign for India's independence from British rule.
He inspired movements for civil rights and freedom across the world. The honorific Mahātmā (from Sanskrit, meaning great-souled, or venerable), first applied to him in South Africa in , is now used throughout the world.[2]
Born and raised in a Hindu family in coastal Gujarat, Gandhi trained in the law at the Inner Temple in London and was called to the bar at the age of After two uncertain years in India, where he was unable to start a successful law practice, Gandhi moved to South Africa in to represent an Indian merchant in a lawsuit.
He went on to live in South Africa for 21 years. Here, Gandhi raised a family and first employed nonviolent resistance in a campaign for civil rights.
In , aged 45, he returned to India and soon set about organising peasants, farmers, and urban labourers to protest against discrimination and excessive land tax.
Assuming leadership of the Indian National Congress in , Gandhi led nationwide campaigns for easing poverty, expanding women's rights, building religious and ethnic amity, ending untouchability, and, above all, achieving swaraj or self-rule.
Gandhi adopted the short dhoti woven with hand-spun yarn as a mark of identification with India's rural poor. He began to live in a self-sufficient residential community, to eat simple food, and undertake long fasts as a means of both introspection and political protest. Bringing anti-colonial nationalism to the common Indians, Gandhi led them in challenging the British-imposed salt tax with the &#;km (&#;mi) Dandi Salt March in and in calling for the British to quit India in He was imprisoned many times and for many years in both South Africa and India.
Gandhi's vision of an independent India based on religious pluralism was challenged in the early s by a Muslim nationalism which demanded a separate homeland for Muslims within British India. In August , Britain granted independence, but the British Indian Empire was partitioned into two dominions, a Hindu-majority India and a Muslim-majority Pakistan.
As many displaced Hindus, Muslims, and Sikhs made their way to their new lands, religious violence broke out, especially in the Punjab and Bengal. Abstaining from the official celebration of independence, Gandhi visited the affected areas, attempting to alleviate distress. In the months following, he undertook several hunger strikes to stop the religious violence.
The last of these was begun in Delhi on 12 January , when Gandhi was The belief that Gandhi had been too resolute in his defence of both Pakistan and Indian Muslims spread among some Hindus in India. Among these was Nathuram Godse, a militant Hindu nationalist from Pune, western India, who assassinated Gandhi by firing three bullets into his chest at an interfaith prayer meeting in Delhi on 30 January
Gandhi's birthday, 2 October, is commemorated in India as Gandhi Jayanti, a national holiday, and worldwide as the International Day of Nonviolence.
Gandhi is considered to be the Father of the Nation in post-colonial India. During India's nationalist movement and in several decades immediately after, he was also commonly called Bapu, an endearment roughly meaning "father".
Early life and background
Parents
Gandhi's father, Karamchand Uttamchand Gandhi (–), served as the dewan (chief minister) of Porbandar state.[3][4] His family originated from the then village of Kutiana in what was then Junagadh State.
Although Karamchand only had been a clerk in the state administration and had an elementary education, he proved a capable chief minister.
During his tenure, Karamchand married four times. His first two wives died young, after each had given birth to a daughter, and his third marriage was childless. In , Karamchand sought his third wife's permission to remarry; that year, he married Putlibai (–), who also came from Junagadh, and was from a PranamiVaishnava family.[6][7][8] Karamchand and Putlibai had four children: a son, Laxmidas (c.&#;–); a daughter, Raliatbehn (–); a second son, Karsandas (c.&#;–).
and a third son, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi[11] who was born on 2 October in Porbandar (also known as Sudamapuri), a coastal town on the Kathiawar Peninsula and then part of the small princely state of Porbandar in the Kathiawar Agency of the British Raj.[12]
In , Gandhi's father, Karamchand, left Porbandar for the smaller state of Rajkot, where he became a counsellor to its ruler, the Thakur Sahib; though Rajkot was a less prestigious state than Porbandar, the British regional political agency was located there, which gave the state's diwan a measure of security.
Henrik nanasi biography of mahatma gandhi for kids Mahatma Gandhi inspirational quotes on success, education, leadership, thoughts for students, life, and love collectively give us a positive approach to personal growth, emphasising the interconnections of purposeful achievement, meaningful education, compassionate leadership, thoughtful student eng. Kasturba's unwavering support helped Gandhi maintain his focus on their shared goals, even as their personal lives faced challenges. After the end of the non-cooperation movement, Gandhi focused on his social reform work and was not very active in the political sphere. Open In App.In , Karamchand became diwan of Rajkot and was succeeded as diwan of Porbandar by his brother Tulsidas. Karamchand's family then rejoined him in Rajkot. They moved to their family home Kaba Gandhi No Delo in [14]
Childhood
As a child, Gandhi was described by his sister Raliat as "restless as mercury, either playing or roaming about.
One of his favourite pastimes was twisting dogs' ears." The Indian classics, especially the stories of Shravana and king Harishchandra, had a great impact on Gandhi in his childhood. In his autobiography, Gandhi states that they left an indelible impression on his mind. Gandhi writes: "It haunted me and I must have acted Harishchandra to myself times without number." Gandhi's early self-identification with truth and love as supreme values is traceable to these epic characters.[16][17]
The family's religious background was eclectic.
Mohandas was born into a GujaratiHinduModhBania family.[18][19] Gandhi's father, Karamchand, was Hindu and his mother Putlibai was from a Pranami Vaishnava Hindu family.[20][21] Gandhi's father was of Modh Baniya caste in the varna of Vaishya.[22] His mother came from the medieval Krishna bhakti-based Pranami tradition, whose religious texts include the Bhagavad Gita, the Bhagavata Purana, and a collection of 14 texts with teachings that the tradition believes to include the essence of the Vedas, the Quran and the Bible.[21][23] Gandhi was deeply influenced by his mother, an extremely pious lady who "would not think of taking her meals without her daily prayers she would take the hardest vows and keep them without flinching.
To keep two or three consecutive fasts was nothing to her."
At the age of nine, Gandhi entered the local school in Rajkot, near his home. There, he studied the rudiments of arithmetic, history, the Gujarati language and geography. At the age of 11, Gandhi joined the High School in Rajkot, Alfred High School.
Henrik nanasi biography of mahatma gandhi Eventually, the government relented and adopted a policy of tax exemptions in and and the re-admission of confiscated properties. After the end of the non-cooperation movement, Gandhi focused on his social reform work and was not very active in the political sphere. Work Experiences. Prominent leaders such as Rajendra Prasad, and Anugrah Narayan Sinha stepped forward with Gandhiji to fight for the indigo farmers.He was an average student, won some prizes, but was a shy and tongue-tied student, with no interest in games; Gandhi's only companions were books and school lessons.
Marriage
In May , the year-old Gandhi was married to year-old Kasturbai Gokuldas Kapadia (her first name was usually shortened to "Kasturba", and affectionately to "Ba") in an arranged marriage, according to the custom of the region at that time.[27] In the process, he lost a year at school but was later allowed to make up by accelerating his studies.[28] Gandhi's wedding was a joint event, where his brother and cousin were also married.
Recalling the day of their marriage, Gandhi once said, "As we didn't know much about marriage, for us it meant only wearing new clothes, eating sweets and playing with relatives." As was the prevailing tradition, the adolescent bride was to spend much time at her parents' house, and away from her husband.[29]
Writing many years later, Gandhi described with regret the lustful feelings he felt for his young bride: "Even at school I used to think of her, and the thought of nightfall and our subsequent meeting was ever haunting me." Gandhi later recalled feeling jealous and possessive of her, such as when Kasturba would visit a temple with her girlfriends, and being sexually lustful in his feelings for her.
In late , Gandhi's father, Karamchand, died.
Gandhi had left his father's bedside to be with his wife mere minutes before his passing. Many decades later, Gandhi wrote "if animal passion had not blinded me, I should have been spared the torture of separation from my father during his last moments."[33] Later, Gandhi, then 16 years old, and his wife, age 17, had their first child, who survived only a few days.
The two deaths anguished Gandhi. The Gandhis had four more children, all sons: Harilal, born in ; Manilal, born in ; Ramdas, born in ; and Devdas, born in [27]
In November , the year-old Gandhi graduated from high school in Ahmedabad. In January , he enrolled at Samaldas College in Bhavnagar State, then the sole degree-granting institution of higher education in the region.
However, Gandhi dropped out and returned to his family in Porbandar.
Outside school, Gandhi's education was enriched by exposure to Gujarati literature, especially reformers like Narmad and Govardhanram Tripathi, whose works alerted the Gujaratis to their own faults and weaknesses such as belief in religious dogmatism.[36]
Three years in London
Student of law
Gandhi had dropped out of the cheapest college he could afford in Bombay.[37] Mavji Dave Joshiji, a Brahmin priest and family friend, advised Gandhi and his family that he should consider law studies in London.[38] In July , Gandhi's wife Kasturba gave birth to their first surviving child, Harilal.
Gandhi's mother was not comfortable about Gandhi leaving his wife and family and going so far from home. Gandhi's uncle Tulsidas also tried to dissuade his nephew, but Gandhi wanted to go. To persuade his wife and mother, Gandhi made a vow in front of his mother that he would abstain from meat, alcohol, and women. Gandhi's brother, Laxmidas, who was already a lawyer, cheered Gandhi's London studies plan and offered to support him.
Putlibai gave Gandhi her permission and blessing.[40]
On 10 August , Gandhi, aged 18, left Porbandar for Mumbai, then known as Bombay. A local newspaper covering the farewell function by his old high school in Rajkot noted that Gandhi was the first Bania from Kathiawar to proceed to England for his Barrister Examination.[41] As Mohandas Gandhi waited for a berth on a ship to London he found that he had attracted the ire of the Modh Banias of Bombay.[42] Upon arrival in Bombay, he stayed with the local Modh Bania community whose elders warned Gandhi that England would tempt him to compromise his religion, and eat and drink in Western ways.
Despite Gandhi informing them of his promise to his mother and her blessings, Gandhi was excommunicated from his caste. Gandhi ignored this, and on 4 September, he sailed from Bombay to London, with his brother seeing him off.[37] Gandhi attended University College, London, where he took classes in English literature with Henry Morley in –[43]
Gandhi also enrolled at the Inns of Court School of Law in Inner Temple with the intention of becoming a barrister.[38] His childhood shyness and self-withdrawal had continued through his teens.
Gandhi retained these traits when he arrived in London, but joined a public speaking practice group and overcame his shyness sufficiently to practise law.[44]
Gandhi demonstrated a keen interest in the welfare of London's impoverished dockland communities. In , a bitter trade dispute broke out in London, with dockers striking for better pay and conditions, and seamen, shipbuilders, factory girls and other joining the strike in solidarity.
The strikers were successful, in part due to the mediation of Cardinal Manning, leading Gandhi and an Indian friend to make a point of visiting the cardinal and thanking him for his work.[45]
Vegetarianism and committee work
His vow to his mother influenced Gandhi's time in London.
Gandhi tried to adopt "English" customs, including taking dancing lessons.[46] However, he didn't appreciate the bland vegetarian food offered by his landlady and was frequently hungry until he found one of London's few vegetarian restaurants. Influenced by Henry Salt's writing, Gandhi joined the London Vegetarian Society (LVS) and was elected to its executive committee under the aegis of its president and benefactor Arnold Hills.[47] An achievement while on the committee was the establishment of a Bayswater chapter.[48] Some of the vegetarians Gandhi met were members of the Theosophical Society, which had been founded in to further universal brotherhood, and which was devoted to the study of Buddhist and Hindu literature.
They encouraged Gandhi to join them in reading the Bhagavad Gita both in translation as well as in the original.[47]
Gandhi had a friendly and productive relationship with Hills, but the two men took a different view on the continued LVS membership of fellow committee member Thomas Allinson.
Henrik nanasi biography of mahatma gandhi in english Gandhi's notable career began in South Africa, where he first encountered the harsh realities of racial discrimination. Most of the major leaders of Congress including Mahatma Gandhi were arrested. Interview Experiences. During this crucial phase, Gandhi introduced the concept of Satyagraha, which advocated non-violent resistance against injustice.Their disagreement is the first known example of Gandhi challenging authority, despite his shyness and temperamental disinclination towards confrontation.[citation needed]
Allinson had been promoting newly available birth control methods, but Hills disapproved of these, believing they undermined public morality.
He believed vegetarianism to be a moral movement and that Allinson should therefore no longer remain a member of the LVS. Gandhi shared Hills' views on the dangers of birth control, but defended Allinson's right to differ.[49] It would have been hard for Gandhi to challenge Hills; Hills was 12 years his senior and unlike Gandhi, highly eloquent.
Hills bankrolled the LVS and was a captain of industry with his Thames Ironworks company employing more than 6, people in the East End of London. Hills was also a highly accomplished sportsman who later founded the football club West Ham United. In his An Autobiography, Vol. I, Gandhi wrote:
The question deeply interested meI had a high regard for Mr.
Hills and his generosity. But I thought it was quite improper to exclude a man from a vegetarian society simply because he refused to regard puritan morals as one of the objects of the society[49]
A motion to remove Allinson was raised, and was debated and voted on by the committee. Gandhi's shyness was an obstacle to his defence of Allinson at the committee meeting.
Gandhi wrote his views down on paper, but shyness prevented Gandhi from reading out his arguments, so Hills, the President, asked another committee member to read them out for him. Although some other members of the committee agreed with Gandhi, the vote was lost and Allinson was excluded. There were no hard feelings, with Hills proposing the toast at the LVS farewell dinner in honour of Gandhi's return to India.[50]
Called to the bar
Gandhi, at age 22, was called to the bar in June and then left London for India, where he learned that his mother had died while he was in London and that his family had kept the news from Gandhi.[47] His attempts at establishing a law practice in Bombay failed because Gandhi was psychologically unable to cross-examine witnesses.
He returned to Rajkot to make a modest living drafting petitions for litigants, but Gandhi was forced to stop after running afoul of British officer Sam Sunny.[47][48]
In , a Muslim merchant in Kathiawar named Dada Abdullah contacted Gandhi. Abdullah owned a large successful shipping business in South Africa.
His distant cousin in Johannesburg needed a lawyer, and they preferred someone with Kathiawari heritage. Gandhi inquired about his pay for the work. They offered a total salary of £ (~$4, in money) plus travel expenses. He accepted it, knowing that it would be at least a one-year commitment in the Colony of Natal, South Africa, also a part of the British Empire.[48]
Civil rights activist in South Africa (–)
In April , Gandhi, aged 23, set sail for South Africa to be the lawyer for Abdullah's cousin.[52] Gandhi spent 21 years in South Africa where he developed his political views, ethics, and politics.[53][54] During this time Gandhi briefly returned to India&#;in to mobilise support for the welfare of Indians in South Africa.[55]
Immediately upon arriving in South Africa, Gandhi faced discrimination due to his skin colour and heritage.[56] Gandhi was not allowed to sit with European passengers in the stagecoach and was told to sit on the floor near the driver, then beaten when he refused; elsewhere, Gandhi was kicked into a gutter for daring to walk near a house, in another instance thrown off a train at Pietermaritzburg after refusing to leave the first-class.[37] Gandhi sat in the train station, shivering all night and pondering if he should return to India or protest for his rights.
Gandhi chose to protest and was allowed to board the train the next day.[58] In another incident, the magistrate of a Durban court ordered Gandhi to remove his turban, which he refused to do.[37] Indians were not allowed to walk on public footpaths in South Africa. Gandhi was kicked by a police officer out of the footpath onto the street without warning.[37]
When Gandhi arrived in South Africa, according to Arthur Herman, he thought of himself as "a Briton first, and an Indian second." However, the prejudice against Gandhi and his fellow Indians from British people that Gandhi experienced and observed deeply bothered him.
Gandhi found it humiliating, struggling to understand how some people can feel honour or superiority or pleasure in such inhumane practices. Gandhi began to question his people's standing in the British Empire.[60]
The Abdullah case that had brought him to South Africa concluded in May , and the Indian community organised a farewell party for Gandhi as he prepared to return to India.
The farewell party was turned into a working committee to plan the resistance to a new Natal government discriminatory proposal. This led to Gandhi extending his original period of stay in South Africa.
Biography of mahatma gandhi death The Jalliawala Bagh Massacre took place on April 13th, Gandhiji seeing the violence spread called off the Rowlatt Satyagraha on the 18th of April. Follow Us. He had inspired two generations of India, patriots, shaken an empire and sparked off a revolution which was to change the face of Africa and Asia. Accompanied by a group of devoted followers, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi embarked on a mile journey from Sabarmati Ashram to the coastal village of Dandi.Gandhi planned to assist Indians in opposing a bill to deny them the right to vote, a right then proposed to be an exclusive European right. He asked Joseph Chamberlain, the British Colonial Secretary, to reconsider his position on this bill.[53] Though unable to halt the bill's passage, Gandhi's campaign was successful in drawing attention to the grievances of Indians in South Africa.
He helped found the Natal Indian Congress in ,[48][58] and through this organisation, Gandhi moulded the Indian community of South Africa into a unified political force. In January , when Gandhi landed in Durban, a mob of white settlers attacked him,[62] and Gandhi escaped only through the efforts of the wife of the police superintendent.[citation needed] However, Gandhi refused to press charges against any member of the mob.[48]
During the Boer War, Gandhi volunteered in to form a group of stretcher-bearers as the Natal Indian Ambulance Corps.
According to Arthur Herman, Gandhi wanted to disprove the British colonial stereotype that Hindus were not fit for "manly" activities involving danger and exertion, unlike the Muslim "martial races." Gandhi raised 1, Indian volunteers to support British combat troops against the Boers. They were trained and medically certified to serve on the front lines.
They were auxiliaries at the Battle of Colenso to a White volunteer ambulance corps. At the Battle of Spion Kop, Gandhi and his bearers moved to the front line and had to carry wounded soldiers for miles to a field hospital since the terrain was too rough for the ambulances. Gandhi and 37 other Indians received the Queen's South Africa Medal.[65]
In , the Transvaal government promulgated a new Act compelling registration of the colony's Indian and Chinese populations.
At a mass protest meeting held in Johannesburg on 11 September that year, Gandhi adopted his still evolving methodology of Satyagraha (devotion to the truth), or nonviolent protest, for the first time.[66] According to Anthony Parel, Gandhi was also influenced by the Tamil moral text Tirukkuṛaḷ after Leo Tolstoy mentioned it in their correspondence that began with "A Letter to a Hindu".[67][68] Gandhi urged Indians to defy the new law and to suffer the punishments for doing so.
His ideas of protests, persuasion skills, and public relations had emerged. Gandhi took these back to India in [70]
Europeans, Indians and Africans
Gandhi focused his attention on Indians and Africans while he was in South Africa.
Biography of mahatma gandhi hindi: Mahatma Gandhi inspirational quotes on success, education, leadership, thoughts for students, life, and love collectively give us a positive approach to personal growth, emphasising the interconnections of purposeful achievement, meaningful education, compassionate leadership, thoughtful student eng. Mahatma Gandhi called for a nationwide Satyagraha against the act. Class 12 History Notes Chapter 11 Knowing Gandhi looks into Mahatma Gandhi's multidimensional behaviour, one of the most memorable personalities in Indian history. R Ambedkar and Gandhiji concerning the communal awards provided for the depressed class but, in the end for the upliftment of the marginalized communities of the Indian society both came on the same understandings.
Initially, Gandhi was not interested in politics, but this changed after he was discriminated against and bullied, such as by being thrown out of a train coach due to his skin colour by a white train official. After several such incidents with Whites in South Africa, Gandhi's thinking and focus changed, and he felt he must resist this and fight for rights.
Gandhi entered politics by forming the Natal Indian Congress.[71] According to Ashwin Desai and Goolam Vahed, Gandhi's views on racism are contentious in some cases. He suffered persecution from the beginning in South Africa. Like with other coloured people, white officials denied Gandhi his rights, and the press and those in the streets bullied and called Gandhi a "parasite", "semi-barbarous", "canker", "squalid coolie", "yellow man", and other epithets.
People would even spit on him as an expression of racial hate.[72]
While in South Africa, Gandhi focused on the racial persecution of Indians before he started to focus on racism against Africans. In some cases, state Desai and Vahed, Gandhi's behaviour was one of being a willing part of racial stereotyping and African exploitation.[72] During a speech in September , Gandhi complained that the whites in the British colony of South Africa were "degrading the Indian to the level of a raw Kaffir."[73] Scholars cite it as an example of evidence that Gandhi at that time thought of Indians and black South Africans differently.[72] As another example given by Herman, Gandhi, at the age of 24, prepared a legal brief for the Natal Assembly in , seeking voting rights for Indians.
Gandhi cited race history and European Orientalists' opinions that "Anglo-Saxons and Indians are sprung from the same Aryan stock or rather the Indo-European peoples" and argued that Indians should not be grouped with the Africans.
Years later, Gandhi and his colleagues served and helped Africans as nurses and by opposing racism.
The Nobel Peace Prize winner Nelson Mandela is among admirers of Gandhi's efforts to fight against racism in Africa.[74] The general image of Gandhi, state Desai and Vahed, has been reinvented since his assassination as though Gandhi was always a saint, when in reality, his life was more complex, contained inconvenient truths, and was one that changed over time.[72] Scholars have also pointed the evidence to a rich history of co-operation and efforts by Gandhi and Indian people with nonwhite South Africans against persecution of Africans and the Apartheid.[75]
In , Gandhi started the Indian Opinion, a journal that carried news of Indians in South Africa, Indians in India with articles on all subjects -social, moral and intellectual.
Each issue was multi-lingual and carried material in English, Gujarati, Hindi and Tamil. It carried ads, depended heavily on Gandhi's contributions (often printed without a byline) and was an 'advocate' for the Indian cause.[76]
In , when the Bambatha Rebellion broke out in the colony of Natal, the then year-old Gandhi, despite sympathising with the Zulu rebels, encouraged Indian South Africans to form a volunteer stretcher-bearer unit.
Writing in the Indian Opinion, Gandhi argued that military service would be beneficial to the Indian community and claimed it would give them "health and happiness." Gandhi eventually led a volunteer mixed unit of Indian and African stretcher-bearers to treat wounded combatants during the suppression of the rebellion.
The medical unit commanded by Gandhi operated for less than two months before being disbanded.
After the suppression of the rebellion, the colonial establishment showed no interest in extending to the Indian community the civil rights granted to white South Africans. This led Gandhi to becoming disillusioned with the Empire and aroused a spiritual awakening within him; historian Arthur L. Herman wrote that Gandhi's African experience was a part of his great disillusionment with the West, transforming Gandhi into an "uncompromising non-cooperator".
By , Gandhi's newspaper, Indian Opinion, was covering reports on discrimination against Africans by the colonial regime.
Gandhi remarked that the Africans "alone are the original inhabitants of the land. … The whites, on the other hand, have occupied the land forcibly and appropriated it for themselves."[79]
In , Gandhi established, with the help of his friend Hermann Kallenbach, an idealistic community they named Tolstoy Farm near Johannesburg.[80][81] There, Gandhi nurtured his policy of peaceful resistance.