Today is the birthday of a great man. I have read his "My Experiments with Truth" a long time ago . When I remembered him I found that if someone asks me to narrate his life I would not be able to do so except narrating some stray incidents. I thought I should therefore compile a narrative of his life. I am giving it below. This was largely complied from the info in Wikipedia but vastly abridged. Despite all his weaknesses Gandhi was a great man. I would have loved to put together his idiosyncrasies in this narrative but I had no time as I wanted to post this today. I always believe that greatness should always be acknowledged but should never be made a basis for adulation. We should take the great strengths he had from his life but not all what he did and said without analysis. Absolutely no person should be held above criticism.
Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi was born on 2nd October 1869 at Porbander in Gujarat. His father was the Diwan of the Porbander state. He was powerfully influenced by his mother Putlibai who was a devout Jain. Hindu literature also made a strong impression on Gandhi.
When he was 13 years old, he was married to Kasturba who was then 14. Their first child was born when Gandhi was just 15 but died in childbirth. They had 4 more children, all sons.
Gandhi had his schooling in Porbander and then at Rajkot where he was a mediocre student. He finally passed his Matriculation from Bhavnagar with some difficulty.
Gandhi then went to the University College of London in 1888 to study law. At London he came into contact with the Theosophists who made him read the Bhagavad-Gita along with them. This got him interested in religious thought.
His mother died while he was in London and when he came back to India. He tried to set up a law practice at Bombay which failed because he was too shy to speak in the court. He then returned back to Rajkot and was making a modest living drafting petitions for litigants but he had to give it up when he had a brush with a British Officer. Then in 1893 when he was just 24 years old, he accepted a yearlong contract with an Indian firm for a post in Natal, South Africa.
Gandhi spent a long period of 21 years in South Africa. His much quoted incident on the train where he was discriminated and thrown out did something to Gandhi. It is an alien country for him and another person in his place would have bore the discrimination but not so Gandhi and he fought back. He is a frail man and stood 5 foot 4 inches tall and weighed around 110 pounds, yet his determination is that of steel. He stood firm on the issue as well as the subsequent discriminatory incidents that took place.
Gandhi helped to found the Indian Natal Congress in 1894 which made the Indians in South Africa into a united force. He first used the weapon of peaceful Satyagraha in 1906 against the Transvaal government when it enacted a legislation which compelled the Indians to register. The Indian community accepted his plan and struggled peacefully for 7 years before the agitation was suppressed by the government but there was a public outcry against the force used to do so and the South African leader Jan Christian Smuts had to negotiate a compromise with Gandhi. Gandhi has adopted the weapon of Satyagraha from the Sinn Fein activists of Ireland who used it when was in England and made it more effective than them.
When the British were fighting a war with the Zulus, Gandhi formed a stretcher bearer corps of 20 members manned by Indians and commanded by him. This corps was treating the wounded British soldiers. This corps operated only for 2 months.
He came back to India in 1915 with an international reputation and the country welcomed him with open arms. He joined the Indian National Congress and was introduced to the national issues and politics by Gopalakrishna Gokhale.
Surprisingly enough, the pacific Gandhi mounted a war recruitment campaign during the first world war after the war conference called by the British in 1918. This time not an ambulance corps like the one he raised for the Zulu war but for actual combat.
Gandhi’s first achievement came in 1918 with the Champaran agitation in Bihar. The peasants were forced by the British to grow Indigo whose demand has been declining. Furthermore, they are required to sell the produce to the British planters at a fixed price. Gandhi took up a non violent struggle in the area and won concessions from the government.
In 1918, Kheda in Gujarat was hit by floods and famine and the peasantry was demanding relief in taxes which the British were in no mood to consider. Gandhi initiated non cooperation in the area and the government had to yield in 5 months time. Vallabhai Patel represented the farmers in the talks with the British.
In 1919 Gandhi launched the Khilafat movement for the restoration of Caliph in Turkey. After the Ottoman empire lost the 1st world war, the Caliphate was disbanded by the British and Gandhi started a movement called the Khilafat movement for its restoration. This movement however, has collapsed by 1922.
In 1920 Gandhi launched the non cooperation movement with the Jalianwalabagh massacre as a backdrop. A part of this is the Swadeshi movement which boycotted foreign made goods. This movement in turn was linked to the Khadi movement or wearing of self spun textiles. This movement caught the imagination of the Indian people and involved mass participation. When the movement reached a peak in 1922, there was a violent incident that took place at the Chauri Chaura police station in which the police station was torched and some policemen burned to death. Gandhi was so shocked with the violent incident that he immediately withdrew the movement despite opposition from many in the Congress including Nehru himself.
In 1927, the British appointed a commission under Sir John Simon for constitutional reforms which did not have a single Indian as its member and all the Indian political parties boycotted it. In 1928 Gandhi got a resolution passed by the Congress calling for the British government to either grant dominion status for India or face the non cooperation movement with complete Independence as its goal. Gandhi then launched a new satyagraha against the tax on salt in 1930.As part of this satyagraha he marched 388 KM from Ahmedabad to Dandi in Gujarat fro making the salt himself. This movement became very successful and the British imprisoned over 60,000 people.
This led the British to negotiate with Gandhi which resulted in the Gandhi Irwin pact in 1931 and Gandhi was invited to the round table conference at London. This turned out to be a great disappointment to Gandhi and the people as it focused on the Indian princes and the Indian minorities instead of transfer of power.
Gandhi and Ambedkar often clashed because Ambedkar felt that the caste Hindus are biased against the Dalits and would not let them flourish. On the other hand Gandhi felt that they are a part of Hindus society but were suppressed and tried to redeem their rights. Gandhi had to fight both the sides as Ambedkar complained that Gandhi moved too slowly, while Hindu traditionalists said Gandhi was a dangerous radical who rejected scripture.
In the summer of 1934, three attempts were made on Gandhi's life. In the same year Gandhi resigned from the membership of the Congress party as some groups in the party felt that their views were being suppressed.
He returned to active politics again in 1936 when Nehru got elected as the president. Gandhi had a clash with Bose who was elected president after Nehru as they were ideologically opposite. Bose was reelected as the Congress president again in 1938 against Gandhi’s nominee Bhogaraju Pattabhi Seetharamayya (the founder of Andhra Bank) much to the distress of Gandhi. He went to the extent of saying that Pattabhi Seetharamayya’s defeat was his own defeat. Bose had to resign subsequently as Congress president due to the opposition from Gandhi.
Gandhi finally launched the Quit India movement in 1942 that culminated in India’s independence in 1947. Perhaps the nationalists should also thank Adolf Hitler because he had been indirectly responsible for our Independence. When the 2nd world ended in 1945, the economy of Britain was ruined and it lay in tatters. They had a tremendous reconstruction to do at home and did not have the means to stop the mass movement that was taking place in India and were forced to grant Independence. If the 2nd World war had not taken place at that juncture, then our freedom would have cost us many more lives before it could have been achieved.
Gandhi was assassinated in 1948 by a Hindu Mahasabha member Nathuram Godse. The immediate provocation by Gandhi had been that he went on a fast to put pressure on the Indian government to release Pakistan’s share of currency amounting to Rs 55 crore after the partition. His fast was just because that was the agreed share of Pakistan as per the segregation of assets but the government dithered and the new Pakistani government had no money.
So ultimately the great man has helped his own demise wih his uncompromising principles which he believed were correct. He had been larger than life while he lived and continues to do so even after his death.
GANDHI'S DESECENDENTS:
What happened to Gandhis children? The last of his sons died in 1969 and none have been successful. Gandhi refused to send them to school in South Africa because he felt that the western system of education would corrupt them.
Harilal (1888-1948) rebelled most strongly. He renounced all family ties in 1911 and embarked upon a tragic, lifelong path of self-destruction. He became a Muslim convert, an alcoholic, an embezzler; accounts of his arrests, public drunkenness, and destitution became commonplace. "I was a slave of my passions when Harilal was conceived," said Gandhi. Harilal appeared at his father's funeral in such derelict condition that few recognized him. He died in a tuberculosis sanitarium two months later.
Manilal (1892-1956) was in disgrace in 1916 after he lent his elder brother some money. Gandhi sent him to South Africa, where he edited an Indian newspaper. Later he spent a brief period in India.
Ramdas (1898-1969) had no taste for asceticism, yet participated in the grueling civil protests of the 1930s. Numerous jailings wrecked his health. Born and raised in South Africa, he never adjusted to the idealistic poverty imposed by his father.
Devadas (1900-1957) stayed near his father, sometimes being granted the privilege of serving as his secretary.
As per the info I could gather from the net, Gandhi's direct descendants numbered 47 in five nations in 1976 .
