Mohandas Gandhi (1869 - 1948)
\Mohandas Gandhi © Known as 'Mahatma' (great soul), Gandhi was the leader of the Indian nationalist movement against British rule, and is widely considered the father of his country. His doctrine of non-violent protest to achieve political and social progress has been hugely influential.
Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi was born on 2 October 1869 in Porbandar in Gujarat. After university, he went to London to train as a barrister. He returned to India in 1891 and in 1893 accepted a job at an Indian law firm in Durban, South Africa. Gandhi was appalled by the treatment of Indian immigrants there, and joined the struggle to obtain basic rights for them. During his 20 years in South Africa he was sent to prison many times. Influenced primarily by Hinduism, but also by elements of Jainism and Christianity as well as writers including Tolstoy and Thoreau, Gandhi developed the satyagraha ('devotion to truth'), a new non-violent way to redress wrongs. In 1914, the South African government conceded to many of Gandhi's demands.
Gandhi returned to India shortly afterwards. In 1919, British plans to intern people suspected of sedition - the Rowlatt Acts - prompted Gandhi to announce a new satyagraha which attracted millions of followers. A demonstration against the acts resulted in the Amritsar Massacre by British troops. By 1920, Gandhi was a dominant figure in Indian politics. He transformed the Indian National Congress, and his programme of peaceful non-cooperation with the British included boycotts of British goods and institutions, leading to arrests of thousands.
In 1922, Gandhi himself was sentenced to six years' imprisonment. He was released after two years and withdrew from politics, devoting himself to trying to improve Hindu-Muslim relations, which had worsened. In 1930, Gandhi proclaimed a new campaign of civil disobedience in protest at a tax on salt, leading thousands on a 'March to the Sea' to symbolically make their own salt from seawater.
In 1931, Gandhi attended the Round Table Conference in London, as the sole representative of the Indian National Congress, but resigned from the party in 1934 in protest at its use of non-violence as a political expedient. He was replaced as leader by Jawaharlal Nehru.
In 1945, the British government began negotiations which culminated in the Mountbatten Plan of June 1947, and the formation of the two new independent states of India and Pakistan, divided along religious lines. Massive inter-communal violence marred the months before and after independence. Gandhi was opposed to partition, and now fasted in an attempt to bring calm in Calcutta and Delhi. On 30 January 1948, he was assassinated in Delhi by a Hindu fanatic.
Mohandas K. Gandhi was a Hindu leader in India’s quest for independence from Britain and was a prime apostle of nonviolence — “passive resistance” — as a way to achieve political and social goals. Gandhi was looked upon as a saint by many of his followers and was popularly known as “mahatma,” which is Sanskrit for “great soul.” The image of this small man wearing nothing but a loincloth and shawl and standing up to the great colonial power of Britain gained him, and his cause, worldwide attention.
At age 19 he went to London, where he studied at University College and was called to the bar by the Inner Temple. He opened a law practice in Bombay but had little success and accepted a position as a legal adviser with an Indian firm having interests in South Africa, where he found that Indian immigrants were denied civil liberties and political rights.
It was during his 20 years in South Africa that he began teaching the policy of passive resistance, or Satyagraha, in his struggle for human rights. After World War I, he began advocating passive resistance against Britain as a means to achieve home rule. He became the international symbol of a free India. In his pursuit of independence, he would become accustomed to spending time in prison.
Gandhi believed that through his and his followers’ practice and advocacy of nonviolence Britain would eventually consider violence useless and would leave India — which it finally did in 1947. The next year, he was assassinated by a Hindu fanatic.
At 5 o’clock in the afternoon on Feb. 1, 1948, a funeral pyre of sandalwood bearing his rose-covered earthly remains was set alight by his son on the banks of the holy Jumna River in New Delhi. It was 24 hours, almost to the minute, after the assassin's bullets had shot him down as he was on his way to prayer. His body had been carried in state in a five hour procession over five and a half miles through the streets of Old and New Delhi. His funeral procession and cremation were witnessed by about a million people. His ashes were scattered on the Jumna.
On March 5, 2009, despite direct appeals from the Indian government and a last-minute stay from an Indian court, an auction of Mr. Gandhi’s personal items — including his sandals, bowl, watch and spectacles — was held as planned at Antiquorum Auctioneers in New York City. The items were sold for $1.8 million.
The buyer was identified as Vijay Mallya, an Indian liquor and airline executive who owns the company that makes Kingfisher beer. A representative for Mr. Mallya, Tony Bedhi, did the bidding and later announced that the belongings would be returned to India for public display, but it was not clear whether they would be turned over to the government, as some officials have demanded.
Indian officials had maintained that the auction was illegal, but continued to negotiate with the owner, James Otis, over a possible resolution. Ultimately, the government and Mr. Otis were not successful in halting the auction.
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