Plastic bertrand biography of mahatma gandhi

He molded the character of the struggle for freedom in India, and impressed his own ideals upon the new governing class that came into power when the English went home. There is, at the present day, a general awakening throughout Asia, but the spirit and policy of India, thanks largely to Gandhi, remains very different from that of any other Asiatic country.

Gandhi, like some other great men, developed slowly. Quite extraordinary psychological acumen would have been necessary to discern his future in the shy youth who studied law, first in India and then in England. Some of the characteristics that he displayed throughout his life were already in evidence at this time. He had a wide and unsectarian interest in religion, and listened to Christian teaching without hostility, though without acceptance.

He had already that scrupulous honesty which later distinguished him. He had been married, as was the custom of this country, while still a schoolboy, but when he came to England he left his wife in India and was not generally known by his English friends to be married. He believed, rightly or wrongly, that a certain young lady was becoming interested in him, and he therefore wrote a long letter to her chaperone explaining his matrimonial position.

He found it made him ill, and he disliked the deceiving of his parents that was involved. He therefore reverted to strict vegetarianism before his journey to England. All through his life he attached an importance to questions of diet which it is a little difficult for most modern Europeans to understand. But although in England he observed as far as he could the customs in which he had been brought up, he did not become in any degree a rebel, and did not apparently encounter the kind of treatment by which rebels are created.

After a year or so in India, he went on professional legal business to South Africa, and it was there that events soon pushed him into the career which made him famous. He landed at Durban and had to travel to Pretoria. The incidents of this journey are treated vividly and precisely in his autobiography. He took a first-class ticket at Durban, and apparently the railway authorities had no objection to selling it to him.

But after he had been in the train for some time, a railway official insisted that however much he might have a first-class ticket, he must travel in a third-class carriage. Gandhi refused to yield voluntarily, so lie was pushed out of the train, which went on without him. He sat throughout the night in the station waiting-room, shivering with cold, because his overcoat was in the luggage of which the railway company had taken charge, and he would not ask of them the favor of being allowed to get it out.

It would be cowardice to run back to India without fulfilling my obligation. The hardship to which I was subjected was only superficial. It was only a symptom of the deep disease of colour prejudice. I should try, if possible, to root out the disease and suffer hardship in the process. Redress for wrongs I should seek only to the extent that would be necessary for the removal of the colour prejudice.

So I decided to take the next available train to Pretoria. A part of his journey had to be done by stagecoach, as there was at that time no railway from the Natal frontier to Johannesburg. For a time he was allowed to sit next to the driver while the conductor sat inside, but presently the conductor decided that he wanted to smoke, and ordered Gandhi to sit on the floor of the roof.

That insult I put up with. Now that you want to sit outside and smoke, you would have me sit at your feet. I refuse to do so, but I am prepared to sit inside. I clung to the brass rails of the coach-box and was determined to keep my hold even at the risk of breaking my wristbones. The passengers were witnessing the scene — the man swearing at me, dragging and belabouring me, and I remaining still.

He was strong and I was weak. It is difficult to guess how this scene would have ended but for the intervention of some of the passengers, who apparently had some inkling of humanity. Thanks to them, Gandhi was allowed to remain where he was, and a Hottentot, who had been sitting on the other side of the driver, was made to vacate his seat for the conductor.

The feelings of Hottentots about this incident remain for a future page of history. He had some further adventures on the journey, but of a less dramatic sort. No good hotel would give him lodging, and it was only with some difficulty that he procured a first-class ticket from Johannesburg to Pretoria. He was aware of himself as an educated man, a man whose family in their own country had a certain social prominence.

He had not yet thought of Negroes as having the same right to equality as he was claiming for himself, and at first he was not particularly interested in the wrongs of Indian indentured laborers. It was only step by step, through a number of years, that his outlook on human affairs developed to the point where the untouchables became bis main preoccupation.

M hat he had to say on this subject was quoted in many Indian newspapers and brought him into contact with Indian leaders. This agitation had repercussions in South Africa, where the white population became filled with fury against Gandhi. His Indian friends in South Africa telegraphed to him to return to that country, which he did. All sorts of measures were adopted to prevent him from landing.

First the ship on which lie had come was kept in quarantine for a long time, without any medical justification. Hamburger icon An icon used to represent a menu that can be toggled by interacting with this icon. Web icon An illustration of a computer application window Wayback Machine Texts icon An illustration of an open book. Texts Video icon An illustration of two cells of a film strip.

Video Audio icon An illustration of an audio speaker. Audio Software icon An illustration of a 3. Software Images icon An illustration of two photographs. The mob followed us. With every step we advanced, it grew larger and larger. The gathering was enormous when we reached West Street. A man of powerful build caught hold of Mr. Laughton and tore him away from me.

He was not therefore in a position to come up with me. The crowd began to abuse me and showered upon me stones and whatever else they could lay their hands on. They threw down my turban. Meanwhile a burly fellow came up to me, slapped me in the face and then kicked me. I was about to fall unconscious when I held on to the railings of a house near by.

For a while I took breath, and when the fainting was over proceeded on my way. At that time I had almost given up any hope of reaching home alive. But I remember well that even then my heart did not arraign my assailants. She had been a friend of his before, and insisted upon walking beside him so that the mob, even with the worst will in the world, could not injure him much without injuring her too, which they did not wish to do.

Finally the police heard what was happening, and escorted him to the police station. From there he reached his destination without further injury. It was not until many years later that Gandhi became in any general sense a rebel against authority. At the time of the Boer War he did war work for the British, and justified his doing so on the ground that Indians owed something to British protection.

He argued at this time that "the authorities may not always be right, but so long as the subjects own allegiance to a State, it is their clear duty generally to accommodate themselves, and to accord their support, to acts of the State. Many things are surprising in Gandhi's development, and this is certainly one of them. We have already seen his courage in facing the Durban mob.

He showed another sort when, shortly after the end of the Boer War, the pneumonic plague broke out. The pneumonic plague, as everyone knows, is even more deadly and even more infectious than the bubonic plague, but without a moment's hesitation Gandhi devoted himself to the care of the victims, and did everything in his power for them until the outbreak had been adequately coped with.

He was not under any kind of official obligation to do this work. I think that few men would have behaved with the wholehearted and immediate devotion which he displayed on this occasion. The Boer War and its aftermath give more occasion for cynical disillusionment than most events in British history. The war was brought on by the intrigues of money grubbing financiers, who spread a network of corruption that descended far down in the social scale.

It was fought by the British, first with incompetence and then with inhumanity. It was in this war that concentration camps were invented. Boer women and children were taken to these camps, where they died in large numbers of enteric fever, brought on by the sanitary carelessness of the authorities. Throughout the war two arguments had been used by the British Government to mitigate its imperialistic character.

It was said that the Boers treated non-Europeans very much worse than the English colonists, and it was said that when the war was ended, British miners would find lucrative employment in the mines of South Africa. The British Government, however, decided that Chinese indentured labour would be cheaper than the labour of British miners. A great wave of popular indignation swept out of power the Government which had introduced Chinese labour.

Those who had voted for the Liberals imagined that a victory had been won. The Chinese, it is true, were sent back to China, but the place was taken by Indian indentured labour. At the same time legislation was introduced to make the position of Indians in South Africa worse than it had been. At first the British Government refused to sanction this legislation, but very soon it granted self-government to the Transvaal, a measure which was universally hailed as a "noble gesture," and as allowing to the brave Boers the enjoyment of that liberty for which they had fought so well.

The brave Boers immediately saw to it that only they should enjoy the blessings of liberty. The oppressive measures which the British Government had refused to sanction were immediately carried, and the British Government no longer dared to use its legal power to veto. The country had been made safe for mine owners and slave drivers, and the vanquished had been generously granted permission to persist in their slave-driving.

This was the situation with which Gandhi had to contend. The Transvaal Government was faced with a dilemma which generally confronts governments in such a situation. On the one hand cheap coloured labour was very convenient, while on the other hand there was a general hatred of Asians, and a desire, so far as possible, to have no non-Europeans except Negroes.

With this end in view, acts were passed to compel a sifting of Indians with a view to diminishing their numbers and to reducing those who remained to a much more subservient condition. Gandhi led the opposition, and it was in this campaign that he first developed the method of Satyagraha. The essence of this method, which he gradually brought to greater and greater perfection, consisted in refusal to do things which the authorities wished to have done, while abstaining from any positive action of an aggressive sort.

If the police could be provoked into brutalities, so much the better, but those who were brutally treated were to submit to the treatment with complete passivity. The method always had in Gandhi's mind a religious aspect. He came gradually to object more and more to violence, while at the same time preaching, with ever greater emphasis, the duty of not resisting violence with violence.

As a rule this method depended upon moral force for its success. The authorities found it intensely repugnant to persist in ill-treating people who did nothing whatever in self-defence. This journey was crucial for Gandhi as it allowed him to connect with the people, understand their struggles, and gauge the extent of British exploitation.

He established an ashram in Ahmedabad, which became a base for his activities and a sanctuary for those who wanted to join his cause. His efforts during these early years back in India laid the groundwork for the massive civil disobedience campaigns that would follow. This act allowed the British authorities to imprison anyone suspected of sedition without trial, sparking widespread outrage across India.

Gandhi called for a nationwide Satyagraha against the act, advocating for peaceful protest and civil disobedience. The movement gained significant momentum but also led to the tragic Jallianwala Bagh massacre , where British troops fired on a peaceful gathering, resulting in hundreds of deaths. This event was a turning point for Gandhi and the Indian independence movement, leading to an even stronger resolve to resist British rule non-violently.

In the years that followed, Gandhi became increasingly involved with the Indian National Congress, shaping its strategy against the British government.

Plastic bertrand biography of mahatma gandhi

He advocated for non-cooperation with the British authorities, urging Indians to withdraw from British institutions, return honors conferred by the British empire, and boycott British-made goods. On March 12, , Gandhi began a mile march from his ashram in Sabarmati to the coastal village of Dandi on the Arabian Sea. His aim was to produce salt from the sea, which was a direct violation of British laws.

Over the course of the day march, thousands of Indians joined him, drawing international attention to the Indian independence movement and the injustices of British rule. The march culminated on April 6, when Gandhi and his followers reached Dandi, and he ceremoniously violated the salt laws by evaporating sea water to make salt. This act was a symbolic defiance against the British Empire and sparked similar acts of civil disobedience across India.

The Salt March marked a significant escalation in the struggle for Indian independence, showcasing the power of peaceful protest and civil disobedience. In response, the British authorities arrested Gandhi and thousands of others, further galvanizing the movement and drawing widespread sympathy and support for the cause. The impact of the Salt March was profound and far-reaching.

It succeeded in undermining the moral authority of British rule in India and demonstrated the effectiveness of non-violent resistance. Gandhi vehemently opposed the age-old practice of untouchability in Hindu society, considering it a moral and social evil that needed to be eradicated. He believed that for India to truly gain independence from British rule, it had to first cleanse itself of internal social evils like untouchability.

This stance sometimes put him at odds with traditionalists within the Hindu community, but Gandhi remained unwavering in his belief that social reform was integral to the national movement. By elevating the issue of untouchability, Gandhi sought to unify the Indian people under the banner of social justice, making the independence movement a struggle for both political freedom and social equality.

He argued that the segregation and mistreatment of any group of people were against the fundamental principles of justice and non-violence that he stood for. The talks were often contentious, with significant disagreements, particularly regarding the partition of India to create Pakistan, a separate state for Muslims. Gandhi was deeply involved in these discussions, advocating for a united India while striving to alleviate communal tensions.

Despite his efforts, the partition became inevitable due to rising communal violence and political pressures.