About Mahatma Gandhi, "Father of Nation"1869

Mahatma Gandhi: An Estimate

The word Mahatma means great soul. Gandhi was born in India, on the 2nd of October, in 1869, At the age of six Gandhi went to school in Porbandar and had difficulty learning to multiply.

When Gandhi was thirteen, he was married to Kasturbai, a girl of the same age. Gandhi was sixteen when his father died. After that he went to England and studied law.

He fought for civil rights in India. He believed in nonviolence. Mahatma Gandhi died on January 1948.

It is not easy to give a just measure of a great man in his lifetime. And in some ways it is even harder if you know him personally. For you must stand a little way off if you are to see a man in true perspective. I have no wish to stand even at arm’s length from Mahatma Gandhi. While he lives, I find it best to try, by following his thought from week to week in his paper Harijan, to keep as close to him as possible.

However, from time to time, one must necessarily face the questions which the world asks about him, and try to answer them: and I suppose one main purpose of this volume is to show what impression he makes on some of his contem-poraries.

So having made this brief apology, I will try to say how I see him in the setting of our modern world.

Our age has witnessed the revolt of the disinherited in many countries and in varied forms. The trade union movement and various brands of Socialism have proclaimed the rights of the industrial workers all over the West. Perhaps the International Labor Organization marks one first culmination of this struggle. But in Russia, it has taken another great stride: there, the industrial worker is no longer just a man to be reckoned with, one who may turn round and bite you if you treat him.

Mahatma Gandhi—one of the most revered names in Indian history—played a significant role in the Indian freedom struggle. He is considered the ‘Father of our nation’. Indians lovingly called him Bapu. Mahatma Gandhi’s teachings of Ahinsa and Satya (non-violence and truth) changed the complete outlook of the Indian freedom fighters and helped India to get freedom eventually. Here is a brief description of Mahatma Gandhi’s life, which is a great source of inspiration.

“Chanakya-famous for his wisdom and knowledge was the advisor and Prime Minister of Emperor Chandragupta Maurya. He worked as a professor at the University of Takshila and was well-known for his expertise in Commerce, Economics, and various other subjects. Considered as the ‘Pioneer Economist of India’, he authored the two ancient Indian treatises named ‘Arthashastra’ and ‘Neetishastra’. With the help of Chandragupta Maurya, Chanakya established the Mauryan Dynasty after defeating the Nanda kings. Here is a brief description of Chanakya’s life, which is a great source of inspiration.

Gandhi was the youngest child of his father’s fourth wife. His father—Karamchand Gandhi, who was the dewan (chief minister) of porbandar, the capital of a small principality in western India (in what is now Gujarat state) under British suzerainty—did not have much in the way of a formal education. He was, however, an able administrator who knew how to steer his way between the capricious princes, their long-suffering subjects, and the headstrong British political officers in power.

Gandhi’s mother, Putlibai, was completely absorbed in religion, did not care much for finery or jewelry, divided her time between her home and the temple, fasted frequently, and wore herself out in days and nights of nursing whenever there was sickness in the family. Mohandas grew up in a home steeped in Vaishnavism—worship of the Hindu god Vishnu—with a strong tinge of Jainism, a morally rigorous Indian religion whose chief tenets are nonviolence and the belief that everything in the universe is eternal. Thus, he took for granted ahimsa (noninjury to all living beings), vegetarianism, fasting for self-purification, and mutual tolerance between adherents of various creeds and sects.

The educational facilities at Porbandar were rudimentary; in the primary school that Mohandas attended, the children wrote the alphabet in the dust with their fingers. Luckily for him, his father became dewan of Rajkot, another princely state. Though Mohandas occasionally won prizes and scholarships at the local schools, his record was on the whole mediocre. One of the terminal reports rated him as “good at English, fair in Arithmetic and weak in Geography; conduct very good, bad handwriting.” He was married at the age of 13 and thus lost a year at school. A diffident child, he shone neither in the classroom nor on the playing field. He loved to go out on long solitary walks when he was not nursing his by then ailing father (who died soon thereafter) or helping his mother with her household chores.

Movements

Champaran Satyagraha (1917) : This was Gandhi’s first Satyagraha movement in India, focused on the rights of indigo farmers in Champaran, Bihar.
Non-Cooperation Movement (1920-1922) : A nationwide movement calling for Indians to boycott British institutions and products, aiming to achieve swaraj (self-rule).
Civil Disobedience Movement (1930-1934) : This movement, which included the Salt March, was a mass protest against British salt laws and other unjust policies.
Quit India Movement (1942) : A call for the immediate end of British rule in India, demanding the British to “Quit India”.

March

Mahatma Gandhi is most famously associated with the Salt March of 1930, a nonviolent protest against the British salt monopoly in India. This act of civil disobedience, also known as the Dandi March, involved a 240-mile trek to the coastal village of Dandi, where Gandhi and his followers made salt from seawater, directly challenging the British salt laws. The march, which began on March 12 and concluded on April 6, 1930, sparked widespread acts of civil disobedience across India and garnered international attention for the Indian independence movement.