Mohandas Gandhi was a nationalist Indian leader that waged a campaign of nonviolence against the colonial British government that took over India in order to help achieve its’ independence. Mohandas Gandhi was among the greatest political and social reformers of recent times, he is best remembered for his later campaigns to overthrow British rule in India, which led to India’s independence in 1947. He was born in the second day of October in 1869 Gandhi placed himself at the heart of the world-encircling empire ruling India.
He saw all aspects of human life as a single unity that is the body, spirit, and mind are connected with one another and cannot be separated. He earned the title of “Mahatma” a Hindi word that means “great soul” due to his selflessness. Gandhi’s career was marked by dedication to compassion, nonviolence, and tolerance, his virtues were mostly inspired by his Hindu faith, which formed a major part on his campaign and trails in major territories of India. Due to his frustrations, he was permitted to build a nation-wide protest against the European colonialism.
His strikes, noncooperation, mass demonstrations, campaigns of civil resistance, and peaceful boycotts, made him acceptable to become a part of moderate and radical nationalists ,also he found effective the weakening the control of the European by limiting opportunities for violent retributions. Britain’s influence in India began in the late 1700s, after they beat other European countries that also tried to take control of the subcontinent due to all the trading posts, such as Portuguese, French, Dutch, and Danes, they took control of the
East India Company’s private lands. At the time, India did not contained a central government, which attracted foreign countries to place their trading bases. The British East India Company took control of the country and also established the Raj. They contained an elaborate hierarchy of officials that was established to enforce its rule, the monarchy was supported by thousands of civil servants.
The British did not deliberately set out to make India’s people change their existing ways of life, however their main focus was on the promotion of trade, perhaps they took away land of landlords taking advantage that they had more power. They manufactured goods into the country, ruining Indian industries because they preferred to export its raw materials to England, to be manufactured there and then returned as finished goods for Indians to buy. Indian cotton fed the huge textile mills of Lancashire and its tea quenched the thirst of the British.
In this way England gained huge wealth and employment from its Indian empire, while leaving Indian industry relatively underdeveloped, with few resources, Indians had limited power over their own local affairs and had no role in central government. The British took a tactic of divide and rule to keep Indians dividing among themselves, by making conflicts between Hindus and Muslims. Gandhi returned to India, while he was outside the country in 22 years, he still believed in the fairness of the British and their empire.
He decided to travel around India and he faced with the poverty and backwardness of village life, realizing that he must address local social concerns rather than tackle the bigger issue of how India was governed. He decided to go to poor villages and help them, which allowed him to gain followers in order to stop the British unfairness toward Indian poor economy, by facing them through non-violence, Satyagraha. He wanted to stop the British taking profit from India’s land and not sharing any capital making the villages suffer of poverty.
In March of 1919 he proposed a “hartal”, which helped him to gain more followers and more support from the people that agree with his ideology. In 1948 he announced that he would fast to death in order to prevent Hindu-Muslim violence. He decided to stop wearing western clothing to mourn those Indians who had died in the Satyagraha protests, by wearing a white cotton loincloth and sandals. In 1930 he and his supporters walked 230 miles to seashore, this march was called “Salt March” challenging the British due to their monopoly on the manufacture and sale of salt.
He started constructive programs running with his campaigns of non-violence in order to revive Indian sufficiency ready to obtain independence of England and govern itself as a modern nation. Mahatma Gandhi began the “Quit India Movement” in 1942 which proposed the British to leave the country or a new Satyagraha campaign would be under Gandhi’s leadership. The British eventually realized that they should leave the country for good.
In 1945, a general election was held in England making Clement Attlee become the new head in the government. The new government immediately announced that it sought an early realization of self-government in India. India finally achieved its independence from England in August 1947. Mountbatten Plan calls for the partition of India into the country as a liberation, dividing the it into two dominions, India and Pakistan. Gandhi’s proposal’s helped the country achieve independence, since his hopes and also his campaigns helped India.
In conclusion, Indian leader Mahatma Gandhi was a social and political reformer whose career was marked by non-violence, compassion and tolerance. His role in India’s independence struggle provides more evidence of his saintliness. His nonviolent movements during Satyagraha protests and willingness to fast the death and to end violence mark him out as somebody important due to his sacrifices and also his disobediences against the government. He would use only moral means to achieve his aims, and he was a nationalist person that did everything for his country.