Mahatma Gandhi

by Dennis Dalton

  1928—1929: Vallabhbhai (Sardar) Patel led a campaign against the payment of property taxes in the region of Bardoli, in Gujarat, with Gandhi’s support. Its success inspired Gandhi to plan a nation-wide tax resistance movement. On December 27, 1929, at the annual meeting of the Indian Congress in Lahore, Gandhi was fully empowered to inaugurate the next national civil disobedience campaign in 1930.

  1930: At age 61, Gandhi began the most energetic political movement of his life. First, a declaration of independence prepared by him was proclaimed throughout India on January 26. Then in mid-February, in opposition to skeptical members of the Working Committee of the Indian Congress, he alone decided on his plan of action. He unexpectedly selected the government tax on salt rather than property to be the campaign issue, and a march to the seacoast, over a distance of over 240 miles and taking about twenty-four days, as the method of protest. On March 2 he wrote an eloquent letter to the Viceroy, Lord Edward Irwin, giving the precise details of his plan. As the government, torn by ambivalence, hesitated to arrest him, Gandhi commenced his civil disobedience campaign by leaving his ashram at Sabarmati on March 12 and marching with eighty members of his ashram to the village of Dandi on the coast of western India. There, on April 6, he defied the government tax on salt by collecting natural salt deposits from the sea. Although the action was heavily symbolic, it inspired millions of Indians to break the law by following his example. Finally, on May 5, the government belatedly arrested and imprisoned Gandhi without trial, along with over one hundred thousand other satyagrahis, both men and women. The movement had been launched and was now surging toward swaraj (see chapter 4).

  1931: Gandhi was released together with other Congress leaders on January 26. Direct negotiations between Gandhi and Lord Irwin followed and a pact was signed that enabled Gandhi to attend a round table conference in London from September 12 to December 5. The conference failed to reach an agreement on Gandhi’s demand for India’s complete independence.

  1932: When Gandhi returned to India, he was immediately arrested in Bombay on January 4. While in prison, he fasted from September 20 to 26 to protest the government policy of “separate electorates” for untouchables. Gandhi interpreted this plan as being potentially divisive, invidiously institutionalizing untouchability instead of breaking down its barriers. He was opposed by B. R. Ambedkar, leader of the untouchable community. (Gandhi referred to untouchables as “harijans,” or children of God, the Raj called them “scheduled castes,” and today they are known as “dalits,” or downtrodden). In the face of Gandhi’s weakening condition, Ambedkar and caste Hindus alike signed the Poona Pact, a compromise that granted all sides some satisfaction.

  1933—1934: Released from prison unconditionally on August 23, Gandhi plunged into his campaign against the institution of untouchability with renewed vigor throughout 1934, announcing his decision on September 17, 1934, to retire from politics to devote himself to Harijan service and basic education. On October 30 he resigned from the Indian National Congress.

  1936—1939: On April 30 he settled in his last ashram, called Sevagram (village of service), near Wardha in central India’s Maharashtra state. He made it his headquarters and the prime example of his commitment to social reforms. An educational conference was held there in October, 1937, and he constantly appealed for social change in the form of his “three pillars of swaraj”: abolition of untouchability, Hindu-Muslim unity, and economic equality. He emphasized his commitment to the revival of cottage industries through khadi production and made Sevagram a demonstration of the simplicity that Thoreau had exemplified.

  1940: As a pacifist, Gandhi opposed World War II and India’s forced participation in it as a colony without representation. On October 17 he launched a limited civil disobedience campaign to register his opposition, now assuming again an active role in the Indian Congress.

  1941: Gandhi divided his efforts between social reform and political independence. On the one hand, he intensified his work on swadeshi, khadi, caste, and untouchability; on the other, as the relations between the Raj and the Congress deteriorated over the war, he was drawn into the politics of negotiating with Britain. Regarding the former, he published Constructive Programme in December 1941, his comprehensive statement of social reform.

  1942—1944: It was politics that ultimately consumed him, especially as the prospect loomed of a divided British India, a “vivisection,” as he called it, of his country into separate nations for Hindus and Muslims. After negotiations over independence with Sir Stafford Cripps broke down in March 1942, he launched his last national civil disobedience movement, proposing his “Quit India” resolution to the Indian Congress on August 8. Millions responded to this call for the British to leave India, and the Raj’s repression was harsh. Gandhi, along with Congress leaders, were arrested and imprisoned from August 9, 1942, until May 6, 1944. During this time in prison, Kasturbai remained with him, but she contracted pneumonia and died, ending their sixty years of marriage on February 22, 1944.

  1945—1946: After Gandhi’s release from prison, the political scene surrounding independence—especially the idea of partitioning India advanced by M. A. Jinnah, leader of the Muslim League—preoccupied him. With Congress leaders in prison, the whole organization had been immobilized, while the Muslim League had mobilized the Muslim-majority areas of northern India behind its demand for a separate nation of Pakistan. Gandhi’s direct talks with Jinnah in September 1944 had failed, nor could there be any resolution of the conflict at conferences of the Raj and Congress and Muslim League leaders in Simla in June 1945 and May 1946. Negotiations continued without success until August 16, 1946, when suddenly the national situation was cruelly crystallized. With the Great Calcutta Killing, when mass violence consumed that city for four days, the threat of civil war became a reality. Four thousand Hindus and Muslims were slaughtered and eleven thousand injured. Religious (or “communal”) violence spread through Bengal, and Gandhi responded by trying to calm its villages, walking 116 miles through the remote area of Noakhali in November and December. Later, he turned to Bihar with the same purpose.

  1947: India attained independence on August 15, but it was not the swaraj that Gandhi envisaged. Instead, British India was divided into two nations, with Pakistan the country of Islam. As the civil war metastasized from Bengal and Bihar to Delhi and the Punjab, Gandhi focused on Calcutta, where for an entire year acute urban violence had been endemic. In desperation he fasted from September 1 to 4 for Hindu-Muslim unity. His success was dramatic, and “the miracle of Calcutta” was proclaimed as one of his greatest feats of nonviolent action (see chapter 5).

  1948: Gandhi fasted in New Delhi from January 13 to 18 to overcome communal violence there. He declared, “I do not wish to live if peace is not established in India and Pakistan.” On January 30, on the way to prayers, he was assassinated by a Hindu fanatic, Nathuram Vinayak Godse. The sole motive, as Godse declared unrepentantly in his trial testimony, was Gandhi’s tolerance of Muslims. Yet the consequence of this murder was that at a stroke, the civil war came to a halt. Indian Hindus could not bear the shame that Gandhi had been killed by one of their own.

  • NOTES

  Introduction

  1. M. K. Gandhi, The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi [hereafter, Delhi: Publications Division, Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, Government of India, 1961, 10, p. 64; and M. K. Gandhi, Hind Swarajya (Ahmedabad, Navijivan, Prakashan Mandir Publishing House), 1979, p. 269–271. The latter is a photostatic copy of Gandhi’s original handwritten text in Gujarati. The present author is indebted to Pyarelal Nayar, D. G. Dave, and Sita N. Kapadia for their assistance in translating and interpreting the Gujarati text, and for the former’s interpretation of satyagraha as “power.” Although Gandhi himself translated satyagraha as “truth-force,” it is suggested here that “power” is a preferable translation because “force” is often associated with violence. The specific identification of satyagraha as a form of power accords with the valuable analy
sis of power in Gene Sharp, The Politics of Nonviolent Action (Boston: Porter Sargent, 1973), pp. 3–48. See Gandhi’s discussion of power in Pyarelal, Mahatma Gandhi: The Last Phase, vol. 2 (Ahmedabad: Navajivan, 1958), pp. 630–633.

  2. CWMG:83: 180

  3. CWMG:45: 263–264.

  4. The Sanskrit pronoun sva means “own, one’s own, my own, or self.” (Sir M. Monier-Williams, A Sanskrit-English Dictionary, New Edition, Oxford, Clarendon, 1899, pp. 1275–1276). Thus svaraj as used in Vedic texts signified “self-ruling,” “selfruling,” “self-ruler,” one’s own rule. Sva becomes swa with most modern Indian writers, with svarajya (self-rule) as the Sanskrit substantive. The Rig Veda and Atharvaveda used svaraj in the political sense of “self-ruler” and usually “king.” This kingship could be either divine or terrestrial, applying to Indra, “king” of the gods, or occasionally to earthly kings of western India. (A. A. MacDonell and A. B. Keith, Vedic Index of Names and Subjects (London, John Murray, 1912), 2: 494; Aitareya Brahmana VIII. 14. in MacDonell and Keith, ibid., p. 494. For complete reference see Rigyeda Brahmanas, The Aitareya and Kausitahi Brahmanas of the Rig-Veda, translated by A. B. Keith, Harvard Oriental Series, 30 volumes (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1920), 25: 330.

  5. The Bhagavad-Gita, 2: 71–72, translated by Barbara Stoler Miller (New York: Bantam, 1986), p. 39. The meaning of freedom in this sense need not exclude kings or political leaders because they may possess also the spiritual qualities of self-rule. Barbara Miller examines the idea of the “royal sage,” a leader of spiritual power and knowledge in Theater of Memory (New York: Columbia University Press, 1984), pp, 8–9.

  6. Chandogya Upanishad, VII, 25, 2, in The Principal Upanishads, edited by S. Radhakrishnan (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1969), p. 488. Those who do not possess knowledge of self and of the universal Self “have no freedom” and are “subject to others (anya-raj)” This concept of spiritual freedom may be compared and contrasted with the idea expressed in Christ’s maxim, “And ye shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free.” St. John. 8:32.

  7. Bhagavad-Gita, VI, 29, p. 66, and XIII, 30, p. 119.

  8. Dadabhai Naoroji, Speeches and Writings (Madras: G.A. Natesan, 1910), p. 76. Bal Gangadhar Tilak, Writings and Speeches (Madras: Ganesh & Co., 1918), pp. 97–115, 152–53

  9. Aurobindo Ghose, “Ideals Face to Face,” in Bande Mataram, May 3, 1908, as contained in Haridas and Uma Mukherjee, Bande Mataram and Indian Nationalism (1906–1908) (Calcutta: Firma K. L. Mukhopadhyay, 1957), pp. 84–85.

  10. B. C. Pal, Writings and Speeches (Calcutta: Vugayatri Prakashak Ltd., 1958), pp. 75–77. And Madan Gopal Sinha, The Political Ideas of Bipin Chandra Pal (Delhi, Commonwealth Publishers, 1989), pp. 35–36.

  11. CWMG89: 356.

  12. Isaiah Berlin, “Two Concepts of Liberty” in Four Essays on Liberty (New York, Oxford University Press, 1984), pp. 131–166. For comparison of these Europeans with Gandhi, see: Joan Bondurant, Conquest of Violence (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988), pp. 161–164, 211–214; Raghavan N. Iyer, The Moral and Political Thought of Mahatma Gandhi (New York: Oxford University Press, 1973), pp. 115–118, 236, 346–357; W. H. Morris-Jones, “Mahatma Gandhi—Political Philosopher?” in Political Studies, 7(1) (1960): 16–36; Bhikhu Parekh, Gandhi s Political Philosophy (Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 1989), pp. 33–34.

  13. Sri Aurobindo Ghose, The Ideal of Human Unity In The Human Cycle, The Ideal of Human Unity and War and Self Determination (Pondicherry, India: Sri Aurobindo Ashram), 1962, pp. 564–566. These volumes first appeared serially in the journal Arya in 1915–1920. Revised editions appeared in 1950.

  14. The ideas of Aurobindo Ghose are examined further in the author’s Indian Idea of Freedom (Gurgaon, India: The Academic Press, 1982), pp. 85–126; and also “The Idea of Freedom in the Political Thought of Vivekananda and Aurobindo,” South Asian Affairs. The Movement for National Freedom in lndia. St. Anthony’s Papers No. 18, S. N. Mukherjee, ed. (London: Oxford University Press, 1966), pp. 34–45. These two writings emphasize what has not been discussed here, the critical influence of Swami Vivekananda, who wrote a decade before either Aurobindo Ghose or B. C. Pal formulated their ideas on freedom: “That ideal of freedom that you perceived was correct, but you projected it outside yourself, and that was your mistake. Bring it nearer and nearer, until you find that it was all the time within you, it was the Self of your own self.” The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda, 8 volumes (Calcutta: Advaita Vedanta Ashram, 1952) 2: 128. Vivekananda had a direct and profound influence on Ghose especially.

  15. CWMG 69: 52.

  16. CWMG 35: 294.

  17. CWMG 38: 1–2

  18. CWMG 38: 18

  19. Iyer, The Moral and Political Thought of Mahatma Gandhi, p. 354. In another place, Iyer offers an incisive explanation of Gandhi’s ideas of freedom and swaraj: “Freedom for Gandhi was neither a condition granted by some social contract nor a gratuitous privilege; freedom was grounded in the moral autonomy of the individual and was thus inalienable. Furthermore, he saw freedom as a social necessity which cannot be severed from its roots in the individual psyche; only a society based on some minimal degree of awakened individual conscience can sustain itself for long. Freedom as an inherent characteristic of human nature is true swaraj or self-rule. The social and institutional dimensions of swaraj are enormously dependent upon the individual dimension. Thus, while swaraj is open equally to individuals and to groups, its first step lies in individual consciousness. National self-rule has the same exacting requirements for its nurture and sustenance as individual self-rule…. Swaraj in its fullest sense is perfect freedom from all bondage and, for Gandhi, it could be equated with moksha or liberation. But, like that knowledge which can be gained even as one becomes increasingly aware of the scope of one’s ignorance, swaraj is attainable by degrees so long as its achievements are measured honestly against ideals. This is possible because swaraj on the individual level involves perforce self-awareness and conscious choice.” The Moral and Political Writings of Mahatma Gandhi, Raghavan Iyer, ed. (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1987), 3 (“Introduction”): 8–9.

  20. CWMG 27: 134.

  21. Gloria Steinem’s discussion of Gandhi’s life suggests that his personal journey offers parallels with a woman’s struggle for freedom and self-esteem when faced with sexual oppression. She conveys the meaning of Gandhi’s call for “reform from within” in her Revolution From Within (Boston: Little, Brown, 1992), pp. 49–53. Not all American feminists have shared Steinem’s enthusiasm for Gandhi. Carol Gilligan argues that Gandhi was led “in the guise of love, to impose his truth on others without awareness of or regard for the extent to which he thereby did violence to their integrity.” Citing Gandhi’s own autobiographical confessions of his mistreatment of his wife, Gilligan concludes that “Gandhi compromised in his everyday life the ethic of nonviolence to which, in principle and in public, he steadfastly adhered” In a Different Voice (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1982), pp. 103–105, 155). This negative appraisal of Gandhi is reinforced by Judy Costello, “Beyond Gandhi: An American Feminist’s Approach to Nonviolence” but countered by the more careful reading of Gandhi by Lynne Shivers, “An Open Letter to Gandhi,” both essays in Reweaving the Web of Life, edited by Pam McAllister (Philadelphia: New Society Publishers, 1982), pp. 175–194. Steinem’s application of Gandhi’s ideas to the concerns and values of feminists today is shared in large part by Shivers and also by Sara Ruddick, Maternal Thinking: Toward a Politics of Peace (New York: Ballantine Books, 1989), especially ch. 7, pp. 160–174 and Pam McAllister, You Cant Kill the Spirit (Philadelphia: New Society Publishers, 1988), pp. 1–5. An American feminist who expressed Gandhi’s ideas in action is Barbara Deming, We Are All Part of One Another: A Barbara Deming Reader, Jane Meyerding, ed. (Philadelphia: New Society Publishers, 1984). Her essay “On Anger” has become a classic of its kind, especially the use of Gandhi on pp. 210–213. A deficiency in the writing of American feminist
s about Gandhi is that they often do not assess his ideas or experience within their historical context; that is, the precise ways that he tried to apply his ideas about the role of women in India. This study has been done by Indian feminists who have related their concerns about women in their society to a thorough analysis of Gandhi’s contribution. The work of Madhu Kishwar (noted below in chapter 4, pp. 118–19) is exemplary in this regard.

  22. CWMG 24: 227.

  23. CWMG 75: 158.

  24. CWMG 36: 470.

  25. CWMG 31: 46.

  26. CWMG 75: 158.

  27. William Shirer, Gandhi: A Memoir. (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1979) p. 245.

  28. CWMG 29: 92.

  29. Bhikhu Parekh argues that agraha was used by Gandhi “in its ordinary Gujarati and not the classical Sanskrit sense, [that] means insisting on something without becoming obstinate or uncompromising” which then denotes “both insistence on and for truth.” Gandhis Political Philosophy (Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 1989), p. 143. These two connotations from Gujarati and Sanskrit are complementary and Parekh’s point highlights the distinction that Gandhi made between passive resistance (or duragraha) and satyagraha: the former in Gandhi’s view was “obstinate or uncompromising.”

  30. CWMG 54: 416.

  31. CWMG 10: 431. Analysts of Gandhi’s thought have focused on the centrality of his theory of means. Joan Bondurant devotes careful attention to this in Conquest of Violence (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988), especially chapter 7, pp. 189–233, which begins “The challenge of Gandhian satyagraha centers upon the necessity of reconciling ends and means through a philosophy of action.” Raghavan Iyer offers a cogent analysis of the subject in The Moral and Political Thought of Mahatma Gandhi, chapter 13, arguing that “Gandhi seems to stand almost alone among social and political thinkers in his firm rejection of the rigid dichotomy between ends and means and in his extreme preoccupation with the means to the extent that they, rather than the ends, provide the standard of reference” (p. 361).