Taryne mowatt biography of mahatma gandhi
Early Life
Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi was born on October 2, , at Porbandar, in the present-day Indian state of Gujarat.
His father was the dewan (chief minister) of Porbandar; his deeply religious mother was a devoted practitioner of Vaishnavism (worship of the Hindu god Vishnu), influenced by Jainism, an ascetic religion governed by tenets of self-discipline and nonviolence. At the age of 19, Mohandas left home to study law in London at the Inner Temple, one of the city’s four law colleges.
Upon returning to India in mid, he set up a law practice in Bombay, but met with little success. He soon accepted a position with an Indian firm that sent him to its office in South Africa. Along with his wife, Kasturbai, and their children, Gandhi remained in South Africa for nearly 20 years.
Did you know?
In the famous Salt March of April-May , thousands of Indians followed Gandhi from Ahmadabad to the Arabian Sea. The march resulted in the arrest of nearly 60, people, including Gandhi himself.
Gandhi was appalled by the discrimination he experienced as an Indian immigrant in South Africa.
Taryne mowatt biography of mahatma gandhi His disdain for physical training at school, particularly gymnastics has also been written about in this part. Gandhi began to organize a fast response to this new South African political configuration. Download as PDF Printable version. The autobiography was written and serialized over the period from 25 November to 3 February [ 8 ] in installments, which appeared in Navajivan.When a European magistrate in Durban asked him to take off his turban, he refused and left the courtroom. On a train voyage to Pretoria, he was thrown out of a first-class railway compartment and beaten up by a white stagecoach driver after refusing to give up his seat for a European passenger. That train journey served as a turning point for Gandhi, and he soon began developing and teaching the concept of satyagraha (“truth and firmness”), or passive resistance, as a way of non-cooperation with authorities.
The Birth of Passive Resistance
In , after the Transvaal government passed an ordinance regarding the registration of its Indian population, Gandhi led a campaign of civil disobedience that would last for the next eight years.
During its final phase in , hundreds of Indians living in South Africa, including women, went to jail, and thousands of striking Indian miners were imprisoned, flogged and even shot.
Taryne mowatt biography of mahatma gandhi in english Eventually, through several phases of negotiations, an agreement was reached, by which the government agreed to accept the major demands of the Indians and promised to treat the issue of Immigration in a lenient manner. The violent act took the life of a pacifist who spent his life preaching nonviolence. Hundreds died and many more were wounded. At the time, he also engaged in active correspondence with a highly educated and spiritual Jain from Bombay, his friend Raychandra, who was deeply religious, yet well versed in a number of topics, from Hinduism to Christianity.Finally, under pressure from the British and Indian governments, the government of South Africa accepted a compromise negotiated by Gandhi and General Jan Christian Smuts, which included important concessions such as the recognition of Indian marriages and the abolition of the existing poll tax for Indians.
In July , Gandhi left South Africa to return to India.
He supported the British war effort in World War I but remained critical of colonial authorities for measures he felt were unjust. In , Gandhi launched an organized campaign of passive resistance in response to Parliament’s passage of the Rowlatt Acts, which gave colonial authorities emergency powers to suppress subversive activities. He backed off after violence broke out–including the massacre by British-led soldiers of some Indians attending a meeting at Amritsar–but only temporarily, and by he was the most visible figure in the movement for Indian independence.
Leader of a Movement
As part of his nonviolent non-cooperation campaign for home rule, Gandhi stressed the importance of economic independence for India.
He particularly advocated the manufacture of khaddar, or homespun cloth, in order to replace imported textiles from Britain. Gandhi’s eloquence and embrace of an ascetic lifestyle based on prayer, fasting and meditation earned him the reverence of his followers, who called him Mahatma (Sanskrit for “the great-souled one”). Invested with all the authority of the Indian National Congress (INC or Congress Party), Gandhi turned the independence movement into a massive organization, leading boycotts of British manufacturers and institutions representing British influence in India, including legislatures and schools.
After sporadic violence broke out, Gandhi announced the end of the resistance movement, to the dismay of his followers.
British authorities arrested Gandhi in March and tried him for sedition; he was sentenced to six years in prison but was released in after undergoing an operation for appendicitis.
He refrained from active participation in politics for the next several years, but in launched a new civil disobedience campaign against the colonial government’s tax on salt, which greatly affected Indian’s poorest citizens.
A Divided Movement
In , after British authorities made some concessions, Gandhi again called off the resistance movement and agreed to represent the Congress Party at the Round Table Conference in London.
Meanwhile, some of his party colleagues–particularly Mohammed Ali Jinnah, a leading voice for India’s Muslim minority–grew frustrated with Gandhi’s methods, and what they saw as a lack of concrete gains. Arrested upon his return by a newly aggressive colonial government, Gandhi began a series of hunger strikes in protest of the treatment of India’s so-called “untouchables” (the poorer classes), whom he renamed Harijans, or “children of God.” The fasting caused an uproar among his followers and resulted in swift reforms by the Hindu community and the government.
In , Gandhi announced his retirement from politics in, as well as his resignation from the Congress Party, in order to concentrate his efforts on working within rural communities.
Drawn back into the political fray by the outbreak of World War II, Gandhi again took control of the INC, demanding a British withdrawal from India in return for Indian cooperation with the war effort.
Taryne mowatt biography of mahatma gandhi for kids Absolute truth — the ultimate reality. After a while, Gandhi became influenced by the idea of Indian independence from the British, but he dreaded the possibility that a westernized Indian elite would replace the British colonial government. Instead, the final plan called for the partition of the subcontinent along religious lines into two independent states—predominantly Hindu India and predominantly Muslim Pakistan. After his initial assignment was over, he succeeded in growing his own practice to about twenty Indian merchants who contracted him to manage their affairs.Instead, British forces imprisoned the entire Congress leadership, bringing Anglo-Indian relations to a new low point.
History Rewind: Gandhi's Funeral
Partition and Death of Gandhi
After the Labor Party took power in Britain in , negotiations over Indian home rule began between the British, the Congress Party and the Muslim League (now led by Jinnah).
Later that year, Britain granted India its independence but split the country into two dominions: India and Pakistan. Gandhi strongly opposed Partition, but he agreed to it in hopes that after independence Hindus and Muslims could achieve peace internally. Amid the massive riots that followed Partition, Gandhi urged Hindus and Muslims to live peacefully together, and undertook a hunger strike until riots in Calcutta ceased.
In January , Gandhi carried out yet another fast, this time to bring about peace in the city of Delhi.
On January 30, 12 days after that fast ended, Gandhi was on his way to an evening prayer meeting in Delhi when he was shot to death by Nathuram Godse, a Hindu fanatic enraged by Mahatma’s efforts to negotiate with Jinnah and other Muslims. The next day, roughly 1 million people followed the procession as Gandhi’s body was carried in state through the streets of the city and cremated on the banks of the holy Jumna River.
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Biography of mahatma gandhi death I simply want to tell the story of my experiments with truth, and as my life consist of nothing but experiments, it is true that the story will take the shape of an autobiography. He stayed away from the political trend of Indian nationalism, which many of the members of the Indian National Congress embraced. Gandhi writes in his "Farewell" to the readers, a suitable conclusion for an autobiography that he never intended to be an autobiography, but a tale of experiments with life, and with truth. At this point, although Gandhi still remained loyal to Britain and enamored with the ideals of the British constitution, his desire to support an independent home rule became stronger.All articles are regularly reviewed and updated by the team. Articles with the “ Editors” byline have been written or edited by the editors, including Amanda Onion, Missy Sullivan, Matt Mullen and Christian Zapata.
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- Mahatma Gandhi
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- HISTORY
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- Date Accessed
- January 17,
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- A&E Television Networks
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- June 6,
- Original Published Date
- July 30,
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