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Mohandas Gandhi
Mohandas Gandhi Mohandas Gandhi Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, also known as mahatma Gandhi, was a Indian nationalist leader, who established his country's freedom through a nonviolent revolution. Gandhi became a leader in a difficult struggle, the Indian campaign for home rule. He believed and dedicated his life to demonstrating that both individuals and nations owe it to themselves to stay free, and to allow the same freedom to others. Gandhi was one of the gentlest of men, a devout and almost mystical Hindu, but he had and iron core of determination. Nothing could change his convictions. Some observers called him a master politician. Others believed him a saint. Gandhi became a leader in a difficult struggle, the Indian campaign for home rule. He worked to reconcile all classes and religious sects. Gandhi meant not only technical self-government but also self-reliance. After World War I, in which he played an active part in recruiting campaigns, he launched his movement of passive resistance to Great Britain. When the Britain government failed to make amends, Gandhi established an organized campaign of noncooperation. Through India, streets were blocked by squatting Indians who refused to rise even when beaten by the police. He declared he would go to jail even die before obeying anti-Asian Law. Gandhi was arrested, but the British were soon forced to release him. Economic independence for India, involving the complete boycott of British goods, was made a result of Gandhi's self-ruling movement. The economic aspects of the movement were serious, for the exploitation of Indian villagers by British industrialists has resulted in extreme poverty in the country and the virtual destruction of Indian home industries. As a solution for such poverty, Gandhi supported revival of cottage industries; he began to use a spinning wheel as a token of the return to the simple village life he preached, and of the renewal of native Indian Industries. Gandhi became the international symbol of a free India. He lived a spiritual and ascetic life of prayer, fasting, and meditation. He employed propaganda, agitation, demonstration, boycott, noncooperation, parallel government, and strikes. He refused earthly possessions, he wore the loincloth and shawl of the lowliest Indian and lived on vegetables, fruit juices, and goat's milk. Indians thought of him as a saint and began to call him Mahatma. Mahatma meant great soul, a title reserved for the greatest leaders. Gandhi's nonviolence was the expression of a way of life understood in the Hindu religion. By the Indian practice of nonviolence, Gandhi said, Great Britain would eventually consider violence useless and would leave India. The Mahatma's political and spiritual hold on India was so great that the British authorities dared not to interfere with him. In 1921 the Indian National Congress, the group that spearheaded the movement for nationhood, gave Gandhi complete executive authority, with the right of naming his own successor. A series of armed revolts against Great Britain broke out, culminating in such violence that Gandhi confessed failure of the civil-disobedience campaign he had called, and ended it. The British government again seized and imprisoned him in 1922. In 193... This is ONLY a preview of the article. If you would like to view the entire document, you must subscribe to Academic Library. Please register below now!
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