Bishakh jyoti biography of mahatma gandhi

His simplistic lifestyle won him, admirers, both in India and the outside world. He was popularly known as Bapu Father. He was born on 2 October, in Porbandar, Gujarat. At the age of 13, Mahatma Gandhi was married to Kasturba which is an arranged marriage. They had four sons namely Harilal, Manilal, Ramdas and Devdas. She supported all the endeavors of her husband until her death in Mahatma Gandhi was the son of his father's fourth wife Putlibai, who belonged to an affluent Vaishnava family.

Let us tell you that in his earlier days, he was deeply influenced by the stories of Shravana and Harishchandra as they reflected the importance of truth. When Gandhi was 9 years old he went to a local school at Rajkot and studied the basics of arithmetic, history, geography, and languages. At the age of 11, he went to a high school in Rajkot.

Because of his wedding, at least about one year, his studies were disturbed and later he joined and completed his schooling. He joined Samaldas college in Bhavnagar in at Gujarat. Later, one of his family friends Mavji Dave Joshi pursued further studies i. Gandhiji was not satisfied with his studies at Samaldas College and so he became excited by the London proposal and managed to convince his mother and wife that he will not touch non-veg, wine, or women.

In the year , Mahatma Gandhi left for London to study law. Thereafter 10 days after arrival, he joined the Inner Temple, one of the four London law colleges, and studied and practiced law. In , a bitter trade dispute broke out in London, with dockers striking for better pay and conditions, and seamen, shipbuilders, factory girls and other joining the strike in solidarity.

The strikers were successful, in part due to the mediation of Cardinal Manning , leading Gandhi and an Indian friend to make a point of visiting the cardinal and thanking him for his work. His vow to his mother influenced Gandhi's time in London. Gandhi tried to adopt "English" customs, including taking dancing lessons. They encouraged Gandhi to join them in reading the Bhagavad Gita both in translation as well as in the original.

Gandhi had a friendly and productive relationship with Hills, but the two men took a different view on the continued LVS membership of fellow committee member Thomas Allinson. Their disagreement is the first known example of Gandhi challenging authority, despite his shyness and temperamental disinclination towards confrontation. Allinson had been promoting newly available birth control methods , but Hills disapproved of these, believing they undermined public morality.

He believed vegetarianism to be a moral movement and that Allinson should therefore no longer remain a member of the LVS. Gandhi shared Hills' views on the dangers of birth control, but defended Allinson's right to differ. Hills was also a highly accomplished sportsman who later founded the football club West Ham United. In his An Autobiography, Vol.

I , Gandhi wrote:. The question deeply interested me I had a high regard for Mr. Hills and his generosity. But I thought it was quite improper to exclude a man from a vegetarian society simply because he refused to regard puritan morals as one of the objects of the society [ 50 ]. A motion to remove Allinson was raised, and was debated and voted on by the committee.

Gandhi's shyness was an obstacle to his defence of Allinson at the committee meeting. Gandhi wrote his views down on paper, but shyness prevented Gandhi from reading out his arguments, so Hills, the President, asked another committee member to read them out for him. Although some other members of the committee agreed with Gandhi, the vote was lost and Allinson was excluded.

There were no hard feelings, with Hills proposing the toast at the LVS farewell dinner in honour of Gandhi's return to India. Gandhi, at age 22, was called to the bar in June and then left London for India, where he learned that his mother had died while he was in London and that his family had kept the news from Gandhi. He returned to Rajkot to make a modest living drafting petitions for litigants, but Gandhi was forced to stop after running afoul of British officer Sam Sunny.

Abdullah owned a large successful shipping business in South Africa. His distant cousin in Johannesburg needed a lawyer, and they preferred someone with Kathiawari heritage. Gandhi inquired about his pay for the work. He accepted it, knowing that it would be at least a one-year commitment in the Colony of Natal , South Africa, also a part of the British Empire.

Immediately upon arriving in South Africa, Gandhi faced discrimination due to his skin colour and heritage. Gandhi was kicked by a police officer out of the footpath onto the street without warning. Gandhi found it humiliating, struggling to understand how some people can feel honour or superiority or pleasure in such inhumane practices.

The Abdullah case that had brought him to South Africa concluded in May , and the Indian community organised a farewell party for Gandhi as he prepared to return to India. This led to Gandhi extending his original period of stay in South Africa. Gandhi planned to assist Indians in opposing a bill to deny them the right to vote , a right then proposed to be an exclusive European right.

He asked Joseph Chamberlain , the British Colonial Secretary, to reconsider his position on this bill. He helped found the Natal Indian Congress in , [ 49 ] [ 59 ] and through this organisation, Gandhi moulded the Indian community of South Africa into a unified political force. In January , when Gandhi landed in Durban, a mob of white settlers attacked him, [ 63 ] and Gandhi escaped only through the efforts of the wife of the police superintendent.

According to Arthur Herman, Gandhi wanted to disprove the British colonial stereotype that Hindus were not fit for "manly" activities involving danger and exertion, unlike the Muslim " martial races. They were trained and medically certified to serve on the front lines. They were auxiliaries at the Battle of Colenso to a White volunteer ambulance corps.

At the Battle of Spion Kop , Gandhi and his bearers moved to the front line and had to carry wounded soldiers for miles to a field hospital since the terrain was too rough for the ambulances. In , the Transvaal government promulgated a new Act compelling registration of the colony's Indian and Chinese populations. At a mass protest meeting held in Johannesburg on 11 September that year, Gandhi adopted his still evolving methodology of Satyagraha devotion to the truth , or nonviolent protest, for the first time.

His ideas of protests, persuasion skills, and public relations had emerged. Gandhi took these back to India in Gandhi focused his attention on Indians and Africans while he was in South Africa. Initially, Gandhi was not interested in politics, but this changed after he was discriminated against and bullied, such as by being thrown out of a train coach due to his skin colour by a white train official.

After several such incidents with Whites in South Africa , Gandhi's thinking and focus changed, and he felt he must resist this and fight for rights. Gandhi entered politics by forming the Natal Indian Congress. He suffered persecution from the beginning in South Africa. Like with other coloured people, white officials denied Gandhi his rights, and the press and those in the streets bullied and called Gandhi a "parasite", "semi-barbarous", "canker", "squalid coolie", "yellow man", and other epithets.

People would even spit on him as an expression of racial hate. While in South Africa, Gandhi focused on the racial persecution of Indians before he started to focus on racism against Africans. In some cases, state Desai and Vahed, Gandhi's behaviour was one of being a willing part of racial stereotyping and African exploitation. Gandhi cited race history and European Orientalists' opinions that "Anglo-Saxons and Indians are sprung from the same Aryan stock or rather the Indo-European peoples" and argued that Indians should not be grouped with the Africans.

Years later, Gandhi and his colleagues served and helped Africans as nurses and by opposing racism. In , Gandhi started the Indian Opinion , a journal that carried news of Indians in South Africa, Indians in India with articles on all subjects -social, moral and intellectual. Each issue was multi-lingual and carried material in English, Gujarati, Hindi and Tamil.

It carried ads, depended heavily on Gandhi's contributions often printed without a byline and was an 'advocate' for the Indian cause. In , when the Bambatha Rebellion broke out in the colony of Natal , the then year-old Gandhi, despite sympathising with the Zulu rebels, encouraged Indian South Africans to form a volunteer stretcher-bearer unit.

The medical unit commanded by Gandhi operated for less than two months before being disbanded. This led Gandhi to becoming disillusioned with the Empire and aroused a spiritual awakening within him; historian Arthur L. Herman wrote that Gandhi's African experience was a part of his great disillusionment with the West, transforming Gandhi into an "uncompromising non-cooperator".

By , Gandhi's newspaper, Indian Opinion , was covering reports on discrimination against Africans by the colonial regime. Gandhi remarked that the Africans "alone are the original inhabitants of the land. In , Gandhi established, with the help of his friend Hermann Kallenbach , an idealistic community they named Tolstoy Farm near Johannesburg.

In the years after black South Africans gained the right to vote in South Africa , Gandhi was proclaimed a national hero with numerous monuments. Andrews , Gandhi returned to India in He brought an international reputation as a leading Indian nationalist, theorist and community organiser. Gandhi joined the Indian National Congress and was introduced to Indian issues, politics and the Indian people primarily by Gokhale.

Gokhale was a key leader of the Congress Party best known for his restraint and moderation, and his insistence on working inside the system. Gandhi took Gokhale's liberal approach based on British Whiggish traditions and transformed it to make it look Indian. Gandhi took leadership of the Congress in and began escalating demands until on 26 January the Indian National Congress declared the independence of India.

The British did not recognise the declaration, but negotiations ensued, with the Congress taking a role in provincial government in the late s. Gandhi and the Congress withdrew their support of the Raj when the Viceroy declared war on Germany in September without consultation. Tensions escalated until Gandhi demanded immediate independence in , and the British responded by imprisoning him and tens of thousands of Congress leaders.

Meanwhile, the Muslim League did co-operate with Britain and moved, against Gandhi's strong opposition, to demands for a totally separate Muslim state of Pakistan. In August , the British partitioned the land with India and Pakistan each achieving independence on terms that Gandhi disapproved. In a June leaflet entitled "Appeal for Enlistment", Gandhi wrote: "To bring about such a state of things we should have the ability to defend ourselves, that is, the ability to bear arms and to use them If we want to learn the use of arms with the greatest possible despatch, it is our duty to enlist ourselves in the army.

Gandhi's support for the war campaign brought into question his consistency on nonviolence. Gandhi's private secretary noted that "The question of the consistency between his creed of ' Ahimsa ' nonviolence and his recruiting campaign was raised not only then but has been discussed ever since. Therefore, Gandhi felt that Indians needed to be willing and capable of using arms before they voluntarily chose non-violence.

In July , Gandhi said that he could not persuade even one individual to enlist for the world war. He added: "They object because they fear to die. Gandhi's first major achievement came in with the Champaran agitation in Bihar. The Champaran agitation pitted the local peasantry against largely Anglo-Indian plantation owners who were backed by the local administration.

The peasants were forced to grow indigo Indigofera sp. Unhappy with this, the peasantry appealed to Gandhi at his ashram in Ahmedabad. Pursuing a strategy of nonviolent protest, Gandhi took the administration by surprise and won concessions from the authorities. In , Kheda was hit by floods and famine and the peasantry was demanding relief from taxes.

Gandhi moved his headquarters to Nadiad , [ 94 ] organising scores of supporters and fresh volunteers from the region, the most notable being Vallabhbhai Patel. A social boycott of mamlatdars and talatdars revenue officials within the district accompanied the agitation. Gandhi worked hard to win public support for the agitation across the country.

For five months, the administration refused, but by the end of May , the government gave way on important provisions and relaxed the conditions of payment of revenue tax until the famine ended. In Kheda, Vallabhbhai Patel represented the farmers in negotiations with the British, who suspended revenue collection and released all the prisoners.

In , following World War I, Gandhi aged 49 sought political co-operation from Muslims in his fight against British imperialism by supporting the Ottoman Empire that had been defeated in the World War. Before this initiative of Gandhi, communal disputes and religious riots between Hindus and Muslims were common in British India, such as the riots of — Gandhi had already vocally supported the British crown in the first world war.

The British colonial officials made their counter move by passing the Rowlatt Act , to block Gandhi's movement. The Act allowed the British government to treat civil disobedience participants as criminals and gave it the legal basis to arrest anyone for "preventive indefinite detention, incarceration without judicial review or any need for a trial.

Gandhi felt that Hindu-Muslim co-operation was necessary for political progress against the British. He leveraged the Khilafat movement , wherein Sunni Muslims in India, their leaders such as the sultans of princely states in India and Ali brothers championed the Turkish Caliph as a solidarity symbol of Sunni Islamic community ummah. It initially led to a strong Muslim support for Gandhi.

However, the Hindu leaders including Rabindranath Tagore questioned Gandhi's leadership because they were largely against recognising or supporting the Sunni Islamic Caliph in Turkey. The increasing Muslim support for Gandhi, after he championed the Caliph's cause, temporarily stopped the Hindu-Muslim communal violence. It offered evidence of inter-communal harmony in joint Rowlatt satyagraha demonstration rallies, raising Gandhi's stature as the political leader to the British.

Jinnah began creating his independent support, and later went on to lead the demand for West and East Pakistan. Though they agreed in general terms on Indian independence, they disagreed on the means of achieving this. Jinnah was mainly interested in dealing with the British via constitutional negotiation, rather than attempting to agitate the masses.

In , the Khilafat movement gradually collapsed following the end of the non-cooperation movement with the arrest of Gandhi. With his book Hind Swaraj Gandhi, aged 40, declared that British rule was established in India with the co-operation of Indians and had survived only because of this co-operation. If Indians refused to co-operate, British rule would collapse and swaraj Indian independence would come.

In February , Gandhi cautioned the Viceroy of India with a cable communication that if the British were to pass the Rowlatt Act , he would appeal to Indians to start civil disobedience. The satyagraha civil disobedience followed, with people assembling to protest the Rowlatt Act. On 30 March , British law officers opened fire on an assembly of unarmed people, peacefully gathered, participating in satyagraha in Delhi.

People rioted in retaliation. On 6 April , a Hindu festival day, Gandhi asked a crowd to remember not to injure or kill British people, but to express their frustration with peace, to boycott British goods and burn any British clothing they owned. He emphasised the use of non-violence to the British and towards each other, even if the other side used violence.

Communities across India announced plans to gather in greater numbers to protest. Government warned him not to enter Delhi, but Gandhi defied the order and was arrested on 9 April. On 13 April , people including women with children gathered in an Amritsar park, and British Indian Army officer Reginald Dyer surrounded them and ordered troops under his command to fire on them.

The resulting Jallianwala Bagh massacre or Amritsar massacre of hundreds of Sikh and Hindu civilians enraged the subcontinent but was supported by some Britons and parts of the British media as a necessary response. Gandhi in Ahmedabad, on the day after the massacre in Amritsar, did not criticise the British and instead criticised his fellow countrymen for not exclusively using 'love' to deal with the 'hate' of the British government.

The massacre and Gandhi's non-violent response to it moved many, but also made some Sikhs and Hindus upset that Dyer was getting away with murder. Investigation committees were formed by the British, which Gandhi asked Indians to boycott. With Congress now behind Gandhi, and Muslim support triggered by his backing the Khilafat movement to restore the Caliph in Turkey, [ ] Gandhi had the political support and the attention of the British Raj.

Gandhi expanded his nonviolent non-co-operation platform to include the swadeshi policy — the boycott of foreign-made goods, especially British goods. Linked to this was his advocacy that khadi homespun cloth be worn by all Indians instead of British-made textiles. Gandhi exhorted Indian men and women, rich or poor, to spend time each day spinning khadi in support of the independence movement.

Gandhi thus began his journey aimed at crippling the British India government economically, politically and administratively. The appeal of "Non-cooperation" grew, its social popularity drew participation from all strata of Indian society. Gandhi was arrested on 10 March , tried for sedition, and sentenced to six years' imprisonment. He began his sentence on 18 March With Gandhi isolated in prison, the Indian National Congress split into two factions, one led by Chitta Ranjan Das and Motilal Nehru favouring party participation in the legislatures, and the other led by Chakravarti Rajagopalachari and Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel , opposing this move.

Muslim leaders left the Congress and began forming Muslim organisations. The political base behind Gandhi had broken into factions. He was released in February for an appendicitis operation, having served only two years. After his early release from prison for political crimes in , Gandhi continued to pursue swaraj over the second half of the s.

He pushed through a resolution at the Calcutta Congress in December calling on the British government to grant India dominion status or face a new campaign of non-cooperation with complete independence for the country as its goal. The British did not respond favourably to Gandhi's proposal. British political leaders such as Lord Birkenhead and Winston Churchill announced opposition to "the appeasers of Gandhi" in their discussions with European diplomats who sympathised with Indian demands.

This day was commemorated by almost every other Indian organisation. Gandhi then launched a new Satyagraha against the British salt tax in March He sent an ultimatum in the form of a letter personally addressed to Lord Irwin, the viceroy of India, on 2 March. Gandhi condemned British rule in the letter, describing it as "a curse" that "has impoverished the dumb millions by a system of progressive exploitation and by a ruinously expensive military and civil administration It has reduced us politically to serfdom.

This was highlighted by the Salt March to Dandi from 12 March to 6 April, where, together with 78 volunteers, Gandhi marched kilometres mi from Ahmedabad to Dandi, Gujarat to make salt himself, with the declared intention of breaking the salt laws. The march took 25 days to cover miles with Gandhi speaking to often huge crowds along the way.

Thousands of Indians joined him in Dandi. According to Sarma, Gandhi recruited women to participate in the salt tax campaigns and the boycott of foreign products, which gave many women a new self-confidence and dignity in the mainstream of Indian public life. On 5 May, Gandhi was interned under a regulation dating from in anticipation of a protest that he had planned.

The protest at Dharasana salt works on 21 May went ahead without Gandhi. A horrified American journalist, Webb Miller , described the British response thus:. In complete silence the Gandhi men drew up and halted a hundred yards from the stockade. A picked column advanced from the crowd, waded the ditches and approached the barbed wire stockade Not one of the marchers even raised an arm to fend off blows.

They went down like ninepins. From where I stood I heard the sickening whack of the clubs on unprotected skulls Those struck down fell sprawling, unconscious or writhing with fractured skulls or broken shoulders. This went on for hours until some or more protesters had been beaten, many seriously injured and two killed. At no time did they offer any resistance.

After Gandhi's arrest, the women marched and picketed shops on their own, accepting violence and verbal abuse from British authorities for the cause in the manner Gandhi inspired. This campaign was one of Gandhi's most successful at upsetting British hold on India; Britain responded by imprisoning over 60, people. Among them was one of Gandhi's lieutenants, Jawaharlal Nehru.

Indian Congress in the s appealed to Andhra Pradesh peasants by creating Telugu language plays that combined Indian mythology and legends, linked them to Gandhi's ideas, and portrayed Gandhi as a messiah , a reincarnation of ancient and medieval Indian nationalist leaders and saints. The plays built support among peasants steeped in traditional Hindu culture, according to Murali, and this effort made Gandhi a folk hero in Telugu speaking villages, a sacred messiah-like figure.

According to Dennis Dalton, it was Gandhi's ideas that were responsible for his wide following. Gandhi criticised Western civilisation as one driven by "brute force and immorality", contrasting it with his categorisation of Indian civilisation as one driven by "soul force and morality. After he returned to India, people flocked to Gandhi because he reflected their values.

Gandhi also campaigned hard going from one rural corner of the Indian subcontinent to another. He used terminology and phrases such as Rama -rajya from Ramayana , Prahlada as a paradigmatic icon, and such cultural symbols as another facet of swaraj and satyagraha. The government, represented by Lord Irwin , decided to negotiate with Gandhi.

The Gandhi—Irwin Pact was signed in March The British Government agreed to free all political prisoners , in return for the suspension of the civil disobedience movement. According to the pact, Gandhi was invited to attend the Round Table Conference in London for discussions and as the sole representative of the Indian National Congress.

The conference was a disappointment to Gandhi and the nationalists. Gandhi expected to discuss India's independence, while the British side focused on the Indian princes and Indian minorities rather than on a transfer of power. Lord Irwin's successor, Lord Willingdon , took a hard line against India as an independent nation, began a new campaign of controlling and subduing the nationalist movement.

Bishakh jyoti biography of mahatma gandhi

Gandhi was again arrested, and the government tried and failed to negate his influence by completely isolating him from his followers. In Britain, Winston Churchill , a prominent Conservative politician who was then out of office but later became its prime minister, became a vigorous and articulate critic of Gandhi and opponent of his long-term plans.

Churchill often ridiculed Gandhi, saying in a widely reported speech:. It is alarming and also nauseating to see Mr Gandhi, a seditious Middle Temple lawyer, now posing as a fakir of a type well known in the East, striding half-naked up the steps of the Vice-regal palace Churchill's bitterness against Gandhi grew in the s. He called Gandhi as the one who was "seditious in aim" whose evil genius and multiform menace was attacking the British empire.

Churchill called him a dictator, a "Hindu Mussolini ", fomenting a race war, trying to replace the Raj with Brahmin cronies, playing on the ignorance of Indian masses, all for selfish gain. It gained Churchill sympathetic support, but it also increased support for Gandhi among Europeans. The developments heightened Churchill's anxiety that the "British themselves would give up out of pacifism and misplaced conscience.

During the discussions between Gandhi and the British government over —32 at the Round Table Conferences , Gandhi, now aged about 62, sought constitutional reforms as a preparation to the end of colonial British rule, and begin the self-rule by Indians. The British negotiators proposed constitutional reforms on a British Dominion model that established separate electorates based on religious and social divisions.

The British questioned the Congress party and Gandhi's authority to speak for all of India. Ambedkar as the representative leader of the untouchables. The Second Round Table conference was the only time Gandhi left India between and his death in Gandhi declined the government's offer of accommodation in an expensive West End hotel, preferring to stay in the East End , to live among working-class people, as he did in India.

After Gandhi returned from the Second Round Table conference, he started a new satyagraha. Gandhi was arrested and imprisoned at the Yerwada Jail , Pune. While he was in prison, the British government enacted a new law that granted untouchables a separate electorate. It came to be known as the Communal Award. In , Gandhi resigned from Congress party membership.

He did not disagree with the party's position, but felt that if he resigned, Gandhi's popularity with Indians would cease to stifle the party's membership, which actually varied, including communists, socialists, trade unionists, students, religious conservatives, and those with pro-business convictions, and that these various voices would get a chance to make themselves heard.

Gandhi also wanted to avoid being a target for Raj propaganda by leading a party that had temporarily accepted political accommodation with the Raj. In , Gandhi returned to active politics again with the Nehru presidency and the Lucknow session of the Congress. Although Gandhi wanted a total focus on the task of winning independence and not speculation about India's future, he did not restrain the Congress from adopting socialism as its goal.

Gandhi had a clash with Subhas Chandra Bose, who had been elected president in , and who had previously expressed a lack of faith in nonviolence as a means of protest. Gandhi declared that Sitaramayya's defeat was his defeat. Gandhi opposed providing any help to the British war effort and he campaigned against any Indian participation in World War II.

Gandhi's opposition to the Indian participation in World War II was motivated by his belief that India could not be party to a war ostensibly being fought for democratic freedom while that freedom was denied to India itself. As the war progressed, Gandhi intensified his demand for independence, calling for the British to Quit India in a speech in Mumbai.

In , Gandhi now nearing age 73, urged his people to completely stop co-operating with the imperial government. In this effort, Gandhi urged that they neither kill nor injure British people but be willing to suffer and die if violence is initiated by the British officials. Gandhi's arrest lasted two years, as he was held in the Aga Khan Palace in Pune.

During this period, Gandhi's longtime secretary Mahadev Desai died of a heart attack, his wife Kasturba died after 18 months' imprisonment on 22 February , and Gandhi suffered a severe malaria attack. Gelder then composed and released an interview summary, cabled it to the mainstream press, that announced sudden concessions Gandhi was willing to make, comments that shocked his countrymen, the Congress workers and even Gandhi.

The latter two claimed that it distorted what Gandhi actually said on a range of topics and falsely repudiated the Quit India movement. Gandhi was released before the end of the war on 6 May because of his failing health and necessary surgery; the Raj did not want him to die in prison and enrage the nation. Gandhi came out of detention to an altered political scene — the Muslim League for example, which a few years earlier had appeared marginal, "now occupied the centre of the political stage" [ ] and the topic of Jinnah's campaign for Pakistan was a major talking point.

Gandhi and Jinnah had extensive correspondence and the two men met several times over a period of two weeks in September at Jinnah's house in Bombay, where Gandhi insisted on a united religiously plural and independent India which included Muslims and non-Muslims of the Indian subcontinent coexisting. Jinnah rejected this proposal and insisted instead for partitioning the subcontinent on religious lines to create a separate Muslim homeland later Pakistan.

While the leaders of Congress languished in jail, the other parties supported the war and gained organisational strength. Underground publications flailed at the ruthless suppression of Congress, but it had little control over events. At this point, Gandhi called off the struggle, and around , political prisoners were released, including the Congress's leadership.

Gandhi opposed the partition of the Indian subcontinent along religious lines. Jinnah rejected Gandhi's proposal and called for Direct Action Day , on 16 August , to press Muslims to publicly gather in cities and support his proposal for the partition of the Indian subcontinent into a Muslim state and non-Muslim state. Thousands of Hindus and Muslims were murdered, and tens of thousands were injured in the cycle of violence in the days that followed.

Archibald Wavell , the Viceroy and Governor-General of British India for three years through February , had worked with Gandhi and Jinnah to find a common ground, before and after accepting Indian independence in principle. Wavell condemned Gandhi's character and motives as well as his ideas. Wavell accused Gandhi of harbouring the single-minded idea to "overthrow British rule and influence and to establish a Hindu raj", and called Gandhi a "malignant, malevolent, exceedingly shrewd" politician.

The British reluctantly agreed to grant independence to the people of the Indian subcontinent, but accepted Jinnah's proposal of partitioning the land into Pakistan and India. Gandhi was involved in the final negotiations, but Stanley Wolpert states the "plan to carve up British India was never approved of or accepted by Gandhi". The partition was controversial and violently disputed.

More than half a million were killed in religious riots as 10 million to 12 million non-Muslims Hindus and Sikhs mostly migrated from Pakistan into India, and Muslims migrated from India into Pakistan, across the newly created borders of India, West Pakistan and East Pakistan. Gandhi spent the day of independence not celebrating the end of the British rule, but appealing for peace among his countrymen by fasting and spinning in Calcutta on 15 August The partition had gripped the Indian subcontinent with religious violence and the streets were filled with corpses.

At p. There, he died about 30 minutes later as one of Gandhi's family members read verses from Hindu scriptures. Friends and comrades, the light has gone out of our lives, and there is darkness everywhere, and I do not quite know what to tell you or how to say it. Our beloved leader, Bapu as we called him, the father of the nation, is no more.

Perhaps I am wrong to say that; nevertheless, we will not see him again, as we have seen him for these many years, we will not run to him for advice or seek solace from him, and that is a terrible blow, not only for me, but for millions and millions in this country. Godse, a Hindu nationalist, [ ] [ ] [ ] with links to the Hindu Mahasabha and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh , [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] made no attempt to escape; several other conspirators were soon arrested as well.

The trial began on 27 May and ran for eight months before Justice Atma Charan passed his final order on 10 February The prosecution called witnesses, the defence none. Eight men were convicted for the murder conspiracy, and others were convicted for violation of the Explosive Substances Act. Savarkar was acquitted and set free. Nathuram Godse and Narayan Apte were sentenced to death by hanging [ ] while the remaining six including Godse's brother, Gopal were sentenced to life imprisonment.

Gandhi's death was mourned nationwide. The engine of the vehicle was not used; instead, four drag-ropes held by 50 people each pulled the vehicle. Gandhi was cremated in accordance with Hindu tradition. His ashes were poured into urns which were sent across India for memorial services. In , Tushar Gandhi immersed the contents of one urn, found in a bank vault and reclaimed through the courts, at the Sangam at Allahabad.

On 30 January , the contents of another urn were immersed at Girgaum Chowpatty. 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.

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. He supported the British war effort in World War I but remained critical of colonial authorities for measures he felt were unjust.

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. The iconic Indian activist, known for his principle of nonviolent resistance, had humble beginnings and left an outsized legacy.

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. 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.

The government appointed a committee to look into the matter and nominated Gandhi as a member. Rajendra Prasad, Anugrah Narayan Sinha, and other eminent lawyers became inspired by Gandhi and volunteered to fight for the Indigo farmers in court for free. Gandhi was able to convince the authorities to abolish the system and the peasants were compensated for the illegal dues extracted from them.

Because of the drought in crops failed in the Kheda district of Gujarat. According to the revenue code if the yield was less than one-fourth of the normal produced the farmers for entitled to remission. Gujarat sabha sent a petition requesting revenue assessment for the year but the authorities refused to grant permission. Sardar Patel led a group of eminent people who went around villages and gave them political advisors and instructions.

The government finally agreed to form an agreement with the farmers and hence the taxes were suspended for the years and and all confiscated properties were returned. He intervened in a dispute between Mill owners of Ahmedabad and the workers over the issue of discontinuation of the plague bonus. The striking workers turned to Anusuiya Sarabai in quest of justice and she contacted Gandhi for help.

During World War I Gandhi sought cooperation from the Muslims in his fight against the British by supporting the Ottoman Empire that had been defeated in the world war. The British passed the Rowlatt act to block the movement. Gandhi called for a nationwide Satyagraha against the act. It was Rowlatt Satyagraha that elevated Gandhi into a national leader.

Rowlatt Satyagraha was against the unjust Rowlatt Act passed by the British. On April 13th, the Jallianwala Bagh incident took place. Seeing the violence spread Mahatma Gandhi called off the civil disobedience movement on the 18th of April. Gandhi convinced the congress leaders to start a Non-Cooperation Movement in support of Khilafat as well as Swaraj.

At the congress session of Nagpur in , the non-cooperation program was adopted. After the non-cooperation movement ended, Gandhi withdrew from the political platform and focused on his social reform work. Gandhi declared that he would lead a march to break the salt law as the law gave the state the Monopoly on the manufacturer and the sale of salt.

Gandhi along with his followers marched from his ashram in Sabarmati to the coastal town of Dandi in Gujarat where they broke the government law by gathering natural salt and boiling seawater to produce salt. Gandhi accepted the truce offered by Irwin and called off the civil disobedience movement and agreed to attend the second round table conference in London as the representative of the Indian National Congress.

But when he returned from London he relaunched the civil disobedience movement but by it had lost its momentum. This was a pact reached between B. R Ambedkar and Gandhi concerning the communal awards but in the end, strived to achieve a common goal for the upliftment of the marginalized communities of the Indian society. Gandhi returned to active politics in with the Lucknow session of Congress where Jawaharlal Nehru was the president.

The outbreak of World war II and the last and crucial phase of national struggle in India came together. Gandhi was arrested and held at Aga Khan Palace in Pune. During this time his wife Kasturba died after 18 months of imprisonment and in Gandhi suffered a severe malaria attack. He was released before the end of the war on 6th May World war II was nearing an end and the British gave clear indications that power would be transferred to Indians hence Gandhi called off the struggle and all the political prisoners were released including the leaders of Congress.

While he and Congress demanded the British quit India the Muslim league demanded to divide and quit India.