Gandhi: The born rebel, a revolutionary

 

The birth anniversary of the Mahatma

Gandhi: The born rebel, a revolutionary

 

The UN General Assembly passed a Resolution in 2007 declaring Gandhi’s birthday as the International Non-Violence Day to promote the message of non-violence. Gandhi, the anti-colonial nationalist and the political ethicist, who employed non-violent resistance to lead the campaign for India’s Independence from the British Rule, had inspired movements for civil rights and freedom across the world.

 

His autobiography The Story of My Experiments with Truth reveals that, like any of us, he had his failings and weaknesses. There was nothing to suggest that he would one day transform into a Mahatma and liberate his country, enslaved for hundreds of years.  As a boy he used to be so shy and reserved that he would run back home as soon as the school closed, fearing poking fun at him. He was a victim of the cruel custom of child marriage prevalent in the Hindu Society. He was married at the age of 13 to a girl, who was illiterate and elder to him by a few months. Before the marriage, he was betrothed thrice- the third at the age of seven- without his knowledge; and the two girls chosen for him having died in turn. He recalled the marriage in his autobiography: " As we didn't know much about marriage, for us it meant only wearing new clothes, eating sweets and playing with relatives." The reason why Gandhi transformed into a Mahatma was his simplicity, firm commitment to truth- ‘a worshipper of truth’- absence of fear of consequences and the courage of conviction to practice what he believed.  

 

After the matriculation, Gandhi joined the arts stream in Samaldas College, Bhavnagar, but finding himself a misfit dropped out after the first term.  He wanted to qualify for the medical profession. His elder brother was against it as Gandhis being Vaishnavites should have nothing to do with dissection of dead bodies. Therefore, the wisest thing to do was to become a barrister.  That is how he went to England to study the Law, after taking a vow that he would not touch wine, women and meat. The Modh Bania community had declared him ‘outcaste’ for daring to define its diktat of not to travel to England as ‘it is not possible to keep our religion there.’

 

Gandhi, after qualifying as the barrister in London, had returned to India in1891 and enrolled in Bombay High Court Bar. However, he found it difficult to purse the legal profession. His first case in the Small Causes Court in Bombay was a very humiliating experience.  He took up the case of one Mamibai, charging Rs.30 as his fees.  He appeared for the defendant and was to cross examine the plaintiff’s witness.  He stood up to argue the case. He was trembling and could not ask any question; and ashamed of himself, he returned the money to the client and asked him to engage some other competent lawyer. He would walk from Girgaon to the High Court every day, and doze off in the court, having no briefs to argue. He responded to an advertisement for the job of an English teacher in a School, but the school principal rejected him as he was not a graduate.

 

The destiny was calling him for a bigger role. He was engaged by one Seth Abdul Karim Jhaveri, Ahmedabad, a partner of a big firm Dada Abdulla and Co.in South Africa, to take up their case there pending in a Court for a long time.  He would be their guest and would not have to incur any expenses whatever. Besides, he was offered a first class return fare and reasonable money in British currency. The offer was for a year.  This was a godsend opportunity for him. 

 

In April 1893, Gandhi set forth in a Ship from Bombay full of zest to try his luck in South Africa.  However, on his way to Pretoria, he had a very humiliating incident that changed the course of history and transformed him into a Mahatma.  The train that he was travelling reached Pietermaritzburg, the capital of Natal, at about 9.00 PM. A railway official came to his coach and asked him to go to the van compartment.  Gandhi pleaded, ‘But I have a first-class ticket,’ The official said, ‘It doesn’t matter...you must go to the van compartment.’  Gandhi refused to get out.  A police constable was called in and he was pushed out. He sat in the waiting room shivering in extreme biting cold, indignant and humiliated. This what he recorded in his autobiography: “I began to think of my duty. Should I fight for my rights or go back to India…It would be cowardice to run back to India without fulfilling my obligation…I should try, if possible, to root out the disease of colour prejudice and suffer hardships in the process…So I decided to take the next available train to Pretoria.”  A bronze statue of Gandhi commemorating the centenary of the incident at the Pietermaritzburg Railway Station was unveiled by Archbishop  Desmond Tutu in 1993.

 

On completion of his assigned work, with the Abdulla Sheth case settled favourably in arbitration, Gandhi was preparing to return to India. A grand farewell party was organised.  At the function, by chance he happened to read in a newspaper the caption ‘Indian Franchise’. It was about a Bill introduced in the Legislature, depriving the Indians of their right to elect members of the Natal Legislative Assembly. That opened his eyes. The people assembled there pleaded with him in a chorus to stay back and fight for the self-respect of Indians. ‘Thus, God laid the foundations of my life in South Africa and sowed the seed of the fight for national self-respect’, he wrote in his autobiography. He drafted a petition, opposing the Bill, and dispatched it to Speaker of the Assembly and the Premier, Sir John Robinson. He went on to stay in South Africa for 21 years fighting for the rights of Indians, voicing against the colour prejudice. And “in the face of the calamity that had overtaken the community all distinctions such as high and low, small and great, master and servant, Hindus, Muslims, Parsis, Christian, Gujaratis, Madrasis, Sindhis etc. were forgotten. All were alike the children and servants of the motherland.”

 

Gandhi finally returned to India in 1915. By that time, he became very famous for his experiments with Satyagraha and Civil Disobedience in South Africa. He travelled in India extensively in third class crowded compartments to understand the people and their problems. In 1917, he took up the cause of tenants of indigo plantations in Champaran who were exploited by the indigo planters. He started inquiring into the plight of peasants working in the indigo plantations.  The Magistrate ordered him to leave the place.  And on his refusal to leave Champaran, he was charged for disobedience and put on trial in a court. Gandhi pleaded guilty and made a brief statement:

 

“I have entered the country with motives of rendering humanitarian and national service. I have done so in response to a pressing invitation to come and help the ryots, who urge they are not being fairly treated by the indigo planters.  I have, therefore, come to study it with the assistance, if possible, of the Administration and the planters.  I have no other motive and cannot believe that my coming can in any way disturb public peace and cause loss of life…I feel that I could just now serve them only by remaining in their midst...the only safe and honorable course for a self-respecting man, is, in the circumstances such as face me, to do what I have decided to do, that is to submit without protest to the penalty of disobedience…but in obedience to the higher law of our being, the  voice of conscience.”

 

The Lt. Governor ordered the case to be withdrawn, and the peasants secured their rights.  Thus, India had its first direct object lesson in Civil Disobedience, setting a stage for long struggle- the Non-Cooperation Movement, the Civil Disobedience Movement, the Dandi March and the Quit India Movement- leading to Independence of India.

 

If the means are right, the end is bound to be right, is the central theme of Gandhi’s philosophy. He knew India well and reacted to her lightest tremors, gauged situations accurately and almost instinctively and had a knack of acting at the psychological moment. He had emphasized the moral approach to political problems as well as those of everyday life. Nehru said in his Autobiography: “What a wonderful man was Gandhiji after all, with his amazing and almost irresistible charm and subtle power over people...And his services to India, how vast they had been. He had instilled courage and manhood in her people, and discipline and endurance, and the power of joyful sacrifice for a cause, and, with all his humility, pride. Courage is the one sure foundation of character, without courage there is no morality, no religion, no love.” 

Gandhi came to represent India to an amazing degree and to express the very spirit of that ancient and tortured land. He was the born rebel, a revolutionary, with truth and non-violence as the cardinal principles of fight against oppression, that India had ever produced and would not see another like him for generations to come.