Mahatma Gandhi

Also called: Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, Gandhiji, Bapu, Father of the Nation · Topic: The National Movement: Gandhian Era · NCERT: Class 10, Ch 2 "Nationalism in India"; Class 10, Ch 5 "Print Culture and the Modern World"; Class 12, Ch 3 "Mahatma Gandhi and the Nationalist Movement"; Class 12, Ch 4 "Framing the Constitution"

Meaning

Mahatma Gandhi (Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, 1869–1948) was the leader of India's freedom struggle. He developed satyagraha, a non-violent way of resisting injustice, in South Africa. He returned to India in January 1915 and turned the national movement from a movement of the educated few into a mass movement. He led the Non-Cooperation, Civil Disobedience and Quit India movements, and he was assassinated on 30 January 1948.

Gandhi matters because he changed both how Indians fought British rule (without violence and with suffering taken on oneself) and who fought it: peasants, workers and women, not only lawyers and landowners.

Explanation

South Africa, 1893–1915: "the making of the Mahatma"

• Gandhi went to South Africa in 1893 to work for an Indian law firm. He settled in Durban and practised law. He faced racial discrimination almost at once. [2]
• The historian Chandran Devanesan called these years "the making of the Mahatma". The Gandhi who came back in 1915 was a different man from the one who left.
• What he built there:
• Natal Indian Congress (1894): he founded it to unite Indians in South Africa and to fight laws that treated them as lesser people. [2]
• Phoenix Settlement (1904): a settlement near Durban. Gandhi and his family lived there until he left for India. [2]

• Tolstoy Farm (1910): a shared-living farm near Johannesburg, named after the Russian writer Leo Tolstoy. Indians lived and trained there in non-violent resistance. It was closed and the settlers moved to Phoenix on 10 January 1913. [2]

• Satyagraha means "devotion to truth". It fights a wrong by taking suffering on yourself instead of causing suffering to others: you resist the opponent without hate and without violence. [2]

• The struggle began in 1906 and lasted eight years. It started when the Transvaal government passed a law forcing every Indian to register his fingerprints. Indians led by Gandhi refused to obey this insulting law. [2]

• Two habits started here and came to India with him:

• He worked to keep Hindus, Muslims and people of other faiths together.
• He argued with upper-caste Indians about how they treated low castes and women. He was ready to challenge his own community, not only the government.

The India of 1915 and Gokhale's guidance

• The Swadeshi movement (1905–07) had already widened the Congress. It drew in more people and made its demands sharper.
• Two camps inside the Congress:
• The militants, "Lal, Bal and Pal" (Lala Lajpat Rai, Bal Gangadhar Tilak, Bipin Chandra Pal), wanted direct, aggressive action.

• The Moderates, including Gopal Krishna Gokhale and Muhammad Ali Jinnah, wanted steady, lawful pressure.

• Gokhale (1866–1915) was Gandhi's political guru (teacher and guide). He founded the Servants of India Society in 1905 to train Indians of different communities and religions for welfare work. [3] Gokhale died in 1915, the year Gandhi returned and joined the Congress. [3]

• Gokhale's advice was to travel first and speak later. Gandhi spent a whole year travelling around India before he took any political stand.

The BHU speech (1916): from elite to mass nationalism

• Gandhi's first major public appearance in India was at the opening of Banaras Hindu University (BHU), Varanasi, in February 1916.
• He called the opening "certainly a most gorgeous show". Then he turned that praise into an attack:
• "Richly bedecked noblemen" (princes and rich men covered in jewels) sat in the hall.
• "The millions of the poor" were missing.

• His line was: "our salvation can only come through the farmer."

• The speech did two things at once:

• It stated a fact: Indian nationalism so far had been an elite affair, led by lawyers, doctors and landowners. [4]

• It made a promise: Gandhi would make nationalism speak for the whole people. [4]

• December 1916, Lucknow Congress: a peasant from Champaran (Bihar) asked Gandhi for help against the harsh indigo planters. This led directly to Champaran (1917).

• Why the poor were ready to listen: the First World War (1914–18)
• Income tax was introduced.
• Prices doubled between 1913 and 1918.
• Villages faced forced recruitment into the army.
• Crop failures and an influenza epidemic followed. The 1921 Census recorded 12–13 million dead.

The mass movements, 1917–1948

• 1917–18: Champaran (1917); Ahmedabad and Kheda (1918). These were the first local tests of satyagraha in India.
• 1919: Rowlatt satyagraha, then the Jallianwala Bagh massacre (13 April).
• 1921–22: the Non-Cooperation–Khilafat movement was launched (January 1921). After the violence at Chauri Chaura, Gandhi withdrew it (February 1922).
• 1929–30: the Lahore Congress adopted Purna Swaraj (complete independence) in December 1929. The pledge was taken on 26 January 1930. The Dandi March (12 March–6 April 1930) began the Civil Disobedience Movement.
• 1931–32: the Gandhi–Irwin Pact (March 1931); the second Round Table Conference (December 1931); Civil Disobedience relaunched and the Poona Pact signed (September 1932).
• 1942: after the Cripps Mission failed, Gandhi launched Quit India (August).
• 1947–48: freedom came with Partition (15 August 1947). Gandhi was assassinated on 30 January 1948.

Time, place and evidence

• Period: 1893–1915 in South Africa; 1915–1948 in India. The years 1915–1948 are called the Gandhian era of the national movement.
• Places:
• South Africa: Durban, Phoenix Settlement (near Durban), Tolstoy Farm (near Johannesburg), Transvaal.

• India: Varanasi (BHU, 1916), Lucknow (Congress session, 1916), Champaran (Bihar), Ahmedabad, Kheda, Dandi.

• Key people: Gopal Krishna Gokhale (his political guru); the militant trio Lal, Bal and Pal; the Moderates, including Jinnah; Leo Tolstoy (whose ideas he admired); Srinivasa Sastri, who succeeded Gokhale as head of the Servants of India Society in 1915. [3]

• How we know:
• The text of the BHU speech (1916), with the lines about "richly bedecked noblemen" and the farmer, used in NCERT Class 12, Ch 3. [4]
• The 1921 Census, which recorded 12–13 million deaths from hunger and epidemic during the war years.
• Historians' writing, such as Chandran Devanesan's "making of the Mahatma" view of the South African years.
• Reference accounts of the Natal Indian Congress, Phoenix Settlement and Tolstoy Farm. [2]

Don't confuse with

• Natal Indian Congress vs Indian National Congress: Gandhi founded the Natal Indian Congress in South Africa in 1894. He did not found the Indian National Congress; he joined it after returning in 1915.
• Phoenix Settlement vs Tolstoy Farm: Phoenix came first (1904, near Durban). Tolstoy Farm came later (1910, near Johannesburg) and was named after Leo Tolstoy. When Tolstoy Farm closed in 1913, its settlers moved to Phoenix. [2]
• Gokhale vs Tilak: Gandhi's political guru was Gokhale, a Moderate. Tilak was the "Bal" of the militant "Lal, Bal and Pal" trio.
• Lucknow 1916 vs Champaran 1917: at the Lucknow Congress (December 1916) a Champaran peasant only asked Gandhi for help. The Champaran satyagraha itself took place in 1917.

Prelims Hooks

• Gandhi reached South Africa in 1893 (Durban) and returned to India in January 1915. [2]
• South African satyagraha began in 1906 and ran for eight years. It was triggered by the Transvaal law requiring Indians to register their fingerprints. [2]
• Correct order: Natal Indian Congress (1894) → Phoenix Settlement (1904) → Tolstoy Farm (1910). [2]
• Gandhi's first major public speech in India was at BHU, Varanasi, February 1916: "our salvation can only come through the farmer."
• Gokhale was Gandhi's political guru and founded the Servants of India Society (1905). [3]
• The phrase "the making of the Mahatma" comes from the historian Chandran Devanesan, describing the South African years.

Mains Points

• South Africa was the testing ground and India the main field.
• Gandhi tested his method (satyagraha), his social programme (Hindu–Muslim unity, reform of how low castes and women were treated) and his ways of organising (Natal Indian Congress, Phoenix, Tolstoy Farm) on a small Indian community abroad. [2]

• His leadership in India was therefore not sudden. He had practised it for more than twenty years.

• The BHU speech marks the turn from elite to mass nationalism.

• Gandhi said openly that nationalism had been made by lawyers, doctors and landowners. [4]
• He kept his promise at Champaran (1917) and at Ahmedabad and Kheda (1918). The Lucknow meeting of 1916 links the promise to the action.

• The war years made people ready to listen: prices doubled, income tax was introduced, men were forcibly recruited, and 12–13 million people died. This gave Gandhi a mass base that neither the Moderates nor the militants had built.

• Gandhi took Gokhale's method but not his limits.

• From Gokhale he took study before action (the year of travel) and the idea of service through the Servants of India Society. [3]
• He rejected the Moderate habit of only petitioning the government, and he also rejected militant violence. The result was a third path: mass, non-violent satyagraha.

Related concepts

• Gandhi in South Africa
• Natal Indian Congress
• Indian Opinion
• Phoenix Settlement
• Tolstoy Farm
• Indian National Congress
• Moderates
• Extremists
• Lal Bal Pal
• Bal Gangadhar Tilak

Read more

• Gandhi's arrival: South Africa, the India of 1915, the BHU announcement