Mohandas 'Mahatma' Gandhi

 

Mahatma Gandhi has come to be known as the Father of India and a beacon of light in the last decades of British colonial rule, promoting non-violence, justice and harmony between people of all faiths.

Born in 1869 in Porbandar on the Western coast of India and raised by Hindu parents, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi found many opportunities in his youth to meet people of all faiths. He had many Christian and Muslim friends, as well as being heavily influenced by Jainism in his youth. Gandhi probably took the religious principle of 'Ahimsa' (doing no harm) from his Jain neighbours, and from it developed his own famous principle of Satyagraha (truth force) later on in his life.

Gandhi hoped to win people over by changing their hearts and minds, and advocated non-violence in all things. He himself remained a committed Hindu throughout his life, but was critical of all faiths and what he saw as the hypocrisy of organised religion.

Even as a young child his morals were tested when an inspector of schools came to visit during a spelling test. Noticing an incorrect spelling, his teacher motioned for him to copy his neighbour's spelling but he stoutly refused to do so. And after being told that the power to the British colonial rule was their meat-eating diet, Gandhi secretly began to eat meat. He soon gave up however, as he felt ashamed of deceiving his strictly vegetarian family.

 
Gandhi in South Africa, 1906©
 
At 19 years old, after barely passing his matriculation exam, he eagerly took the opportunity to travel to Britain to become a barrister. In Britain, he met with Theosophical Society members, who encouraged him to look more closely at Hindu texts and especially the Bhagavad Gita, which he later described as a comfort to him. In doing so, he developed a greater appreciation for Hinduism, and also began to look more closely at other religions, being particularly influenced by Jesus's Sermon on the Mount, and later on by Leo Tolstoy.

After passing his bar, he returned to India to practise law. He found he was unable to speak at his first court case, however, and when presented with the opportunity to go to South Africa, left India again.

When he arrived there, however, he became disgusted with the treatment Indians faced by the white settlers. He exhorted his countrymen to observe truthfulness in business and reminded them that their responsibility was the greater since their conduct would be seen as a reflection of their country. He asked them to forget about religious and caste differences and to give up their unsanitary habits. He wanted his country men to demonstrate their suitability for citizenship by showing they deserved it. He spent twenty years in South Africa fighting for, and finally gaining Indian citizenship rights.

His experience in South Africa was not spent in merely the political, however. He had been interested in religion since he was a child, but he in South Africa he began to study religion systematically. In his first year there, he read over 80 books on religion.

When he returned to India, his immediate problem was to settle his small band of relatives and associates in an ashram, which was a "group life lived in a religious spirit". His ashram was a small model of the whole moral and religious ideal. It did not enforce on its inmates any theology or ritual, but only a few simple rules of personal conduct. More like a large family than a monastery, it was filled with children and senior citizens, the uneducated and American and European scholars, devout followers and thinly disguised sceptics - a melting pots of different and sometimes opposing ideas, living peacefully and usefully with each other. He was the moral father of the ashram, and would fast as penance when any wrong was committed within its walls. Everyone was bound to him by love and a fear of hurting him.

 
Gandhi leaves Downing Street during his 1931 visit to Britain©
 
His increasing influence over the Indian masses with 'satyagraha', which he first coined in his South Africa campaigns, was no less different. Gandhi's involvement with politics in the region meant that he had to tread carefully around the sometimes conflicting ideals of the Hindus and Muslims in the Indian National Congress. Although he initially believed that the British colonial influence was a good one, he was increasingly aware
that to be truly equal, the Indians would need independence from British rule.

When he and other members of the Congress were arrested on 9 August 1942 for promoting this idea, a wave of violent disobedience swept the country. Dismayed by the violent turn of events, he entered into a long correspondence with the Government, but civil unrest continued during and after the war period. It was only the deep love that he had inspired in the Indians, both Hindu and Muslim, for him, that enabled him to control the violence when he threatened to fast until death.

Just when the Indians had attained victory, and the British had formally left, he was shot at by a young Hindu fanatic, angry at a man for promoting peace and tolerance for people of all faiths.