Who Was Mahatma Gandhi And What Was The Role Of Gandhi In The Freedom Struggle?
Born on October 2, 1869, Gandhi was raised to a Hindu family in the coastal area of Gujarat. By profession, he was an Indian lawyer. Out of his professional life, he was an anti-colonial nationalist and political ethicist who favoured nonviolence and peace to lead the successful campaign for India's freedom from the British Raj.
He led several Gandhi movements to bring Independence to India. He faced a significant challenge by religious pluralism in the early 1940s by a new Muslim nationalism that demanded an independent Muslim homeland carved out of India.
Apart from the Mahatma Gandhi major movement mentioned above, he led several other struggles for our country’s independence. Besides the contribution of Mahatma Gandhi to the Indian freedom struggle, we will learn about all movements of Mahatma Gandhi, which landed him the title of Bapu.
Mahatma Gandhi Early Life And Background: Gandhiji Movement In India
M.K. Gandhi’s full name was Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi was born to a Gujarati Hindu Modh Bania family in Porbandar (also known as Sudamapuri), a coastal town located on the Kathiawar Peninsula (earlier it was a part of the small grand state of Porbandar in the Indian Empire’s Kathiawar Agency). Gandhi’s father, Karamchand Uttamchand Gandhi served as the diwan (CM) of Porbandar state.
Mahatma Gandhi’s Early Life: Role Of Mahatma Gandhi In Freedom Struggle
Gandhi accomplished his training in law at the Inner Temple, London, and was called to the bar at age 22 in June 1891. After two undetermined years in India, he couldn’t start a successful law practice. Therefore, he moved to South Africa in 1893 to represent an Indian merchant in a lawsuit, where he lived for 21 years. He raised his first campaign on civil rights in South Africa with the notion of non-violence and peace. This was the initial movement started by Mahatma Gandhi in Indian history.
In the year 1915, at the age of 45, he returned to India. In India, he framed peasants, farmers, and urban labourers to fight against excessive land-tax and discrimination. After taking the leadership of the Indian National Congress in 1921, Gandhi led a nationwide protest for eradicating poverty, stretching women's rights, building religion and ethnic harmony, stopping untouchability, and above all for achieving Swaraj or self-rule (which was the Mahatma Gandhi Major Movement).
Now, let us go through the role of Mahatma Gandhi in the freedom struggle.
Movements Led By Mahatma Gandhi
Now, let us understand the Role Of Gandhi In Freedom Struggle:
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Additionally, in 1921, Gandhi embraced the utilization of an Indian undergarment (short dhoti) and a cloak (in the colder time of year) woven with yarn hand-turned on a customary Indian turning wheel (charkha) as an indication of recognizable proof with India's provincial poor. He additionally started to live unobtrusively in an independent private local area, ate straightforward vegan food, and embraced long diets as a method for self-refinement and political dissent. Carrying against provincial patriotism to the common Indians, Gandhi drove them in testing the British-imposed salt tax with the 400 km (250 mi) Dandi Salt March in 1930 and in requiring the British to stop India in 1942. He was detained ordinarily and for a long time in both South Africa and India.
Gandhi's vision of an independent India relying on religious pluralism was tested in the mid-1940s by another Muslim patriotism that requested a different Muslim country cut out of India. In August 1947, Britain granted independence. However, the British Indian Empire was apportioned into two territories, the Hindu-greater part India and the Muslim-larger part Pakistan. As many uprooted Hindus, Muslims, and Sikhs shifted toward their new terrains, strict brutality broke out, particularly in the Punjab and Bengal.
Gandhi's birthday is honoured in India as Gandhi Jayanti, a public occasion, and worldwide, this day is celebrated as the International Day of Nonviolence. Gandhi is usually, however not officially, thought of as the Father of the Nation in India and was popularly called Bapu.
After understanding the Role Of Gandhi in Freedom Struggle, now let us go through All The Movements Of Mahatma Gandhi:
Mahatma Gandhi Movements List
Below is the list of seven major Gandhi Movements:
World War 1
Champaran Movement
Khilafat Movement
Kheda
Non-cooperation Movement
Quit India Movement
World War I
Let us understand the Mahatma Gandhi Freedom Struggle from the above Mahatma Gandhi movements list in detail.
Lord Chelmsford, the then Viceroy of India, welcomed Gandhi to Delhi at a War Conference. To acquire the trust of the realm, Gandhi consented to move individuals to enroll in the military for World War I. In any case, he kept in touch with the Viceroy and said that he "personally won't kill or harm anyone, companion or enemy.”
Champaran Movement
The Champaran agitation in Bihar was Gandhi's initial dynamic involvement in Indian freedom politics. The Champaran farmers were being compelled to grow Indigo and were being tortured if they dissented.
The farmers looked for Gandhi's assistance, and through a determined, peaceful dissent, Gandhi figured out how to win concessions from the power.
Kheda
When Kheda, a town in Gujarat, was seriously hit by floods, the neighborhood farmers engaged the rulers to postpone the charges. Here, Gandhi began a mark crusade where laborers vowed non-installment of duties.
He additionally arranged a social boycott of the mamlatdars and talatdars (revenue authorities). In 1918, the Government loosened up the conditions of revenue tax until the starvation ended.
Khilafat Movement
Gandhi's effect on the Muslim population was terrific. This was apparent in his inclusion in the Khilafat Movement. After the first World War, the Muslims feared for the wellbeing of their Caliph or strict pioneer, and an overall dissent was being coordinated to battle against the falling status of the Caliph.
Gandhi turned into a prominent speaker and a representative of the All India Muslim Conference and returned the decorations he had gotten from the Empire during his Indian Ambulance Corps days in South Africa. His job in the Khilafat made him a public forerunner quickly.
Non-cooperation Movement
Gandhi had understood that the British had the option to be in India simply because of the co-activity they got from the Indians. Remembering this, he called for a non-cooperation development.
With the Congress' help and his unyielding soul, he persuaded individuals that quiet non-cooperation was the way to Independence. The dismal day of the Jallianwala Bagh Massacre set off the non-cooperation movement. Gandhi put out the objective of Swaraj or self-administration, which from that point forward turned into the maxim of the Indian freedom movement.
Salt March
Otherwise called the Dandi Movement, Gandhi's Salt March is viewed as an urgent episode throughout the entire existence of the freedom battle. In the year 1928, at the Calcutta Congress, Gandhi announced that the British should give India domain status or the nation will emit unrest for complete freedom. The British didn't give a thought to this.
Thus, on December 31, 1929, the Indian banner was spread out in Lahore, and the following January 26 was praised as the Indian Independence Day. Then, at that point, Gandhi began a Satyagraha crusade against the salt expense in March 1930. He walked 388 km from Ahmedabad to Dandi in Gujarat to make salt. A huge number of individuals went along with him and made it perhaps the greatest walk in Indian history.
Quit India Movement
During the Second World War, still up in the air to hit the British Empire with an authoritative blow that would get their exit from India. This happened when the British began selecting Indians for the conflict.
Gandhi fought emphatically and said that the Indians couldn’t be associated with a conflict that is agreeable to vote-based purposes when India itself is certifiably not a free country. This contention uncovered the contemptible picture of the colonizers, and inside a large portion of 10 years, they were out of this country.
Mahatma Gandhi Interesting Facts: Major Achievements To Independent India
Below is the list of major achievements or the major movements led by Mahatma Gandhi that conferred with the title Bapu, the Father Of India:
In South Africa, Gandhi protested racial discrimination.
After the event, when Gandhiji went to SA in 1893 as a legal representative of Indian traders in Durban, he faced the prevalent discrimination against people in terms of colour, and from there, he decided to start the battle against racial oppression.
In 1914, Gandhi led the Satyagraha movement in South Africa: the Indian Relief Act.
In 1915, Gandhi led the Champaran movement: He won his first battle of civil disobedience at Champaran.
Successfully led the non-violent resistance in Kheda in 1918.
Launched Quit India Movement in 1942, demanding freedom from British rule.
FAQs on Mahatma Gandhi
1. What was the Satyagraha movement?
In 1906, a law was ratified in South Africa stating that all-male Asians in the Transvaal Province must be fingerprinted and carry a form of pass. In reaction, Gandhi initiated the Satyagraha (‘truth-force) campaign with an ideology of non-violence. He requested Indians to protest the new law and to face punishments for doing so. In 1913, the campaign escalated a battle against a £3 tax on ex-indentured (forced to work by some contract). Indians and because the state refused to identify Indian marriages. Satyagraha was a 7-year long-term struggle during which were jailed around thousands of Indians, flogged, and even shot. In 1914, due to public roaring over the mistreatment of peaceful protestors, the Indian Relief Act was passed that removed the £3 tax, customary marriages were recognized and accepted, and Indians were permitted to move freely into the Transvaal.
2. What were Gandhi's views on women?
Gandhi emphatically preferred the liberation of women and encouraged "the woman to battle for their self-advancement." He battled against purdah, child marriage, dowry, and Sati. A spouse isn't a prisoner of the husband, expressed Gandhi, yet his confidant, better half, associate, and companion, as indicated by Lyn Norvell. In his own life, according to Suruchi Thapar-Bjorkert, Gandhi's relationship with his significant other was at odds with these values.
At different events, Gandhi credited his orthodox Hindu mother, and his better half, for his first exercises in satyagraha. He utilized the legends of Hindu goddess Sita to explain womens' inborn strength, self-governance, and "lioness in the soul" whose ethical compass can make any evil presence "as defenseless as a goat" To Gandhi, the Indian women were a significant part of the noteworthy "swadeshi movement", and his objective of decolonizing the Indian economy.
