Mahatma Gandhi

"If we could change ourselves, the tendencies in the world would also change. As a man changes his own nature, so does the attitude of the world change towards him. We need not wait to see what others do." 

October 2 holds very special importance for Indians. Some waits for this day to enjoy National Holiday and some sees this as the birthday of two very important personalities of India, who changed the course of modern Indian history and politics. By now you must have guessed the names of these men – Mahatma Gandhi and Lal Bahadur Shastri.

In honour of our greatest political leader of the time, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, the 2nd of October is declared as a national holiday throughout India. Gandhi Jayanti is celebrated by offering prayer services and tribute to Gandhi ji all over India and especially at Rajghat where his remains lay.

The UN General Assembly announced on 15 June 2007 that it adopted a resolution which declared that 2nd October will be celebrated as the International Day of Non-violence. He is also known as the"Father of The Nation"and this title was given to him by Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose for his relentless struggles for our independence. 

Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi was born on 02-oct-1869 in Porbandar, Gujarat. At age 11, he joined the High School in Rajkot, Alfred High School. He was an average student, won some prizes, but was a shy and tongue tied student, with no interest in games; his only companions were books and school lessons. In May 1883, the 13-year-old Mohandas was married to 14-year-old Kasturbai Makhanji Kapadia.

At University College, London, he studied law and jurisprudence and was invited to enroll at Inner Temple with the intention of becoming a barrister. His childhood shyness and self-withdrawal had continued through his teens. He retained these traits when he arrived in London, but joined a public speaking practice group and overcame his shyness sufficiently to practise law.

He moved to South Africa in 1893 to represent an Indian merchant in a lawsuit. He went on to live in South Africa for 21 years. Immediately upon arriving in South Africa, Gandhi faced discrimination because of his skin colour and heritage, like all people of colour. He was not allowed to sit with European passengers in the stagecoach and told to sit on the floor near the driver, then beaten when he refused; elsewhere he was kicked into a gutter for daring to walk near a house, in another instance thrown off a train at Pietermaritzburg after refusing to leave the first-class. It was in South Africa that Gandhi raised a family and first employed nonviolent resistance in a campaign for civil rights. In 1915, aged 45, he returned to India. He set about organising peasants, farmers, and urban labourers to protest against excessive land-tax and discrimination. Assuming leadership of the  Indian National Congress in 1921, Gandhi led nationwide campaigns for easing poverty, expanding women's rights, building religious and ethnic amity, ending untouchability, and above all for achieving Swaraj or self-rule.

There are number on compaigns initiated by Gandhi ji for the independence of India. Many times, these compaigns led him to prisons and tortures, but how an Indian can give up. So he stood strong to face each and every problem.

His compaigns are as follows:

• Champaran agitations: Gandhi's first major effort came in 1917 with the Champaran agitation in Bihar. The Champaran agitation pitted the local peasantry against their largely British landlords who were backed by the local administration. The peasantry was forced to grow Indigofera, a cash crop for Indigo dye whose demand had been declining over two decades, and were forced to sell their crops to the planters at a fixed price. 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.

• Kheda agitations: In 1918, Kheda was hit by floods and famine and the peasantry was demanding relief from taxes. Gandhi moved his headquarters to Nadiad, organising scores of supporters and fresh volunteers from the region, the most notable being Vallabhbhai Patel, Using non-co-operation as a technique, Gandhi initiated a signature campaign where peasants pledged non-payment of revenue even under the threat of confiscation of land. 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 1918, the Government gave way on important provisions and relaxed the conditions of payment of revenue tax until the famine ended.

• Khilafat movement: In 1919, 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. Gandhi's support to the Khilafat movement led to mixed results. 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.

His support for the Khilafat movement also helped him sideline Muhammad Ali Jinnah, who had announced his opposition to the satyagraha non-co-operation movement approach of Gandhi. 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. By the end of 1922 the Khilafat movement had collapsed.

• Non-co-operation: The movement arose from the widespread outcry in India over the massacre at Amritsar in April 1919, when the British-led troops killed several hundred Indians. That anger was later compounded by indignation at the government’s alleged failure to take adequate action against those responsible, notably Gen. Reginald Edward Harry Dyer, who had commanded the troops involved in the massacre. Gandhi strengthened the movement by supporting (on nonviolent terms) the contemporaneous Muslim campaign against the dismemberment of the Ottoman Empire after World war-I.

The movement was to be nonviolent and to consist of Indians resigning their titles; boycotting government educational institutions, the courts, government service, foreign goods, and elections; and, eventually, refusing to pay taxes. Noncooperation was agreed to by the  Indian National Congress at Calcutta in September 1920 and launched that December. In 1921 the government, confronted with a united Indian front for the first time, was visibly shaken, but a revolt by the Muslim Moplahs of Kerala (southwestern India) in August 1921 and a number of violent outbreaks alarmed moderate opinion. After an angry mob murdered police officers in the village of Chaura chauri (now in Uttar Pradesh state) in February 1922, Gandhi himself called off the movement; the next month he was arrested without incident. The movement marked the transition of Indian nationalism from a middle-class to a mass basis.

• Salt Satyagraha: Salt March, also called Dandi March or Salt Satyagraha, major nonviolent protest action inIndia led by Mahatma Gandhi in March-April 1930. Thee March was the first act in an even-larger compaign of civil disobedience, Gandhi waged against British rule in India that extended into nearly 1931 and garnered Gandhi widespread support among the Indian populace and considerable worldwide attention.

In early 1930 Gandhi decided to mount a highly visible demonstration against the increasingly repressive salt tax by marching through what is now the western Indian state of Gujarat from his ashram (religious retreat) at Sabermati (near Ahmadabad) to the town of Dandi (near Surat) on the Arabian Sea coast. He set out on foot on March 12, accompanied by several dozen followers. After each day’s march the group stopped in a different village along the route, where increasingly larger crowds would gather to hear Gandhi rail against the unfairness of the tax on poor people. Hundreds more would join the core group of followers as they made their way to the sea until on April 5 the entourage reached Dandi after a journey of some 240 miles (385 km).

On the morning of April 6, Gandhi and his followers picked up handfuls of salt along the shore, thus technically “producing” salt and breaking the law. No arrests were made that day, and Gandhi continued his satyagraha against the salt tax for the next two months, exhorting other Indians to break the salt laws by committing acts of civil disobedience. Thousands were arrested and imprisoned, including  Pt. Jawaharlal Nehru in April and Gandhi himself in early May after he informed Lord Irwin of his intention to march on the nearby Dharasana saltworks. News of Gandhi’s detention spurred tens of thousands more to join the satyagraha. The march on the saltworks went ahead as planned on May 21, led by the poet Sarojini Naidu, and many of the some 2,500 peaceful marchers were attacked and beaten by police. By the end of the year, some 60,000 people were in jail.

Gandhi was released from custody in January 1931 and began negotiations with Lord Irwin aimed at ending the satyagraha campaign. A truce subsequently was declared, which was formalized in the Gandhi-Irwin Pact that was signed on March 5.

•World War II and Quit India Movement: On 8 August 1942 at the All-India Congress Committee session in Bombay, Gandhi ji launched the 'Quit India' movement. The next day, Gandhi, Nehru and many other leaders of the Indian National Congress were arrested by the British Government. 

By the middle of 1942, Japanese troops were approaching the borders of India. Pressure was mounting from China, the United States and  Britain to solve the issue of  the future status of India before the end of the war. In March 1942, the Prime Minister dispatched Sir Stafford Cripps, a member of the War Cabinet, to India to discuss the British Government's Draft Declaration. The draft granted India Dominion status after the war but otherwise conceded few changes to the British Government Act of 1935. The draft was unacceptable to the Congress Working Committee who rejected it. The failure of the Cripps Mission further estranged the congress and the British Government.

Gandhi ji seized upon the failure of the Cripps Mission, the advances of the Japanese in South-East Asia and the general frustration with the British in India. He called for a voluntary British withdrawal from India. From 29 April to 1 May 1942, the All India Congress Committee assembled in Allahabad to discuss the resolution of the Working Committee. Although Gandhi was absent from the meeting, many of his points were admitted into the resolution: the most significant of them being the commitment to non-violence. On 14 July 1942, the Congress Working Committee met again at Wardha and resolved that it would authorise Gandhi ji to take charge of the non-violent mass movement. The Resolution, generally referred to as the 'Quit India' resolution, was to be approved by the All India Congress Committee meeting in Bombay in August.

On 7 to 8 August 1942, the All India Congress Committee met in Bombay and ratified the 'Quit India' resolution. Gandhi called for 'Do or Die'. The next day, on 9 August 1942, Gandhi, members of the Congress Working Committee and other Congress leaders were arrested by the British Government under the Defence of India Rules. The Working Committee, the All India Congress Committee and the four Provincial Congress Committees were declared unlawful associations under the Criminal Law Amendment Act of 1908. The assembly of public meetings were prohibited under rule 56 of the Defence of India Rules. The arrest of Gandhi and the Congress leaders led to mass demonstrations  throughout India. Thousands were killed and injured in the wake of the 'Quit India' movement. Strikes were called in many places. The British swiftly suppressed many of these demonstrations by mass detentions; more than 100,000 people were imprisoned.

The 'Quit India' movement, more than anything, united the Indian people against British rule. Although most demonstrations had been suppressed by 1944, upon his release in 1944 Gandhi continued his resistance and went on a 21-day fast. By the end of the Second World War, Britain's place in the world had changed dramatically and the demand for independence could no longer be ignored.

On 15th August 1947 the efforts of all the revolutionaries alongwith Mahatma Gandhi and the dream of independence of every Indian comes true.

The personality who shares his birthday with the Mahatma, Lal Bahadur Shastri, was the second Prime Minister of independent India. Not many people remember his birthday, but he was one of the most dynamic leaders of his time. Very few know that this great leader was an ardent follower of Mahatma Gandhi.

Lal Bahadur Shastri was the person who revolutionised the agricultural sector of India. The White Revolution in India took roots under his leadership. He worked extensively to eliminate social problems like food shortage, unemployment and poverty in India. His greatest achievements in his political career were the victory against Pakistan in the 1965 Indo-Pak war.

It is during this time when Lal Bahadur Shastri gave the famous slogan of 'Jai Jawan, Jai Kisan', hailing the soldiers and the farmers. Apart from many outstanding national policies, Lal Bahadur Shastri also contributed significantly to India's foreign policies until his sudden death.

So, we celebrate the birthdays of the two most important personalities of India on the 2nd of October every year. One of them was the most prominent person in history while others gave our country a move into the modern world.

 

"The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is an attribute of the strong."