Mahatma Gandhi, the father of modern India

The most famous spiritual and political leaders
Dr. Moustafa Al-Abdallah Al Kafry
Mahatma Gandhi is the father of modern India, his philosophy is concerned with peaceful struggle as the most powerful weapon against the colonial powers of the Indian War of Independence against the English colonizers.
Gandhi is one of the most famous spiritual and political leaders of the twentieth century. He contributed to the liberation of the Indian people from British colonialism through non-violent resistance, and so the Indian people honored him with the title of "Father of the Indian Nation”. The Indian people also nicknamed him "Mahatma" meaning "Great Spirit".
Mahatma Gandhi (architect of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi) was born on October 2, 1869, in Porbandar, a small town in Gujarat on India s west coast, and his father was the state s prime minister. At the age of sixteen, Mahatma Gandhi married Miss Custor B, a girl of his age, arranged by their parents, and they had four children.
In 1889, Mahatma Gandhi traveled to Britain to study law, and he had pledged himself to study as promised to his mother. During the last days of study in Britain, he learned about the travels of (Algita), which is Hindu Sufism that is superior to the world and calls for asceticism and austerity and said: (These books guide to the truth) and studied the Torah and the conduct of world reformers. After completing his studies and obtaining his law degree, he returned to India thinking about reforming and leading his people from poverty, disease and ignorance to wealth, wellness, science and freedom. He has Noting that Indian women were oppressed and backward, Mahatma Gandhi demanded equality with men and urged them to fight for their full rights.
Gandhi studied law in London, United Kingdom, and returned to India in 1891 to work as a lawyer. In 1893 he signed a contract to work as a legal expert in South Africa. Britain, at the time, controlled South Africa. He lived there working to help Indians secure their rights, having noticed the mistreatment of Indians in that country.
Mahatma Gandhi moved from South Africa to the Indian subcontinent, and wanted to study the conditions of the Indian people and see the reasons for their backwardness and misery before embarking on his liberation movement. He was imprisoned after the Indian feudal lords accused him of inciting the people to revolt, and the peasants declared civil disobedience, so the prosecutor asked for the trial to be postponed to avoid strife, and then Gandhi was released to return to his activity.
In 1904, Mahatma Gandhi bought the newspaper (Al-Rai Al-Hindi) and made it a platform for his movement, awakening the oppressed from their deep slumber, then he bought a large land in Natal and established a cooperative farm in it, making it a safe refuge for every oppressed worker, and where he lived with the refugees, living asceticism and austerity with his wife and children, coarse clothes and cheap food, and on this farm, he fasted for the first time and was imprisoned three times.
Mahatma Gandhi was able to develop a method of action and struggle based on the principles of courage, non-violence, and truth, which he called the satyagraha method, which means upholding the truth, and the satyagraha approach promoted non-violence and civil disobedience, as the best way to obtain political and social goals. Mahatma Gandhi returned to India in 1915 and became the leader of the Indian National Movement some 15 years after his return to India.
On April 13, 1919, tens of thousands of Indian men, women and children gathered in a place called (Galeona Lalla Bagh) and the English general (Dyer) attacked them and opened fire on them, killing six hundred of them and wounding thousands, as his planes bombed the masses from the air and sent thousands of men to prisons. Mahatma Gandhi then announced the plan of no cooperation with the British until they acquiesced and -restore-d to India its right and the Indian people its rights and demanded:
• By giving up titles and honorary ranks.
• Refusal to buy government-held loan bonds.
• Strike by courts and jurists.
• Separation of disputes by civil arbitration.
• Refusal of civilian and military positions.
• Advocating for the economic independence of India.
• Boycott government schools and jobs of all levels.
The Indian National Congress held a meeting in 1920, in which it decided to demand independence and work to achieve it by legitimate and peaceful means, and Mahatma Gandhi was waiting for the power to persist in its tyranny to declare civil disobedience, and demanded in the meantime to rehabilitate the outcasts, who number no less than sixty million people, and received a great response from them, especially when he announced in front of the masses, saying: (It is better for me to be cut to pieces than to deny my brothers from the defeated classes, and if I am destined to be resurrected alive after my death, the maximum I want to be one of those outcasts to share the insults they receive and work to save them.)
Although Gandhi continued to advocate non-violence and peaceful struggle, in 1921 bloody battles broke out between Indians and English.
The British colonial power in India was doing its best to differentiate between Hindus and Muslims and sow sectarian division among them, and Mahatma Gandhi responded on October 4, 1921 by declaring solidarity with Muslims even though he was a Hindu. Following the arrest of the two Muslim leaders, the brothers, Muhammad Ali and Shaukat Ali, he broadcast a statement signed by fifty members of the National Congress banning Hindus from serving militarily and civilly with the English authority.
After spending nearly two years in prison, Mahatma Gandhi was released due to poor health. After his release from prison in 1924, the Mahatma temporarily retired from political activity, and retired to -restore- his ill health, and upon his return to political work Gandhi declared the following principles:
The -union- of sects is the only way to independence.
• Untouchables are citizens.
• Do not be aware of the English colonial power.
• Follow non-violence in word and deed.
• Combating grievances and redressing workers and peasants.
Mahatma Gandhi used the satyagraha approach to lead India s independence campaign. He was repeatedly arrested by the British colonizer for his political activities in South Africa as well as in India, and he felt proud to be thrown in prison for a just cause. His total prison term was 7 years. India gained independence in 1947, and India was divided between Hindus and Muslims, Hindus in present-day India and Muslims in present-day Pakistan, although Mahatma Gandhi had recommended that India remain united in which Hindus and Muslims lived together in peace.
At the end of 1944 and the beginning of 1945, India approached independence and fears of separatist calls aimed at dividing it into two states between Muslims and Hindus increased, and Gandhi tried to convince Muhammad Ali Jinnah, who was at the head of the advocates of this separation, to reverse his orientations, but he failed. The secession actually took place on August 16, 1947, and as soon as the partition of India was declared, religious unrest spread across India and reached such a level of violence that exceeded all expectations, with more than five thousand deaths in Calcutta alone. Gandhi was pained by these events and considered them a national disaster, and was further pained by the escalation of tensions between India and Pakistan over Kashmir and the many deaths in the armed clashes that erupted between them in 1947/1948 and began to call for the restoration of national unity among Indians. Muslims in particular demand that the Hindu majority respect the rights of the Muslim minority.
In order to stop the bloodbath in India due to the conflict between Hindus and Muslims, Mahatma Gandhi began a hunger fast on January 13, 1948 at the age of seventy-eight, and after five days of fasting the leaders of the conflict pledged to stop fighting, and Mahatma Gandhi ended his fast.
Gandhi s calls for the Hindu majority to respect the rights of the Muslim minority did not rise well, and some fanatical Hindu groups considered it a high treason and decided to get rid of him, and 12 days later, on January 30, 1948, a fanatical fundamentalist Hindu, who opposed Gandhi s program of tolerance between beliefs and religions, shot and killed him.
Prof. Dr. Moustafa Al-Abdallah Al Kafry
Faculty of Economics - Damascus University
Study Source: http://almustshar.sy/archives/10534

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