Mahatma Gandhi: From a Man Who Believed in Empire and in Empire to a Man Who Defeated That Empire
Together with his people, Mahatma underwent a long evolution. Not all of Gandhi's precepts can be adopted by Belarusians. Gandhi's tactics worked in a rule-of-law state, which the British Empire was. We have a different situation. And yet, the fascinating story of Gandhi's life and victory teaches each of us a lot. Because this is the story of finding "the only truly your path" and "happiness in your own soul."
"First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you. Then you win." This is Mahatma Gandhi's famous aphorism.
What was India like in the days when "they ignore you"?
When Gandhi was born, India was under British control. Most officials were British, with special rights, such as riding first class.
Relations in the village were semi-feudal: peasants paid taxes, land rent, and gave away part of the harvest. Most of them lived in debt.
The average life expectancy was 23 years.
Industry and infrastructure: mines, railroads, cotton processing factories - all worked to export wealth to the metropolis.
The British allowed newspapers, but censored them, opened three universities, but closed law schools in them.
In such a country grew little Mohandas Karamchand.
In general, young Gandhi wanted to become a doctor. But the older brother objected: "You are not of the origin to cut up corpses." Well, a lawyer is a lawyer.
Mohandas came from a wealthy family. Both his father and grandfather worked in very high positions in the colonial administration.
At the age of 13, Mohandas married a girl named Kasturba, a year older than him. To make it cheaper, the wedding was combined with the second one, of a cousin, a boy of the same age. After the wedding, the young "husband" continued to go to school.
Four children were born in the marriage. The eldest son, out of spite for his father, converted to Islam. He did not want to fight for India, to give up income. He worked as a lawyer, spent a lot and lived for pleasure. He visited his father's funeral incognito, and soon died of cirrhosis. And the other three sons became followers of Mahatma.
Rejection of sex
Gandhi's wife, Kasturba, remained illiterate all her life. Relations in the family were not easy. "My wife became the first example of nonviolent resistance for me."
"You have put everything on me, you have made me cry bitter tears, turned me into a slave!" - she reproached him. There was always someone visiting, eating in their house...
Once Gandhi invited a person from the untouchable caste to his house and in the morning was going to take out the chamber pot after him. With these actions, he sought to support the untouchables, many of whom worked as sanitation workers, Gandhi called them "children of God." "My wife did not want to allow me to take out this pot, but she did not want to do it herself," Gandhi recalled. She cried and swore, and her husband insisted that she do this work "with joy." A quarrel broke out, and Gandhi angrily pushed his wife out of the house. Then, of course, he repented.
In his youth, Mohandas was very jealous of Kasturba. He was afraid that she would cheat.
And at the age of 37, the couple decided to give up physical intimacy forever. "Finally, our marriage became happy and peaceful!" Mohandas wrote. For him, this was another spiritual exercise.
Gandhi was greatly influenced by an incident that occurred when he was 15 years old. Usually after school, the guy sat with his very sick father, but he always wanted to run to his wife. And then one day he said goodbye to his father, flew to Kasturba, and a few hours later learned that his father had died. Mohandas grieved all his life that he was not there. When the couple's first child was born and soon died, Gandhi considered it a punishment for his lust and greed.
Having given up physical intimacy at the age of 37, he finally threw off the stone of guilt. How Kasturba looked at it is unknown. Outwardly, she supported her husband in everything. Selling the house, giving away valuables and outfits, she lived with him in ostentatious poverty, often in the open air. Did she regret it? "The most important thing in life is to choose one direction and forget about all the others."
Gandhi in London
After school, Mohandas Gandhi, already the father of two children, decided to go to university. The guy chose one of the most expensive colleges in London: expensive means quality, he assumed. The large family did not want to let the guy go to Europe for a long time. When Mohandas decided to go anyway, the head of the community excommunicated him from the caste: "From today this child becomes a pariah" (Gandhi, who became famous several decades later, was accepted back).
At 19, Mohandas vows not to eat meat, not to cheat on his wife, and not to drink. Then the mother puts beads made of the sacred tulasi tree around his neck and blesses him for departure. Kasturba with two sons remains waiting at home
Gandhi stepped on European soil in a white flannel suit - he thought he would blend in with the crowd. But it turned out that Europeans wear white only in hot India.
At first it was especially difficult for him in Europe - he spoke very bad English: "I did not have time to understand the meaning of phrases, and even if I did, I could not immediately answer. I built every sentence in my head before uttering it. I didn't know how to use a knife and fork."
Ahead are years of learning about Western life and at the same time - about himself. Gandhi tries to dress like a real Englishman: "A silk top hat, a starched collar, a silk shirt and a dazzling tie of all the colors of the rainbow. A three-piece suit, leather patent leather shoes with gaiters, gloves and a cane with a silver knob." In his quest to become a gentleman, he signs up for dancing and violin. But neither one nor the other works for him. But vegetarian friends slip him books on the history of religions. He swallows them all, gets carried away with the Bible and the Koran, and turns to the theoretical foundations of Hinduism, which he had not been interested in before. In the book "Bhagavad Gita" (this is an "Indian Bible", written in the form of a dialogue between the hero-prince Arjuna and the god Krishna), Gandhi finds the foundations of his future teachings: selflessness and renunciation of wealth.
"Compressing Your Thought"
Despite good grades, Gandhi is a weak lawyer because he is shy.
The insecure young lawyer would fall into a stupor, turn pale, blush and could not say a word in court. "The world was spinning before my eyes, and I asked a colleague to read my speech!" But this played a role - in order not to get confused by excitement, Gandhi tried to speak little: "I made it a habit to compress my thought." From this was born his aphoristic style.
Gandhi found work in South Africa. He is hired by a Muslim merchant of Indian origin. Kasturba with two sons continues to wait for her husband in India.
When many years later the first black leader of the Republic of South Africa, Nelson Mandela, came to India, he said: "You gave us Gandhi, and we gave you Mahatma."
The 25-year-old lawyer Mohandas Gandhi did not know that Africa would make him a world celebrity and spiritual leader.
Great Soul
The Hindu term "Mahatma" - "great soul" - was called 46-year-old Gandhi by the writer, Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore. So this name stuck, although at birth Gandhi received the name Mohandas Karamchand.
Gandhi spent the years from 1893 to 1914 in Africa. In the shy lawyer, the talent of a mediator opened up, he was great at reconciling the parties. He earned good money from this. He was able to buy a good house and furnish it beautifully, moved his family.
On the side of Britain, he participated in wars with the Boers, descendants of Dutch colonizers, and with the Zulus, the indigenous people of Africa. One would expect that he would side with the oppressed, but no: here and there Gandhi defended the empire.
Then he still believed in the empire, in the fact that the future of India is as part of the empire, he just fought against racism in it. Then he still believed that in order to achieve equality, Indians need to adopt everything from Europeans: clothing, manners, etiquette - and thus join civilization.
Gandhi felt discrimination immediately: he came to court in Johannesburg in a European suit and an Indian turban. The guards took him out of the hall.
In Gandhi's time, the inhabitants of southern Africa were the British, the Boers, the autochthonous black population... and the Indians (South Africa today has the largest Indian diaspora in the world). Blacks and Indians are in a disenfranchised position, they cannot walk on sidewalks, ride in stagecoaches...
In the mid-19th century, the British invited Indian workers to sugarcane plantations. In order to lure them to the ends of the earth, each was promised a plot of land after five years of work. The Indians quickly populated a good part of the region, developed a business... But in 1867, diamonds were found here. British business seriously began to squeeze out Indian competitors. One after another, laws were passed against them in order to force them to sell land, business and leave.
One day, the authorities sent Gandhi to a trial in Pretoria. The man took a first-class ticket, sat in the compartment and drove, admiring the African nature. After some time, a companion entered the compartment. Seeing an Asian neighbor, he was furious! The conductors began to persuade Gandhi to move to the third class, intended for blacks and Asians, but he resisted, showing his legally purchased ticket. At the Pietermaritzburg station, the police threw Gandhi out of the train along with his suitcase.
The night in the waiting room at this provincial station became the most dramatic in his life. He wondered: return to India or continue to live in humiliation? And after a few hours he made a key decision.
Now the building of the small station in Pietermaritzburg is a place of pilgrimage. As is the prison in Johannesburg, where Gandhi sat with his associates.
We do not obey, but we do not hide
The authorities of British Africa planned to introduce registration: all Indians from the age of 8 had to register with the police and submit fingerprints. "As if we are a nation of criminals!" people grieved. The police received the right to enter the homes of Indians without warning for inspection. Disobedience threatened prison and deportation.
"It is better to die than to agree with such a law," responded Gandhi, who was already well known as a human rights activist.
His appeal was simple but innovative: we do not obey the unjust law, but we do not hide from responsibility. Gandhi called his method satyagraha, from two words in Sanskrit - perseverance and truth.
"Are you ready to fight evil to the end, lose your job, go to prison, endure torture, hunger and even die?" Gandhi asks the crowd of fans at a rally in the Johannesburg theater. It will be difficult, he warns. Without suffering, without restrictions, there is no result. But in the end we will win.
A full theater of hands rose in support. The first satyagraha began.
"It is impossible to stifle civil disobedience, just as it is impossible to put consciousness in prison," Gandhi writes.
In court for organizing a mass event, Gandhi proudly declares: yes, I am the leader of the civil disobedience campaign, I ask to condemn me in the strictest way, if only the respected court considers the Black Law fair. In response, a soft sentence - 2 months in prison.
Gandhi's tactics worked in a state governed by the rule of law, which was the British Empire. Its laws could be terribly unfair, but if something was not prohibited, then it was not punished for, and the judges were really independent of the executive branch.
Meanwhile, two thousand people publicly burned their registration certificates in protest.
The first Prime Minister of independent India, Jawaharlal Nehru, later wrote: Gandhi's merit is that he was able to deprive his people of fear, gave him confidence in the coming victory.
"Under British rule, the Indian people experienced first of all fear - all-consuming, oppressive, suffocating, fear of the army, the police, the tentacles of the secret services, fear of laws, prison, hunger ... It was against this ubiquitous fear that Gandhi raised his peaceful and resolute voice: "Do not be afraid!"."
Already in India, Gandhi always traveled only in the third class, emphasizing his closeness to the people. When he was asked why he travels in the third class, he joked: "Because there is no fourth."
The joy of prison oatmeal
Passions flared up, and in 1908 Gandhi was behind bars again. He was convicted in several cases for more than six months.
The prison turned out to be quite a decent place, Gandhi writes and adds: "The real path to happiness is to get into prison and endure suffering for your country and your religion." He rereads the Bhagavad Gita and gladly prepares oatmeal without sugar for all his cellmates.
Gandhi says that it is necessary to continue to irritate the government and fill the prisons. Willingness to endure in the name of the cause is evidence of conviction in one's rightness and seriousness of intentions. And people themselves massively go to prisons: they "lose" registrations, traders - licenses. People in groups demonstratively cross the border between colonies - this is also a violation of the law. The world community is shocked by the harsh punishments for these small, symbolic violations. "Gandhi contains an unthinkable spiritual power that turns ordinary people into heroes and martyrs," notes one of his associates.
In the end, the colonial authorities have to arrest so many people that there are not enough prisons. Gandhi is happy and confused. He is put in prison in Pretoria, in a cell without windows. His hands and feet are tied...
Public opinion around the world supported the peaceful protest, especially sympathizing with the imprisoned women. India also began to boil - and these are golden flows to Britain. The Viceroy began to make conciliatory gestures. The negotiations lasted a month. And finally, victory. The derogatory laws against Asians were repealed.
At the negotiations, Gandhi gives the local Minister for Colonial Affairs, General Jan Smets, self-made sandals. Participants in his protest marches walked in such. Interestingly: 26 years later, on Gandhi's 70th birthday, Smets will return his sandals with a joke: "I wore them every summer, although I did not feel worthy of following in the footsteps of such a great man."
The victory of the strike, of peaceful protests, incredibly inspired the 45-year-old Gandhi. He gathered his family and went home to India, where he had not been for more than 20 years, to spread his tactics to his homeland. And in his homeland he was already greeted as a hero.
A mistake the size of the Himalayas
In Africa, Gandhi fought against racism, and in India - for independence. But it was also an exclusively peaceful protest.
On the one hand, the Indians simply did not have weapons, they had nothing to oppose the British army and police. But there was another side.
Nonviolence was a rational strategy in the British Empire. For Gandhi, it was also a philosophy: "We are all of the same mold, we are all children of one creator. It is a mystery to me how people can take pride in humiliating another."
1919. India is tired of the First World War - almost a million Indians fought as part of the British army. Now they are waiting for new rights, freedoms, and perhaps the status of a dominion. Instead, the authorities decide to preserve the laws of wartime: "Anyone who, by words, or gestures, or images, attempts to incite discontent with the government shall be subject to life imprisonment or imprisonment with or without a fine." An indignant Gandhi declares satyagraha. The form comes to him in a dream - hartal.
Hartal is a ritual abstinence from business, both a fast and a strike. "Let the entire population leave their occupations for a day and devote themselves to prayer."
On April 6, all of India does not go to work. In addition, the participants of the satyagraha decide to violate the law on the sale of prohibited literature and print two of Gandhi's brochures. The demand for them is unthinkable. People vie with each other to demonstrate their courage, everyone strives to pay more and eagerly awaits arrests. Hundreds of thousands take to the streets without any organization from above... A real revolution begins: the people disassemble the rails, cut the wires.
In response, the authorities disperse rallies, arrange public floggings, and in Amritsar - the holy city of Sikhs - shoot a crowd. People there, in search of salvation, began to jump into the well ... 400 people died. Gandhi goes there to reconcile and comfort, but the police take him off the train.
Gandhi is devastated. He repents that he called on the people to protest when they were not yet ready to fight peacefully. He calls the premature satyagraha a mistake the size of the Himalayas.
Do not buy their goods
A year later, Mahatma expresses new proposals: to minimize contacts with the British (do not do business, do not hold positions, do not go to their schools) - and do not buy British goods.
And suddenly it turned out: the British in India are strong not in themselves, but because the Indians cooperate with them. Britain was especially affected by the fabric: the Indians stopped buying British fabric. Lancaster fabric manufacturers demanded that Gandhi be sent to a desert island.
"We refuse to participate in your political actions. We refuse to accept your value system, because we have our own and because we can manage ourselves." This thought changed the consciousness of millions.
"Our goal is not to drive out the British, but to build a new India"
Gandhi is on the rise, following the company of non-cooperation, he announces a campaign of disobedience... which did not happen because of the tragedy. In a small town, residents burned English fabrics in the square, and when the police tried to disperse them, they set fire to the police building. 21 people burned down.
Gandhi interrupts satyagraha. He believes that the people are not ready to build a new India. Acts of disobedience will flood the country with blood.
Associates try to dissuade, threaten, ask. Stopping now is irrational, they prove, you need to put pressure.
Our goal is not to drive out the British, but to build a new India, Gandhi says. We are waiting.
Soon Gandhi was arrested. He gets six years, comes out of prison barely alive after two: he developed purulent appendicitis.
For several years, Gandhi lives in an ashram. He spins, prays and meditates. In 1930, the British announce the collection of a commission that will deal with the fate of India. It - only imperialists. The Indian National Congress Party and Gandhi decide to fight for independence.
The idea comes in a dream
The idea of the action comes to Gandhi again in a dream. Salt is a very important product in a hot climate, where it constantly leaves the body with sweat. Salt was a state monopoly, as in many countries now - alcohol and tobacco. Gandhi proposed to organize a march to the town of Dandi, where deposits of sea salt lie directly on the coast. Ahead is 400 km, 78 people follow Mahatma. They stop in every village, and after 23 days, a multi-thousand demonstration arrives in Dandi. Gandhi evaporates the first spoonful of salt.
The authorities were amused by this: some kind of childish games, commented the Viceroy of India. The show of this semi-naked fakir is disgusting, wrote Winston Churchill.
And the people rejoiced: "Throughout the country, in cities and villages, the main topic of the day is how to get salt, we found the most bizarre ways. Since no one was well versed in this matter, we learned everything about it, printed leaflets with recipes, the salt obtained (an unattractive product) was shown with a solemn appearance and often sold at auction at wild prices," recalled the head of the Indian National Congress, Jawaharlal Nehru. And he repented: "We were ashamed that we doubted the effectiveness of Gandhi's method."
The resonance of the action is colossal. The authorities are no longer laughing. The head of the British secret police arrives in Bombay. Gandhi threatens to seize British salt mines. For this threat and a spoonful of evaporated salt, he and another 80,000 people end up behind bars for several months. The whole world sympathizes with them.
The authorities are forced to negotiate. The Viceroy offers Gandhi a compromise - the cessation of satyagraha in exchange for an amnesty for political prisoners, the abolition of the state monopoly on salt production, and permission for the activities of the Indian National Congress. Gandhi agrees.
His associates from the INC are in despair: why compromises, if complete victory is so close... Gandhi justified himself: the people are not yet ready for a peaceful revolution... The party breaks with him, he - with the party.
Boston Tea Party with Salt
According to legend, during a meeting with the Viceroy of India, Gandhi took out a bag of salt: "I will put a little salt in my tea in memory of the Boston Tea Party." Subtle trolling. Then, in 1773, the Americans sank a cargo of English tea in Boston Harbor. This marked the beginning of the American Revolution, which escalated into a war of independence.
The struggle for the untouchables
Even as a successful lawyer, Gandhi complained: I want to help people for real. For this, he even worked part-time as an orderly. Gradually, Mohandas decided: "The thing for which I live and will gladly die is the complete elimination of untouchability."
Untouchables in India are called the lowest castes, this is a huge number of people, 16-17% of society. Traditionally, they lived as outcasts, they were not allowed to use public wells, temples, schools, roads...
Since they have been engaged in the dirtiest jobs for generations, immunity allowed them not to be afraid of many bacteria and viruses. In a hot and humid climate, a huge population density and a low level of general hygiene, their isolation did not allow infections to spread. There is such an explanation.
The untouchables had their own movement, and their leader Ambedkar (he also studied law in London) hated Gandhi. He believed that the politician was promoting himself on their problems and simply wanted to get votes. Ambedkar himself converted from Hinduism to Buddhism, which does not recognize castes, and promoted such a solution among his own. He suggested a new name for his caste - Dalits, "oppressed." Now this name is considered the most politically correct.
In 1932, the British allocated the untouchables into a separate electoral curia, so that they would not intersect with other castes during the elections. Gandhi demanded that they be allowed to vote with everyone and declared a hunger strike.
"I was furious that he chose such a minor issue for his highest sacrifice," Nehru wrote (Gandhi was more of a philosopher, Nehru was a politician).
A week-long hunger strike bore fruit, not least because of the accompanying hypertensive crises. The people were terribly worried about the health of their "saint". As a result, the authorities specifically gathered on a weekend to vote for the abolition of the law. And the caste leaders adopted a resolution: the untouchables are given access to public wells, temples, roads, schools. In the presence of associates and journalists, Gandhi drank a glass of orange juice. Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore read him poems in Bengali.
Today, discrimination against untouchables is considered a criminal offense in India. The untouchables have their own party, have entered the courts, the government. In 1997, Kocheril Narayanan even became President of India. But caste conflicts still happen.
"Preaching disbelief in this system has become my passion"
What was Gandhi's secret? Charisma, charm, own mind. Parents wanted one thing from him, the empire - another, the party - the third. And he thought hard
Singer Dmitry Koldun Showed His Minsk Apartment Near Drozdy MANY PHOTOS 16
Singer Dmitry Koldun Showed His Minsk Apartment Near Drozdy MANY PHOTOS
The All-Belarusian People's Assembly approved the program of socio-economic development of Belarus for the five-year period. It has seven priorities 55
Comments