It was during the first days of January 100 years ago that Mohandas Gandhi returned to India.
He had first left his native country when not even 19 to train to become a barrister. He did not stay a day beyond the call to the bar. The ‘English Barrister’, as he called himself, did not settle down back at home. The years he spent abroad in England and then in South Africa — 26 in all — made the callow youth who had left Porbandar into a Mahatma.
Mahatma Gandhi is that rare example in modern history of a truly global person. Even while coming back to stay permanently in India, he came via London where he recruited soldiers for the Ambulance Corps to fight the War that had just begun. He was 45 by then and biographers had been already writing about him.
Over the next 33 years of his life, he never lost sight of the fact that India’s struggle for independence was part of a global movement against imperialism. The Khilafat movement, which he launched with a coalition of Hindus and Muslims, was part of his way of confronting the severe consequences of bringing Khilafat to an end after 1,200 years.
The Khilafat movement failed. Many attempts to cope with the absence of the Khilafat are still with us as ISIS has shown. What Gandhi accomplished instead was the peaceful dismantling of the British Empire. If there is a Commonwealth today and a thriving Indian diaspora in the UK, Australia, New Zealand and Canada, it is thanks to the revolutionary non-violent way in which he secured the surrender of the most powerful empire of his times.
He did his best to reform his own people. He could be a hard taskmaster, especially to those nearest to him, as Harilal found out. He tried to inculcate a sense of cleanliness and of the dignity of labour, the virtues of a simple life and dedication to the welfare of the least fortunate. He tried to simplify his own religion making it free of ritual, with ecumenical prayers rather than visits to huge temples. He had absorbed the best of Christianity and Judaism from his many friends in England and South Africa.
He expanded his understanding of his own religion by taking the best of Jain philosophy on board. He built bridges to incorporate the spirit of Islam as he saw it.
He did not proselytise his brand of the Sanatana Dharma. He believed that his own life would be the message which would disseminate his faith.
He triumphed over the empire thanks to his unrelenting and yet non-antagonistic battle. He used to speak out to the British soldiers posted at his large public meetings that his quarrel was not with them but with the empire. He explained to the textile workers of Lancashire that his boycott of foreign cloth was not directed against them but the system which oppressed them as well as his own people.
And yet it was his own people he failed with. Untouchability did not disappear as he thought it would using his peaceful methods. The caste system did not weaken. Only a handful went along with his idea of a simple life. The party he led for 30 years paid lip service but never signed up to his philosophy of non-violence.
It ignored his plea that the Congress should cease to be a political party and become a social reform movement. Indeed when the British Raj ended, the Congress Raj smoothly moved into power. There was no change in the power system, only in the colour of the rulers.
Finally his devoted disciples abandoned him at the last hurdle and accepted Partition. Later they disowned all responsibility, blaming it on Jinnah and the perfidious Albion. But they kept him out of the loop till after they had signed up.
He then did what came best to him. He laid down his life trying to correct the injustice of the Partition. To this day, many of his own people have not forgiven him for fighting for Pakistan’s rights. This is why he was killed and why they worship his killer.
See more at: http://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/columns/out-of-my-mind-the-man-who-came-back/99/#sthash.2iWW0glD.dpuf
courtesy : "The Sunday Express", Out of my mind; Posted: January 4, 2015
