Case Study: Gandhi and Satyagraha
Gandhi wanted people to live free of all class, wealth, and educational distinction, even those
imposed by India’s ancient caste system. The first thing he did was to build a different kind of
community where he could model this classless society. He dressed in the clothes a poor man would
wear and did chores an “untouchable” (people so low they were below caste) would do. Most Indians
thought he was absurd. But slowly his strange ideas were accepted until Gandhi came to be known
as ‘Mahatma’ or ‘Great Soul’.
Gandhi saw that India’s self-respect was tied to independence. But England was a giant with colonies
all around the globe. Indian politicians had grappled unsuccessfully with English power for almost a
century. How much harder it would be for the gentle Gandhi to succeed? Yet in the end, Gandhi did
succeed. The question is how?
imposed by India’s ancient caste system. The first thing he did was to build a different kind of
community where he could model this classless society. He dressed in the clothes a poor man would
wear and did chores an “untouchable” (people so low they were below caste) would do. Most Indians
thought he was absurd. But slowly his strange ideas were accepted until Gandhi came to be known
as ‘Mahatma’ or ‘Great Soul’.
Gandhi saw that India’s self-respect was tied to independence. But England was a giant with colonies
all around the globe. Indian politicians had grappled unsuccessfully with English power for almost a
century. How much harder it would be for the gentle Gandhi to succeed? Yet in the end, Gandhi did
succeed. The question is how?
Guiding Question:
Are satyagraha & non-violence effective methods of protest? In your discussion, be sure to analyze the British policies against which Gandhi was protesting, how his protests reflected satyagraha & non-violence, and whether these strategies were ultimately effective in ending British rule in South Asia. |
Directions:
Read the short biography on Gandhi and the sources provided below. You are to create an answer for the guiding question. You will be graded during a class discussion on the following criteria:
|
Click to expand the biography and read about the life of Gandhi →
|
|
Sources:
Source 1: The Salt March
|
Although Gandhi's act produced no immediate effects on British rule or repeal on the heavy salt taxes, news of his act of civil disobedience spread throughout the world. Reporters and photographers from all over the world sought to cover this
piece of history. Hundreds of thousands of people protested until Gandhi was released from jail. Once free, Gandhi was able to meet with Lord Irwin where they both compromised for the Gandhi-Irwin Pact. Through this pact Gandhi had to call off the civil disobedience movement, but he gained freedom for those who had participated in the movement and a representative in Congress at the Round Table conference in London. Besides Gandhi's political and media influence through the movement, Gandhi had a much more profound effect. The main objective in Gandhi's movement was nonviolent disobedience. Not only did Gandhi complete his movement following the Satygraha, but he created an example of thousands of followers who did the same. His goal was to cause change without harming others. When the masses also broke the law, many were beaten by British police before being arrested, but they all remained nonviolent. This movement also was an influence on future nonviolent protests, such as those of Martin Luther King who held Gandhi as a role model. Martin Luther King practiced Gandhi's similar philosophy, of peace to gain peace and justice, through the Montgomery bus boycott. Gandhi not only made an example of change through nonviolence for his time, but provided a model for generations to come. |
Source 2: The Hartal - March 1919
|
The idea came to me last night in a dream that we should call on the country to observe a general hartal... Ours is a sacred fight, and it seems to me to be in the fitness of things that it should be commenced with an act of self-purification. Let all the people in India, therefore, suspend their business on that day and observe the day as one of fasting and prayer...
Note: A general "hartal" in India was traditionally a day of fasting and prayer when all business activity ceased. To call for a hartal was to call for a one day work stoppage and boycott. Although the economic impact of this non-violent campaign was limited to just one day, Gandhi served notice to the British that the people of India could be organized against them. |
Source 4: Satyagraha and Non-Violence
|
Satyagraha often translated as "soul-force" or "truth-force"
"Passive resistance is a method of securing rights by personal suffering; it is the reverse of resistance by arms. When I refuse to do a thing that is repugnant to my conscience, I use soul-force. For instance, the government of the day has passed a law which is applicable to me: I do not like it, if, by using violence, I force the government to repeal the law, I am employing what may be termed body-force. If I do not obey the law and accept the penalty for its breach, I use soul-force. It involves sacrifice of self." |
In the Origin of Nonviolence, Gandhi offered a warning to those who were contemplating joining the struggle for independence.
"It is not at all impossible that we might have to endure every hardship that we can imagine, and wisdom lies in pledging ourselves on the understanding that we shall have to suffer all that and worse. If some one asks me when and how the struggle may end, I may say that if the entire community manfully stands the test, the end will be near. If many of us fall back under storm and stress, the struggle will be prolonged. But I can boldly declare, and with certainty, that so long as there is even a handful of men true to their pledge, there can only be one end to the struggle and that is victory."
"It is not at all impossible that we might have to endure every hardship that we can imagine, and wisdom lies in pledging ourselves on the understanding that we shall have to suffer all that and worse. If some one asks me when and how the struggle may end, I may say that if the entire community manfully stands the test, the end will be near. If many of us fall back under storm and stress, the struggle will be prolonged. But I can boldly declare, and with certainty, that so long as there is even a handful of men true to their pledge, there can only be one end to the struggle and that is victory."
Source 5: Parliament member Fenner Brockway, who was an advocate of Gandhism and Congress policies, addressed the House of Commons in an attempt to defend Gandhi and also to give a detailed account of the results stemming from the Salt March:
|
'At the beginning of the movement which is now being led by Mr Gandhi, the dominant response which was made to it was one of ridicule and of laughter. I do not believe that that is any longer the mood in India or the mood of those in this country who know the situation. We have the report from the very conservative Reuters Agency that at least half a million people took part in the great demonstration in Bombay last week against the Salt Tax. We have the statement of the very well informed correspondent of the Daily Telegraph that at least 1,000,000 people are actually illicitly making salt in the City of Bombay at the present time. So far as the district of Gujarat is concerned, throughout that district there is practically at this moment a civil rebellion, a rebellion which is just as effective because it is not violent, but where you have a whole population having absolutely lost its faith in British administration and by public acts declaring opposition to it'.
|
Source 6: Following extract taken from "The Last Lion: Winston Spencer Churchill Visions of Glory 1874-1932" by William Manchester
|
The origins of that day's controversy lay in a shocking episode. A few months after the war an Englishwoman, a missionary, had reported that she had been molested on a street in the Punjab city of Amritsar. The Raj's local commander, Brigadier General Reginald Dyer, had issued an order requiring all Indians using that street to crawl its length on their hands and knees. He had also authorized the indiscriminate, public whipping of natives who came within lathi length of British policemen. On April 13, 1919, a multitude of Punjabis had gathered in Amritsar's Jallianwallah Bagh to protest these extraordinary measures. The throng, penned in a narrow space smaller than Traflagar Square, had been peacefully listening to the testimony of victims when Dyer appeared at the head of a contingent of British troops. Without warning, he ordered his machine gunners to open fire. The Indians, in Churchill's words, were 'packed together so that one bullet would drive through three or four bodies'; the people 'ran madly this way and the other. When fire was directed upon the centre, they ran to the sides. The fire was then directed to the sides. Many threw themselves down on the ground, and the fire was then directed on the ground. This was continued for eight or ten minutes, and it stopped only when the ammunition had reached the point of exhaustion.' Dyer then marched away, leaving 379 dead and over 1,500 wounded. Back in his headquarters, he reported to his superiors that he had been 'confronted by a revolutionary army,' and had been obliged 'to teach a moral lesson to the Punjab.'
|
Source 7: Gandhi's letter to Lord Irwin, English governor in India, before marching to the sea and breaking the English Salt Tax Law
Sabarmati, India (March, 1930) |
Dear Friend,
Before embarking on Civil Disobedience and taking the risk I have dreaded to take all these years, I would ... approach you and find a way out. I cannot intentionally hurt anything that lives, much less human beings, even though they may do the greatest wrong to me and mine. Whilst therefore I hold the British rule to be a curse, I do not intend harm to a single Englishman or to any legitimate interest he may have in India.... And why do I regard the British rule a curse? ...Even the salt [the peasant] must use to live is so taxed as to make the burden fall heaviest on him.... The tax shows itself still more burden-some on the poor man when it is remembered that salt is one thing he must eat more than the rich man.... My ambition is no less than to convert the British people through nonviolence, and thus make them see the wrong they have done to India.... But if you cannot see your way to deal with these evils and if my letter makes no appeal to your heart, on the eleventh day of this month I shall proceed with such co-workers of the Ashram [Community] as I can take, to disregard the provisions of the Salt Laws.... |
Source 8: American journalist Webb Miller was an eye-witness to the beating of satyagrahis with steel tipped lathis. His report attracted international attention
Miller's first attempts at telegraphing the story to his publisher in England were censored by the British telegraph operators in India. Only after threatening to expose British censorship was his story allowed to pass. The story appeared in 1,350 newspapers throughout the world and was read into the official record of the United States Senate by Senator John J. Blaine. |
Not one of the marchers even raised an arm to lend off the blows. They went down like ten-pins. From where I stood I heard the sickening whacks of the clubs on unprotected skulls. The wailing crowd of watcher's groaned and sucked in their breaths in sympathetic pain at every blow.
Those struck down. fell sprawling, unconscious or writhing in pain with, fractured skulls or broken shoulders. In two or three minutes the ground was quilted with bodies. Great patches of blood widened on their white clothes. The survivors without breaking ranks silently and doggedly marched on until struck down. When every one of the first column was knocked down stretcher bearers rushed up unmolested by the police and carried off the injured to a thatched but which had been arranged as a temporary hospital. There were not enough stretcher-hearers to carry off the wounded,. I saw eighteen injured being carried off simultaneously, while .forty-two still lay bleeding on the ground awaiting stretcher-bearers. The blankets used as stretchers were sodden with blood. At times the spectacle of unresisting men being methodically bashed into a bloody pulp sickened me so much I had to turn away....I.felt an indefinable sense of helpless rage and loathing, almost as much against the men who were submitting unresistingly to being beaten as against the police wielding the clubs... Bodies toppled over in threes and fours, bleeding from great gashes on their scalps. Group after group walked forward, sat down, and submitted to being beaten into insensibility without raising an arm to fend off the blows. Finally the police became enraged by the non-resistance.... They commenced savagely kicking the seated men in the abdomen and testicles. The injured men writhed and squealed in agony, which seemed to inflame the litry of the police.... The police then began.dragging the sitting men by the arms or, feet, sometimes ‘for a hundred yards, and throwing them into ditches. Miller later wrote that he went to the hospital where the wounded were being treated, and "counted 320 injured, many still insensible with fractured skulls, others writhing in agony from kicks in the testicles and stomach....Scores of the injured had received no treatment for hours and two had died." |
Source 9: Divided India
|
As independence grew near, the Muslims, greatly outnumbered by the Hindus, worried for their own safety in a Hindu-ruled nation. The Muslim League, led by Muhammad Ali Jinnah, demanded that a separate Muslim state be created from Indian Territory. The nation was to be called Pakistan, Land of the Pure. Over Gandhi's strenuous and ceaseless objections, Jinnah's plan was adopted. An English Lawyer, Sir Cyril Radcliffe, was designated to work out the new boundaries in what has been called "the most complex divorce in history" - the division of 400,000,000 people who had shared a single country for more than 1,000 years.
|