Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, known as the ‘Father of the Nation’ is undoubtedly the most towering personality of the Indian freedom movement. He remained the colossus on the Indian scene for about three decades. He appeared in the Indian political scenario at a critical moment when the Moderate leaders were rejected and the Extremists and terrorists were frustrated. At this juncture Gandhi appeared like a powerful current of fresh air and like a beam of light to remove the darkness that had prevailed for so long. It was under Gandhiji that the nationalist movement in India became a mass movement and not a movement of the mere intelligentsia of India.
He carried politics from the drawing rooms and council chambers to the streets and fields. To quote Dr. S.R.Mahrotra. “By his personal charisma, by his capacity for mediating between various groups and forces, by his skilful use of popular myths and symbols and his interpretation of tradition for modern purposes, Gandhi drew into the national movement the peasants, workers, untouchable and women who had hitherto remained virtually untouched by it. He transformed the character of the congress by giving it a new direction, a new constitution, a new organisational structure, a new technique of agitation, a new leadership and a new programme of action. He broke the hypnotic spell of the British Raj in India”. He was an apostle of peace and nonviolence.
Gandhiji was born on 2nd October 1869 at Porbander in Kathia War. His father was a Diwan at Porbander and Rajkot. At school he was a mediocre student. After Matriculation he was sent to England for higher studies. After qualifying for the Bar in England in 1891, Gandhi returned to India and set up practice at Rajkot and then at Bombay. In 1893 he got an assignment from Dada Abdullah & Co., a rich Gujarati merchant to assist their counsel in a law suit. This offer proved to be a Godsend gift for Gandhi and he left for South Africa for the case.
His stay in South Africa was the formative period of his political career. There he put into practice his weapon of Satyagraha. He was shocked to see the ill-treatment shown to the Indians. Colour prejudice, apartheid and humiliation by Europeans fermented young Gandhi’s mind and he decided to protest against it. He protested against the discriminating treatment meted out to Indians, formed the Natal Indian Congress and suffered imprisonment. He protested against the Asiatic Act and the Transvaal Immigration Act and started his non-violent civil disobedience Movement. In 1914 the South African Government repealed most of the obnoxious acts against the Indians.
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After his success in South Africa Gandhi returned to India in 1915. Like the Moderates, he had great faith in the sense of justice and fair play of the British Government. But he knew that the Moderate methods of prayers, petitions would not be effective. He presented to his countrymen a middle path between ‘speech making’ and ‘bomb throwing’ and became very popular within a short time. Gandhi’s first experiment of Satyagraha was in 1917 in Champaran. He mobilised the peasants of champaran in North Bihar against the exploitation of European Indigo-planters. It was followed by his mobilisation of workers in Ahmedabad and the peasants of Kheda in Gujarat. With the passage of time Gandhi became increasingly disillusioned with the
British Government. During the First World War he had asked Indians to support the British Government with the hope that the Government would take progressive steps in the direction of realisation of Swaraj. The Rowlaft Act, the Jallianwala Bagh tragedy, and the Khilafat agitation completely shattered his belief in the justice and good faith of the British. Thus the process of transition from a loyalist to a rebel was completed by 1920 when he decided to start the non-violent non-cooperation Movement against the satanic government.