Gandhi & Satyagraha

Mohandas Gandhi was born in 1869 in the Indian coastal city of Porbandar (Background Essay). He then studied law in London, where he noticed that Indians were expected to imitate their rulers, the Englishmen (Background Essay). Gandhi wanted all people to live free, even those imposed by India’s caste system so he decided to take action in a peaceful manner (Background Essay). By doing so he was able to gain India’s independence in 1947 (Background Essay). This caused Gandhi to be known as “ Mahatma” or “ Great Soul” because he was able to do it without violence (Background Essay). Gandhi’s nonviolent movement worked because he accepted the consequences to his actions, strived for fairness to all mankind, and didn’t think of the British as enemies.

Mohandas Gandhi was the first recorded individual to adopt a non-violent method based form for change. His primary objective was for people of all ethnicities and social class to live freely amongst each other, even those inflicted upon by India’s ancient caste system.

To start, Mohandas Gandhi's goal was to March peacefully and without violence.” My ambition is no less than to convert the British people through non-violence, and thus make them see the wrong they have done to India... but if you cannot see your way to deal with this evils and if my letter makes no appeal to your heart... to

He outed the moral and political philosophy of satyagraha, or nonviolent resistance, which he had developed while in South Africa. His message to Indians was simple: develop your own resources and control the instincts and activities that encourage membership in colonial economy and government, and you shall achieve swaraj or self-rule. Faced with Indian self-reliance and self-control pursued nonviolently, Gandhi claimed, the British eventually would have to leave. When the Depression struck India in 1930, Gandhi asked for his people not to use salt showing his new way of civil disobedience. Salt symbolized tasked the Indians' defeat to an alien government. To break the colonial government's control, Gandhi began a 240-mile march from western India to the coast to gather sea salt for free. With him were seventy-one followers representing different regions of India. Thousands of people met around and encouraging them to hold independence from British rule. (Pollard, Rosenberg, Tignor 2015 Pages

M.K. Gandhi was an Indian who protested successfully against Britain and ultimately influenced future events around the world. Gandhi’s most successful tactic to gain Indian independence was “Satyagraha” or passive resistance because the majority of society would disagree with the opponent, they will continue to protest no matter what, and it was successfully used in the Salt March. Firstly, using this tactic, about 80 Indian citizens were publically brutalized by British authorities which greatly influenced the world against them because an eyewitness wrote and sent thousands of newspapers, talking about British police brutality, around the world. For example, in Source 3 the text says, “Webb Miller’s eyewitness account was published in over a thousand newspapers around the world.”

By using the principle of individual autonomy, rather than civil disobedience, Gandhi created “Satyagraha”, a nonviolent resistance to unfair laws.

Gandhi, a man who believes in defending all human rights no matter the cause. Furthermore, “Gandhi developed his philosophy of “Satyagraha,” or resistance through non-violent civil disobedience to defend his rights and the rights of all Indians and non-whites” (Satyagraha: Gandhi's Legacy). Satyagraha is consisting of boycotts, protests marches, and fasts. Conversely, many people use this philosophy for their own beliefs of inspiring. Another example is that South Africa was a place where non-whites were treated less (Satyagraha: Gandhi’s Legacy). Gandhi first discovered that these types of ways were wrong in the country and other parts of the world. One more example is that “Several political and spiritual leaders were inspired by Gandhi’s work, including Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Nelson Mandela” (Satyagraha: Gandhi's Legacy). Gandhi prevails as a man

In 1906, Gandhi organized his first first giant civil-disobedience campaign which he called Satyagraha” (truth and firmness), reacting to the government's new restrictions on the rights of Indians, including not recognizing Hindu marriages. Years and years of protests went by with the government imprisoning hundreds of Indians, including Gandhi.

In 1893, while riding a first-class train carriage, he was ejected due to his skin color (Hardiman). Appalled at the treatment of Indian immigrants, he creates the Indian Congress in Natal to fight segregation by promoting satyagraha, a non-violent protests. In 1913, Gandhi organized a strike against a £3 tax on people of Indian descent (Hardiman). To protest this discriminatory tax, he led a march from Natal into the Transvaal in an act of public disobedience which forced Britain to drop the tax. This type of protest encompasses his philosophy of civil disobedience because “instead of deflecting the violence of the oppressor back onto the oppressor, the oppressed absorbs it willingly” (Stockdale). By not not reacting to the treatment and reverting to violent shows that the oppressor’s unjust actions no longer were no longer an effective tool for ruling disenfranchised people. In the following year, Gandhi explains the power of satyagraha in his “Theory and Practice of Passive Resistance”. In this writing, he shuts down the superstition that civil disobedience is only for the weak when they have no other means to fight back. He proposing the idea that “only those who realise that there is something in man which is

Gandhi is considered by many around the world as the father of the Indian independence movement. Gandhi spent over 20 years in South Africa working to fight discrimination. It was in South Africa that he developed his concept of Satyagraha, a non-violent way of protesting against discrimination. The first time Gandhi used Satyagraha was in South Africa beginning in 1907 when he organized opposition to the Black Act. In 1907, the Black Act was passed, requiring all Indians to keep registration documents on them at all times.

Aroused by the massacre of Amritsar in 1919, Gandhi devoted his life to gaining India’s independence from Great Britain. As the dominant figure used his persuasive philosophy of non-violent confrontation, he inspired political activists with many persuasions throughout the world (Andrews 23). Not only was Mahatma Gandhi a great peacemaker, but also his work to achieve freedom and equality for all people was greatly acknowledged. Gandhi’s unconventional style of leadership gained him the love of a country and eventually enabled him to lead the independence movement in India.

Gandhi believed that if the Satyagrahis maintained a strong posture, then satyagraha would become even more effective.

Einstein was a master and innovator of physics and Gandhi was likewise for the moral and political domains. Reading copious amounts of books and absorbing knowledge were characteristic of both early on in their lives. Einstein’s favored authors of James C Maxwell and Aaron Bernstein would center his fascination in the world of physics. Gandhi was well versed in all the works of the major religions and gained influence from writers such as Leo Tolstoy and Henry Thoreau. Their innovations were not wholly original, as many aspects of relativity can be found in the works of Lorentz and Poincaré and many parts of satyagraha can be found in the teachings of Christ and Tolstoy amongst

Mohandas Karmchand Gandhi was born during the British rule in India on October 2, 1869. Gandhi in the year of 1888 was sent to England to pursue law, where he developed interest in the philosophy of nonviolence as expressed in the holy Bhagawad Gita, a scared text of Hindu scriptures. However after passing the bar, he found little accomplishment in his attempt to practice law in India, which is when he accepted a position in South Africa, where he assisted on a lawsuit. (Mohandas Gandhi, 2015)

Intrigued by the letter, Gandhi wrote to Tolstoy, asking for permission to translate the letter to Guajarati, in an effort to share Tolstoy’s wisdom with the others in the community. Gandhi continually sought advice from Tolstoy from that point onwards; the correspondence between the two went on until 1910 when Tolstoy passed away. The letter profoundly shaped young Gandhi’s Satyagraha ideology, setting a robust basis that Gandhi further develops.