Gandhi’s Key Concepts of Passive Resistance, Non-violence, and Self-rule

In conclusion, Mahatma Gandhi was the primary leader of India’s independence movement and also the architect of a form of non-violent civil disobedience that would influence the world. He died sadly in 1948 when. Around one million people followed the precision as Gandhi’s body was carried in state through the streets of the

Gandhi called his overall nonviolence actions, Satyagraha. The best example of Gandhi’s nonviolence is the salt march of 1930. The salt tax charged for something they need to live. Gandhi led the protest of 240-miles march and when the people reached the sea, they

“If you make laws to keep us suppressed in a wrongful manner and without taking us into confidence, these laws will merely adorn the statue books. We will never obey them”(1). Mohandas Gandhi expressed this in his writing “On Nonviolent Resistance”. “Civil disobedience” is when people use their voice by protesting, non-violently, to stick up against unjust laws and unjust movements. The truths and values are proven and brought to attention in the writings of Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr, and Henry David Thoreau. Civil disobedience can be the solution to unjust laws and violence around the world.

"You must not lose faith in humanity. Humanity is an ocean; if a few drops of the ocean are dirty, the ocean is not." -Mahatma Gandhi. Gandhi was a powerhouse, a leader, and an activist. He started the Salt March, which was a movement that created a new light for the people involved in it.

Mahatma Gandhi was the leader of the Indian independence movement against British rule. He proposed a speech to all of his followers explaining what his resolution was to gain independence, without using violence. Mahatma Gandhi adopts a subtle and affirmative tone while revealing that non violence and the spreading of love is the way to approach this movement for independence. He also portrays his outline for the movement by appealing to the audience's emotions.

Throughout history, many conflicts have happened, some with resolution, and other without. We often tend to think of solving conflicts with war, since most of our history classes are based around World War I, World War II, and so forth, but many conflicts were fought, and successfully won using nonviolent resistance. Many people would use Gandhi as a well known example. Gandhi’s plan of civil disobedience revolved around this big idea called “satyagraha,” which he explains as, “a satyagrahi should always possess civility and humility, qualities that indicated self-control and an humble approach to truth” (Gandhi 50). He later explains that satyagraha is “truth-force” and that truth is soul and spirit, or “spirit-force.” “It excludes the use of violence because man is not capable of knowing the absolute truth and, therefore, not competent to punish” (51). He used this strategy to fight for indian independence. Many other incidents in the world have been fought using civil disobedience, including Women’s Suffrage.

The registration required Indians to submit to physical examinations, provide fingerprints, and carry a registration certificate at all times. Otherwise they could be fined, imprisoned, or deported. Gandhi led a campaign of civil disobedience in retaliation to the ordinance and several other laws over the next eight years. This is when Gandhi introduced the term Satyagraha. Satyagraha, translates to “insistence on the truth”. Gandhi advocated the concept of Satyagraha as a powerful but nonviolent resistance to discrimination. He used it to bring about social and political reforms. Satyagraha would profoundly influence the Indian struggle for independence in later

When Gandhi was trying to prove a point he did two main things, he would get arrested or he would stop eating. One of the main ways he got the Indians to stop using violence against the English was through not eating. He would not eat for days and sometimes weeks just to get his people to stop fighting. Although the founding father of civil disobedience was Henry David Thoreau but Gandhi was the first to really adopt the lifestyle of non-violence, he took constant beatings to show that being violent wa snot the answer. There was two different ways that Gandhi looked at violence, passive and physical. Passive meaning that you get under someone's skin and provoke the physical violence from the person. Physical obviously meaning physically harming someone or something. Gandhi used the term “Ahimsa”, which translates to nonviolence in english, when talking about nonviolence. The term means that no violence is okay passive nor physical. Gandhi also believed that violence was not a natural thing of humans, he believed it was learned through experience.

Born on October 2nd, 1869, Mahatma Gandhi studied the law and spoke for the civil rights of the citizens of India both in India and South Africa to be freed from Great Britain. Gandhi became a leader of the Indians fight for independence, organizing boycotts against the British, in forms of civil disobedience. He was killed in 1948.

He believed that truth and nonviolence, above all were of the highest value. Raghavan Iyer, in discussing the writings of Gandhi states “Gandhi teaches that Truth is God, and that it is our sacred duty to seek it. If Truth was to Gandhi the Ultimate End, then ahimsa (nonviolence) was the perfect means of attaining that end.” Gandhi truly believed that the greatest power that any individual has is the power of non-violence.

was raised under christian values and lessons under the philosophy of the power of love but felt that it was unrealistic approach to a social injustice then he came upon the teachings of mohandas gandhi. After reading the works of Gandhi, Luther King Jr. Was fascinated with his campaign of nonviolent resistances (Pilgrimage to nonviolence pg. 43). Luther King Jr. was influenced by gandhi’s concept of satyagraha, meaning truth force, and discover the potential of non violent to be used as a powerful weapon that was available to oppressed people in their struggle to freedom (pg.43). After a few months, luther king jr. was able to travel to india and there was convience about the power of nonviolence after seeing its aftermath. The aftermath of india's independence was not filled with bitterness or hatred as seen in previous struggles of a country;s independence but was left with mutual friendship between the indians and the british because the nonviolence philosophy was able to remove the hated overtime. With the understanding the teaching of gandhi, luther king jr was conceived that nonviolence was the the best tool to against social injustice because it was

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

The idea of non violence has stemmed off Gandhi in many forms. Gandhi once quoted “Non-violence is the greatest force at the disposal of mankind. It is mightier than the mightiest weapon of destruction devised by the ingenuity of man” and he fulfilled what he said.

During World War I, Gandhi had an active part in recruiting campaigns by launching his new movement of non-violent resistance to Great Britain (Byers 202). When Parliament passed the Rowlatt Acts in 1919, Satyagraha, which means insistence on truth, spread throughout India, recruiting millions of followers. British soldiers massacred Indians at Amritsar as a demonstration against the Rowlatt Acts. In 1920 the British government failed to make peace, which resulted in Gandhi organizing a campaign of non-cooperation (Andrews 103). There was chaos in India as the public

Gandhi’s nonviolent struggle against the British to gain independence not only highlighted the wrongs of Britain’s rule, but also the peacemaking capabilities of the Mahatma. Because Gandhi despised the use of violence to achieve a goal, “Thus was born satyagraha (devotion to truth), a new technique for redressing wrongs through inviting, for resisting adversaries without rancor and fighting them without violence” (“Britannica’s Mohandas Gandhi” 3). Gandhi firmly believed in satyagraha, as exemplified in his actions–such as the Salt March, or refusal to purchase and use British imports. He based his actions on exposing the corrupt by showing their wrongdoings against innocent subjects, and yet he offered a path to redemption. Gandhi did not fight physically, but rather verbally by inspiring many to stand up against their rulers as brothers, not enemies. Numerous events practiced by Gandhi displayed his ideals,