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Mahatma Gandhi Philosophy

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During the period of British colonies in India, Mahatma Gandhi (1869 - 1948) led his community to protest against its harsh policies. Gandhi played an important role as a political figure and primarily as a social reformer in political movements. The Father of the Nation established and employed his philosophy including satyagraha, swaraj, and ashima in Indian nonviolent civil disobedience. In this period, Gandhi’s decision to be celibate and to adopt Bramacharya was consistent with his political philosophy.
While Gandhi was well-known as a political leader, he was primarily a social reformer. Through power of a political figure, he could reform Indian society. First reason, his philosophy originated from his childhood. It matured gradually until he took political activities at his middle age. In his childhood, “She impressed him most with her spirit of self-sacrifice. As a devout Hindu in pursuit of self-purification … He makes clear that the decisive influence on his life came from his mother” (5). At the age of thirteen, he realized that “the wife is …as free as the husband to choose her own path … For a male living at this time in any society, this was an uncommon insight, yet consistent with Gandhi’s later commitment as a political activist to the emancipation of women” (6). At age of eighteen, he learnt to be tolerant of other religions. The syncretic spirit of Hinduism helped him to define “religion…in its broadest sense, meaning thereby self-realization or knowledge

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