Small man who led a big nation Essay

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.”

British rule was tough on many Indians. Gandhi, an Indian born lawyer, believed in freedom and peace for his people. He once experienced racism when he was kicked out of a train in Europe. He changed people’s point of view without breaking the law, which was tough for him. Gandhi made his nonviolent movement work through the use of determination, peaceful civil disobedience, and being a powerful leader.

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

Gandhi, a very influential leader of the movement for independence, writes, “And more and more as they realize that amid the differences of creed and caste is one basic nationality, does agitation spread and take the form of definite demands.that they should be given the ordinary rights of British subjects” (Document 3A). The unrest the Indians faced caused great agitation and led to protests and

This experience in his time in South Africa prepared him to lead India’s independence movement because it helped him become aware of the racial prejudice and exploitation of Indians in South Africa. By him witnessing the racial prejudice in South Africa, he then organized the Indian émigrés in order to protect their interests. As a result, Gandhi developed a basic understanding and experience on how to organize masses of people under a single goal of liberating themselves from foreign oppression that existed in both South Africa and India. This experience in addition to his knowledge on law would aid him to become a respectful leader as he took part in an active independent movement based on nonviolent

Gandhi was a peaceful protester that was very defiant to the British law. The methods he used were simple, effective, and easy. He would protest in a non-violent, non-cooperated way to get more freedom from the British government. He wouldn´t have any violence against the British even though the British had really harsh laws. For example in the movie, he made every indian not work for the British.

After he graduated law school, he went to Africa and lived there for 20 years; however, Indians and non-whites were treated poorly, like in the southern United States. He believed this was wrong, and sought out to peacefully solve the problem, using his method of “Satyagraha.” Once he started though, he discovered a problem: Africa was a British colony at the time. The British rule was ultimately leading to racial tension, so he decided to peacefully protest against British rule. “Gandhi helped people realize that they needed independence from Britain” (StudySync). Although while he was doing this, trouble was brewing in India. The British were trying to pay off their national debt, so they made a monopoly for salt saled and taxed salt heavily in India. The citizens of india where outraged, because salt was an important part in their diet, and many families no longer could afford it. Gandhi desided to use his methood of peaceful protesting to try and free India from the rule of the British. He then started the Salt March, a long march to the sea to protest against the British. “...Gandhi reached down and picked up a small lump of natural salt out of the mud–and British law had been defied…. Civil disobedience broke out all across India, soon involving millions of Indians, and British authorities arrested more than 60,000 people. Gandhi himself was arrested on May 5, but the satyagraha continued

Gandhi was an Indian lawyer, politician, social activist and writer who would lead the independence movement of India to free the country of British rule (“Mahatma Gandhi,” 2017). He would prove that a single person could change the course of history and take on the entire British Empire. Gandhi’s principles of nonviolence and civil disobedience are attributed to his success in gaining independence for India. The act of passive resistance allowed Gandhi to generate more support for his movement for independence while making it difficult for the British to find reasons to arrest them. He argued that although violence could be more effective than peaceful

Mahatma Gandhi is a trailblazer for change thru nonviolent resistance and compassion for others, even for his oppressors, that made a large impact on the world.

In South Africa Gandhi was exposed to a level of racism that he had never experienced before. He was not allowed to wear his turban in a courtroom and he was not allowed to ride in the same cars as Europeans on the trains. While traveling to by train to Pretoria, he was asked to leave his seat for the van compartment. He refused and was kicked off the train.8 To get to his destination, he found a stagecoach going to Pretoria. He was not allowed to sit in the coach-box with the white passengers, but was forced to sit with the coachman. Later, he was asked to give up his seat to sit on the floorboard. Gandhi would not agree to this injustice. And, although he received a beating for it, he remained in his seat.9 These incidents led Gandhi to decide to fight for the rights of Indian workers in South Africa.

Gandhi, in the story showed how if people can come together, how strong we could be together.

Mohandas Gandhi, the leader of India’s independence movement in the early 1900s, inspired many with his use of civil disobedience to bring about change in society. Gandhi was an educated individual who studied law in London and worked in South Africa. Here, he experienced discrimination first hand due to British individual's sense of superiority caused by the concept of social darwinism. This lead to him advocating for equality and later transgressed to the liberation of India, who was at that time under Britain’s control. His method of promoting change through civil disobedience was so revolutionary in a time where violence was so prominent, and was able to capture the astonishing resilience of Indians against British oppression.

Throughout Gandhi’s life, the biggest idea pushed for was peaceful protest. In his speech “Quit India”, Gandhi stated, “Ours is not a drive for power, but purely a non-violent fight for India’s independence” (Quit India Par. 4). Gandhi had good reason to choose a nonviolent act of protesting their rule rather than taking the more aggressive approach that the Americans used during the American Revolution, because at the time, England was far more advanced in almost every field compared to India. Choosing a violent way would only endanger them,

Once Gandhi’s mission in South Africa was complete, he returned to India and became involved in the home ruling movement. He was concerned with excessive land tax and discrimination, so he organized protests by peasants, farmers, and urban laborers to help them stand tall and fight for what they deserved (Gold 57).

The leather sandals slipped from his feet. Mahatma Gandhi's devoted his life mainly to help others, in Ahimsa, non-violence and Hindu - Muslim riots, he was largely inspired by the Gita- the Hindu holy book. Basically he believed everyone should have equal rights. His successes in life were when he studied law in England, got a job in South Africa, when he did the salt march, identified him self with the untouchables- which are India's poorest people.