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| Sunday, 15 January 2006 |
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Famous Trials that shook
the World :
Assassination of Mohandas Gandhi Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi was born into a Hindu family in Porbandar, Gujarat, India in 1869. He was the son of Karamchand Gandhi, Chief Minister of Porbandar.
The town was the capital of a tiny Rajput Kingdom of the same name, and had gained in importance since 1857, because the British were using it as a centre for extending their influence further west. Growing up with a devout Vaishnava mother and surrounded by the Jain influences of Gujarat, Gandhi learned from an early age the tenets of non-injury to living beings, vegetarianism, fasting for self-purification, and mutual tolerance between members of various creeds and sects. When he was seven, Gandhi began his formal education. He enroled in a school created by the British. In his later autobiography he records a major deviation from tradition in his secret experiments with eating meat when he was in his early teens. He seems to have reverted to vegetarianism quite soon. To London When he was sixteen, his father died, leaving him to become the Prime Minister of Rajkot. Six months later, the British took over direct control of the kingdom and removed many members of his family from the adminstration. A friend of the family then advised him to go to London to study law. Having taken a vow not to touch meat, wine or women, he left the country in 1886. His stay in London was crucial to his later career. He was admitted to the bar after the completion of his studies. More important, he came into contact with people of other religions who had voluntarily adopted lifestyles similar to his own--including vegetarianism and a belief in non-violence. Return He returned to India in 1890, a few months after the death of his mother. The twenty-one year old Gandhi tried to set up a practice in Bombay, but failed, and had to move to his home town, where he joined his brother in doing petty legal work. Restless in his old surroundings, he soon left for South Africa, where his brother had found him a job with a trading firm. South Africa was a turning point. The overt racism that he, and other Indians, faced turned him towards active politics, and the various influences in his life came together into the first formulation of what is now called Gandhian politics. His political involvement in South Africa began in the usual liberal British fashion, with the writing of letters to newspapers, organising lectures and debates, founding an organisation with meticulously kept accounts, making petitions and publishing pamphlets. This activity won the sympathy of all parties in India. In 1897 he toured India, meeting Tilak, Ranade, Gokhale and Bannerjee, When he returned to South Africa, he was immediately embroiled in controversy. Nevertheless, in 1899 when the Boer War broke out, he volunteered to lead ambulance corps. The concept of Non-violent protest as a political tool seems to have been born into Gandhi's mind in 1906. In this year the South African government required that every Indian carry an identification pass. Gandhi led the community in a mass refusal to obey the law. The world Sathyagraha was coined in 1908 by Gandhi and one of his cousins. Major campaign By 1914 the movement was making sufficient progress for Gandhi to feel that he could return to India. Gandhi was forty-five years old when he returned to India. Already well known in Indian political circles, he joined the Congress and was soon immersed in India's struggle for independence. His first major campaign was the non-cooperation movement of 1920. This involved a boycott of goods manufactured in Britain. Gandhi insisted on complete non-violence, and called off the movent in 1922 when some villagers attacked a police station and killed several policemen. Attempts at Hindu-Muslim unity which had seemed well set on a path to completion in 1916, collapsed during this movement. Mohammed Ali Jinnah called this an "extremist movement which struck the imagination mostly of the in-experienced youth and the ignorant and illiterate". Through the 20's there was a rising tide of communal violence, and Gandhi's many fasts against this phenomenon did nothing to check it. In 1930 another non-cooperation movement was launched. The British government in India jailed 60,000 Congress workers before making truce and calling Gandhi to negotiate with the viceroy. Winston Churchill's remark on this occasion about "this seditious Fakir... striding half-naked up the steps of the Viceroy's palace:" was turned against the British and made into good propaganda. World War II World War II broke out in 1939 when Nazi Germany invaded Poland. After lengthy deliberations with colleagues in the Congress, he declared that India could not be party to a war ostensibly being fought for democratic freedom while that freedom was denied in India herself. As the war progressed, Gandhi increased his demands for independence, drafting a resolution calling for the British to 'quit India'. This sparked a massive movement for Indian independence with mass arrests and violence on an unprecedented scale. He even hinted at an end for his otherwise unwavering support for non-violence, saying that the "ordered anarchy" around him was "worse than real anarchy". Following this he was arrested in Bombay by British forces on August 9, 1942, and held in prison for two years. In March 1940 Mohammed Jinnah, Muslim leader, presided over a Muslim League session at Lahore, where the first official demand was made for the partition of India and the creation of the State of Pakistan, in which Muslims would be a majority. His tenacity through constitutional discussions between the league, the Congress, and the British government in subsequent years made partition certain. Indian congress disagreed and in 1942, threatened to go on another anti-British campaign. As a result, the British Government jailed the entire congress leadership. From 1944 to 1947 Gandhi tried to halt the partition of India, but failed, He was vehemently opposed to any plan that partitioned India into two separate countries. Nevertheless, partition was eventually adopted, creating, in 1947, a secular but Hindu-majority India, and an Islamic Pakistan. On the day of the power transfer, Gandhi did not celebrate independence with the rest of India, but was alone in Calcutta, mourning partition. Assassination On January 30, 1948 Gandhi was assassinated In Birla House, New Delhi, by Nathuram Godse, a Hindu radical. That evening, Gandhi, frail and 78-year-old, was walking toward the prayer ground in the garden of a New Delhi home. Nathuram Godse approached Gandhi, his hands folded as if in prayer, hiding a pistol, He bent down to touch the Mahatma's feet, and then fired. Nathuram Godse and another man were hanged for Gandhi's murder. Today there are statues in honour of Gandhi in many cities such as Paris, Amsterdam, Barcelona, Lisbon, Canberra and San Fernando, Trinidad and Tobago and in a number of cities in the USA. The best-known artistic depiction of his life is the film 'Gandhi' directed by Richard Attenborough. Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi was an exceptional character. Maybe, that is why Albert Einstein said of him: "Generations to come, it may be, will scarcely believe that such a one as this, ever in flesh and blood, walked upon this earth" |
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