The Emergence of Gandhi- UPSC Notes

The Emergence of Gandhi

The emergence of Gandhi in the Indian National movement is known for the beginning of the mass mobilisation phase. Before he arrived in India in 1915, he was in South Africa from 1893 to 1915, where his experiences made him take up the fight against colonialism.

Gandhi ji developed his philosophy during his struggle in South Africa, based on non-violence and Satyagraha to give a new direction to the mass movement.

Early Career and Political Experiments in South Africa

Gandhi went to South Africa in 1893 as a barrister for a Gujarati merchant, Dada Abdullah, on a one-year contract. His painful experiences of racial discrimination made him realise the suffering and humiliation faced by the Indians there.

Indians living in South Africa were mostly ex-indentured labourers and merchants. They lacked the education and political awareness to demand their right. Gandhi tried to raise political awareness and mass mobilise them for their rights and justice.

Gandhiji’s political journeys went through various phases. It can be seen in the following phases.

Moderate Phase

• From 1894 to 1906, Gandhi was a proponent of the constitutional steps. He relied on drafting petitions to the authorities in South Africa, Britain and India.
• He tried to unite the Indians and amplify their demand, for which he set up the Natal Indian Congress in 1894 and brought out a newspaper, Indian Opinion.

The phase of passive resistance

• The period from 1906 to 1915 is marked by the experiment of passive resistance, civil disobedience, or Satyagraha, as Gandhi called it.
• Satyagraha was against mandatory certificates of registration and restrictions on immigration. It was against newly enacted legislation in 1906, which made it compulsory for Indians to have registration certificates with their fingerprints on them and carry them all the time.
• Gandhi mobilised the Indians in Johannesburg and appealed to them to defy the new law without indulging in violence. During the resistance, hundreds of Indians were imprisoned, including Gandhi himself.
• Meanwhile, the government introduced new legislation in 1908 to restrict Indian immigration.
• The ongoing running campaign was widened, and several prominent Indians from Natal crossed into Transvaal to defy the law.
• In India, Gokhale toured the entire country to mobilise public opinion in support of Indians in South Africa.

Satyagraha against the poll tax and invalidation of non-Christian marriages

• The ongoing resistance was widened to protest against the poll tax of three pounds on all ex-indentured Indians.
• The resistance further included the issue of invalidation of all non-Christian marriages by the Supreme Court.
• Indians took up this matter as an insult to the honour of their women; many women were also drawn into the movement because of this.

Finally, through a series of negotiations involving Gandhi, Viceroy Hardinge, General Smuts and CF Andrews, a settlement was reached in which the Government of South Africa conceded to the major Indian demands of the poll tax, registration certificates and marriages solemnised as per Indian rites.

Learning in South Africa

With the experience of the above political experiments, Gandhi was able to devise various strategies. Various strategies can be seen in the following points:

• The success of non-violent civil disobedience in South Africa prepared Gandhi to play a bigger role in his homeland. He could evolve his own style of politics and leadership and try out new techniques of struggle.
• In South Africa, he realised the capacity of the masses to participate and sacrifice for the cause they believe in.
• He could unite Indians belonging to different parts of the country (mostly Tamils and Gujaratis) and different classes, religions, castes and languages.

Gandhi’s Political Philosophy

Gandhi’s political ideas were influenced by Indian cultural traditions in which he was born and brought up and by reading Western thinkers. He was inspired by Western thinkers like Leo Tolstoy, John Ruskin, and Thoreau. His political philosophy can be seen in the following paragraphs:

• Satyagraha: It literally means “to firmly hold the truth. For Gandhi, Satyagraha goes beyond mere passive resistance. It is a weapon of the strong and does not profess violence in any circumstances. It involves appealing to the conscience of the oppressor. Instead of being forced to accept the truth, People have to be persuaded to see the truth because, ultimately, the truth alone prevails.
• Ahimsa (non-violence): According to Gandhi, Ahimsa is essential to seek the truth. Ahimsa and truth are intertwined and cannot be separated. Ahimsa does not mean submitting to the will of the evil-doer, but it means pitting one’s whole soul against the tyrant’s will.
• Swaraj: Literally, Swaraj means self-rule, but Gandhi saw it with an integrated approach that encompasses all spheres of life.
• At the individual level, it means dispassionate self-assessment, continuous self-purification and achieving self-reliance (swadeshi).
• Politically, it means self-government and the absence of government control, be it the foreign Government or even the national Government. It is the sovereignty of people based on pure moral authority.
• Economically, Poorna Swaraj means complete economic freedom to the toiling millions.
• In its fullest sense, Swaraj is not just freedom from all restraints; it is self-rule and self-restraint and could be equated with moksha or salvation.

Views of Gandhi on the methods of the extremists, the moderates and the revolutionaries

View of Gandhi on moderates:

• While Gandhi acknowledged the contribution of the moderates in establishing the foundation of the national movement and their concern for social reforms, unlike moderates, he did not consider British rule as good and indispensable. For him, British rule was an evil rule.
• He disagreed with the moderate’s approach of constitutional agitation, especially prayers and petitions, which admitted the inferiority of the Indians.
• In the words of Gandhi, “the growing generations will not be satisfied with petitions ……Satyagraha is the only way”.

View of Gandhi on Extremists

• Gandhi’s method of civil disobedience is similar to the political traditions of the extremists, like the idea of passive resistance, which had similarities with Aurobindo’s passive resistance movement in Bengal.
• It can be said that Gandhi developed his political strategies on the foundation laid by the extremists.
• Gandhi and the extremists differed on the conception of Swaraj; While the extremists wanted to expel the British but wanted to keep the institution built by them, Gandhi was not in favour of Western institutions like parliamentary democracy, secularism, army, etc.
• Gandhi had disagreements with the extremists on the question of ends and means. He believed that means to achieve something should be pure, ethically right and non-violent; if not, the end itself would lose its value.

View of Gandhi on revolutionaries

• Gandhi admired the courage, commitment, and sacrifice of the revolutionaries but considered their methods counterproductive and a wrong path for Swaraj.
• He termed their methods as a ‘suicidal policy’. According to him, violence would only attract more violence and to achieve swaraj, we need a higher weapon.
• He also criticised the revolutionaries’ view that there was no connection between end and means.

Arrival in India

• Upon his arrival in India, he decided to take a countrywide tour to understand the condition of the masses.
• His struggle in South Africa was well known among not only educated Indians but also the masses.
• The national movement at that time was divided between the moderates, the extremists and the revolutionaries. Some Muslims had set up the Muslim League for the cause of Muslims alone.
• Gandhi was not convinced by the politics of either moderates or the extremists to achieve freedom. He did not support the home rule movement because he thought it was not right to agitate for it when Britain was in the middle of the war.
• His belief in his successful political experiments in South Africa convinced him to wait for the right opportunity to start a Satyagraha in the country.

Champaran Satyagraha 1917 (First Civil Disobedience)

Cultivators were agitated by the Tinkathia system in Champaran in North Bihar. Under this system, peasant were to grow Indigo on 3/20 parts of their total land. The planters also insisted on cultivating Indigo on the most fertile part of the land. The cultivators also had to face other economic and social exploitations, which agitated them. Rajkumar Shukla, a local Congress leader, invited Gandhi to take a look at the situation.