GANDHI

“To deprive a man of his natural liberty and to deny to him the ordinary amenities of life is worse than starving the body; it is starvation of the soul, the dweller in the body,” this quote is an example of how Gandhi firmly believed in freedom and equality for people. Gandhi believed his main obstacle in life was to end discrimination towards every one.

South Africa was one stage in Gandhi’s life in which he tried to end racial persecution. Being thrown off a train when he sat in the first-class section was the first time that Gandhi experienced racial persecution here. After his realization that the Europeans in South Africa did not want Indians to be in a high status position, Gandhi tried to oppose them. he did this by burning his “pass” that was issued only to the non-Europeans. Other Indians immediately followed him even though it was against the law. This event was the first of many times that Gandhi used passive resistance to illustrate a point. He set up meetings for Indians to gather and protest non-violently. Even in his young years, Gandhi believed that all people should be treated the same and learn to love each other. “In nature there is fundamental unity running through all the diversity we see about us.”

Gandhi lived in South Africa for about twenty-two years, but when the oppressive laws were changed, he made his way back to his home country, India. It had been a long time since he had lived in India and upon arrival he dressed as a commoner and was greeted by thousands of people. Gandhi immediately became a part of Indian politics and his opinion had a great effect on most of the country. Gandhi tried to include the poverty-stricken people in classifying India. He realized their needs and made efforts to help them financially. Gandhi reached out to the inferior castes and began his fight to end discrimination and British control of India. Gandhi once said, “just as a man would not cherish living in a body other than his own, so do nations not like to live under other nations, however noble and great the latter may be.” Passive resistance is still Gandhi’s approach to gaining freedom from the British and stopping violence in India but discrimination keeps getting in the way. Judging people by their religion or colour of skin leads to violence and oppression which are problems in India. Gandhi gets put in prison many times in his lifetimes because of his push for Indian independence. Muslim-Hindu hostility was ended shortly when Gandhi tried to unite the two religious groups by fasting until they stopped the violence against each other and the British. He wanted the British to end their rule on India, and for the Muslims and Hindus to cooperate with each other in the independence of India. India was granted its independence on August 15, 1947.

Although Gandhi was a man of faith, he did not found a church, nor did he create and specific dogma for his followers. Gandhi believed in the unity of all mankind under one god, and preached Hindu, Muslim and Christian ethics. As a youth, he was neither a genius nor a child prodigy. Indeed, he suffered from extreme shyness. However, he approached life as a very long series of small steps towards his goals, which he pursued relentlessly. By the time he died, India had become an independent country, free of British rule, in fact, the largest democracy in the world, mostly Hindu with sizable Muslim minority. Today, Gandhi is remembered not only as a political leader, but as a moralist who appealed to the universal conscience of mankind. As such, he changed the world.