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Mahatma Gandhi – the “Great Soul” Before you read What do you already know about Mahatma Gandhi? Read the fact file and summarise the major events of his life. Reading: Father to a nation, stranger to his son a) Read the headline and guess what the text will be about. b) Read the text and underline passages which give a different impression of Mahatma Gandhi. 1  Fact file Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (1869–1948), known as “Mahatma” (Great Soul), was the leader of the Indian nationalist movement against British rule. He is widely considered to be the father of the Indian nation. He is acclaimed for his doctrine of nonviolent resistance and civil disobedience to reach political and social progress. Loved and respected by people around the world as one of the great human rights activists, he did not really match the hero cliché, as he was thin and poor-looking in his simple white robes. But Gandhi proved that fine clothing and status symbols were not necessary to achieve one’s goals. In his childhood and young adolescent years, religious tolerance, compassion for sentient beings, vegetarianism and fasting for self-purification were among the most important principles he absorbed at that time. In 1883, 13-year-old Mohandas was married to a 14-year-old girl, Kasturbai Makhanji, in an arranged child marriage, as was the custom in western India. After university he went to London to train as a barrister, returned to India 1891 and accepted a job at an Indian law firm in Durban, South Africa, in 1893, staying there for 20 years. Appalled by the treatment of Indian immigrants there, he joined the struggle for basic rights and was imprisoned several times. Returning to India in 1915, he was an influential figure in Indian politics by 1920. His programme of peaceful non- cooperation with the British included boycotts of British goods and institutions, leading to the arrests of himself and thousands of Indians. In 1930, Gandhi announced a new campaign of civil disobedience protesting against a tax on salt, leading thousands on a “Salt March” to the sea to symbolically make their own salt from seawater. On 30 Janu- ary 1948, a Hindu fanatic who opposed to his programme of tolerance assassinated Gandhi in Delhi. F 2  Mahatma Gandhi once confessed that the greatest regret of his life was that there were two people he had not been able to convince. One was Mohammed Ali Jinnah, whose demand for a separate homeland for Muslims led to the partition of India and Pakistan in August 1947 and the end of the dream of a united, independent India. The other person was his own eldest son. Harilal Gandhi’s entire life was lived in the shadow of his father and it was spent rebelling against everything his father believed in. Gandhi’s stern morality, sexual abstinence and principled stand against Britain were all challenged by his son, who was an alcoholic gambler trading in imported British clothes even as his father was urging a boycott of foreign goods. Harilal even converted to Islam before his death in 1948, only months after his father was assassinated by a Hindu extremist. Sixty years on from the Indian independence he was so instrumental in securing, Gandhi is a symbol of innocence and peace; a simple man in peasant clothes whose adherence to nonviolence defeated the British and would later inspire both Martin Luther King and Nelson Mandela. This was the Gandhi depicted in Richard Attenborough’s multi-Oscar- winning film a quarter of a century ago: a dhoti-clad demigod. Attenborough’s film told the story of Gandhi as the father of a nation; now a new film, Gandhi, my father, reveals the extraordinary story of the son and the man he described as “the greatest father you can have but the one father I wish I did not have”. […] Gandhi’s political philosophy was based on the belief that there was a larger good for society that demanded that each individual makes sacrifices. The necessity not to appear hypocritical meant that his sons were schooled at home when the family lived in South Africa. He could not have sent the boys to the private European schools without alienating himself from the Indian community, but in remaining true to his principles, he angered his children, who would meet other youngsters demanding to know which school they attended. […] In fact, Gandhi was a fragile, troubled father. “People assume he was a miracle worker from the start,” says Rajmohan, “some impossibly wonderful human being always in control of himself. This was not the case at all.” Even before the film’s release in India there were protests against this portrayal and demands that the film be banned. 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 87 Nur zu Prüfzwecken – Eigentum des Verlags öbv