Mahatma Gandhi: Satyagraha, Civil Disobedience, and Legacy

Introduction: Gandhi's Life and Early Influences

Mahatma Gandhi — born Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi — was a charismatic leader who brought the cause of India's independence from British colonial rule to the attention of the world. He was a pacifist, a human rights activist, and the moral leader of the Indian independence movement, which in 1947 introduced the concept of nonviolent resistance to end British colonial rule. Gandhi's philosophy of nonviolence, which he termed satyagraha, influenced nationalist and international movements for peaceful change. His principle, often translated as "way of truth," inspired other democratic figures such as Martin Luther King Jr., John Lennon, and the 14th Dalai Lama. Gandhi's values were simple and drawn from his autobiography, The Story of My Experiments with Truth.

Mohandas was the fourth son of Karamchand Gandhi and his fourth wife, Putlibai, a devout Vaishnava. He grew up with Jain influences and learned early about the tenets of non-injury to living beings, vegetarianism, fasting for self-purification, and mutual tolerance among members of different creeds and sects. He married Kasturba Makharji when both were 13 years old, and they had four sons. He studied law in London and worked as an attorney in Bombay upon his return. Unsuccessful in his law practice and teaching, he accepted a year's work contract for a firm in Natal, South Africa.

It was his humiliating experiences of oppression in South Africa that changed him dramatically. He was thrown off a train for refusing to transfer from a first-class to a third-class coach, beaten by a driver for refusing to make room for a European passenger, and barred from many hotels because of his race. At that time, a bill was being considered by the Natal Legislative Assembly to deny suffrage to Indians. He solicited the support of his hosts, and though they were unable to prevent the passage of the bill, his campaign drew attention to the grievances of Indians in South Africa. He founded the Natal Indian Congress in 1894 and led a protest march in November 1913. He solidified the Indian community of South Africa, extensively expressing Indian grievances and evidence of British discrimination. When a mob tried to lynch him in 1897, he refused to press charges, saying that it was his principle not to seek redress for a personal wrong in a court of law.

When the South African War broke out, he argued that Indians must support it in order to legitimize their claim to full citizenship (Wikipedia, 2005). He organized a volunteer ambulance corps of 300 free Indians and 800 indentured laborers. In response to the Transvaal government's new act compelling the registration of the colony's Indian population, a mass protest meeting was held in Johannesburg, with Gandhi adopting his platform of satyagraha — nonviolent protest. He called on his fellow Indians to disobey the new law and suffer the penalty rather than resist through violent means. A seven-year struggle followed during which thousands of Indians were imprisoned, flogged, or even shot for striking, refusing to register, or engaging in other nonviolent forms of resistance. Although the government succeeded in repressing the Indian protesters, the public outcry over the harsh measures applied against peaceful protesters compelled South African General Jan Christian Smuts to reach a compromise with Gandhi.

Gandhi's Campaigns for Indian Independence

Gandhi was elected president of the All-India Home Rule League in April 1920 and invested with executive authority on behalf of the Indian National Congress (Wikipedia, 2005). Under his leadership, the Congress was reorganized and developed a new constitution aimed at swaraj, or independence. It was transformed from an elite organization into one of mass national appeal. Gandhi expanded his nonviolent platform to include the swadeshi policy, which called for boycotting foreign-made goods — especially British goods — as well as British educational institutions and law courts, resigning from government employment, refusing to pay taxes, and rejecting British titles and honors. He also called on both rich and poor Indian women to spin khadi in support of the independence movement.

His new program empowered the Indian people as never before, but ended abruptly with a violent clash in Uttar Pradesh in 1922. He launched his campaign of mass civil disobedience, was arrested, tried for sedition, and sentenced to six years' imprisonment, but was released in 1924 following an operation for appendicitis. In 1930, he launched another campaign of civilian disobedience — the salzmarsch, or Salt March — against the tax on salt, which became his greatest campaign. Thousands of Indians joined him on his march to the sea, and the campaign resulted in the imprisonment of 60,000 people, compelling Lord Irwin's successor, Lord Willingdon, to negotiate with Gandhi. In March 1931, the Gandhi-Irwin Agreement set all political prisoners free in return for the suspension of the civil disobedience movement.

The Round Table Conference in London, to which Gandhi was the sole representative of the Indian National Congress, proved a disappointment. It focused on Indian minorities rather than the transfer of power, and Lord Willingdon embarked on a new campaign of repression against the nationalists. Gandhi was once more arrested, and when the government attempted to break his influence by isolating him from his followers, he began a six-day fast in September 1932. This compelled the government to adopt a more equitable arrangement and to negotiate with him.

In 1934, Gandhi became disillusioned with his colleagues at the Indian National Congress, who, in his view, used nonviolence only as an expediency rather than as a way of life (Wikipedia, 2005). He resigned and was succeeded by Jawaharlal Nehru, devoting his efforts thereafter to educating rural India, living simply in a village called Sevagram. In 1942, he demanded the immediate independence of India and was subsequently arrested several more times by the British colonial authorities. In June 1947, British Prime Minister Clement Attlee announced the independence and partition of India into two states. Gandhi opposed the partition into a Hindu India and an Islamic Pakistan and refused to join the independence celebrations, instead mourning the partition alone in Calcutta. A nationalist Hindu radical named Nathuram Godse, who held Gandhi responsible for weakening the new government, shot him to death on January 30, 1948. His assassin was later tried, convicted, and executed.

The Philosophy of Satyagraha and Nonviolence

Gandhi's method of nonviolent action — satyagraha — translates as the force generated through adherence to truth. It derived from his ideas of satya and ahimsa, influenced by the Bhagavad Gita and Hindu beliefs, the Jain religion, and the pacifist Christian teachings of Leo Tolstoy (Gandhi, 1993). It is commonly known as nonviolence, but Gandhi interpreted it more broadly as a way of life based on love and compassion. Satyagraha, or "truth force," was, to him, the outgrowth of nonviolence. Gandhi saw and used the terms satyagraha and nonviolent action distinctly.

He employed two types of satyagraha in his mass campaigns. The first was civil disobedience, which would result in going to jail. He was willing to risk imprisonment so that his captors would recognize the depth of his sacrifice and the civility of his action and thereby change their views. It was his way of breaking the rigidity of unjust positions, with the ultimate aim of converting his opponents. The second type was non-cooperation, which did not depend on converting the opponent or shaping public opinion, but centered on the power of the people themselves. Gandhi realized that the power of any tyrant depended entirely on the people's willingness to obey. Imprisonment or death threats might force compliance, but the ruler's power ultimately came from that obedience. If people declared they were not afraid of imprisonment and were even willing to die, the tyrant would lose his power and the government would come to a standstill.

Gandhi also advocated vegetarianism, a lifestyle deeply ingrained in Hindu and Jain traditions in India and in his native Gujarat (Gandhi, 1993; Wikipedia, 2005). After experimenting with many diets, he concluded that a vegetarian diet was sufficient to meet the body's minimum requirements. Beyond this, he abstained from food for extended periods, using fasting as a political weapon — either unto death or until his demands were met.

Conclusion: Gandhi's Moral and Spiritual Legacy

From Brahmanic and Buddhist ascetics, Gandhi learned and assumed the vow of not destroying life, a sense of identification with all beings, chastity, and lack of possessions through self-control — qualities needed for moral and political purification. Gandhi used ahimsa as both a moral and political weapon. His act of renunciation not only meant living a simple and pure life but also inclined him to shoulder suffering and practice self-rule. His Hindu doctrine of satya served as his basis for moral and political action, ahimsa expressed selfless love, and karmayoga addressed the equality of all men and women and the elevation of the harijans — the people of God.

Although Gandhi was a political leader, his life was fundamentally rooted in the practice of religion. He combined a life of moral action with spiritual fulfillment. His strongest and deepest yearning was to see God face-to-face, and in pursuit of that goal, he strained his mortal life to live stringently according to truth and away from all distractions and violations of that truth.

Gandhi, Mahatma K. Gandhi: An Autobiography. Navajivan Publishing House / Beacon Press, 1993.

Lama, the Dalai, and Cutler, Howard C. The Art of Happiness at Work. Riverhead Books, 2003.

Healing Hatred: A Guide to the Bodhisattva's Way of Life. Snow Lion Publications, 1997.

Thoreau, Henry David. Resistance to Civil Government. Aesthetic Papers / a Concord Lyceum lecture, May 1849.