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In what way was Gandhi so important for India during the liberation from the Brittish Empire?

This homepage is a school essay written by Joakim Mårtensson & Carl Sandberg. The HTML code was created in Notepad by Calle. Thanks to Zitech for some help with the tables...

Gandhi in the early years Mahatma Gandhi was born in 1869 in the town of Porbandar in India. His real name was Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi. His family had quite a lot of money, and his mother was deeply religeus. When he had grown up he moved to England to study law, he wanted to become a lawyer. He acomplished this after some hard years in school. During this studies he met some socialists that influenced him. He got a job in Southafrica as a lawyer, and between 1893 and 1914 he was spokesman for the indian minority against the whites discrimination. At this point he started to develop his passive resistance. The beginning of the struggle in India In 1915 Gandhi returned to India. He got involved in manifestation for the poor and the lower castes. In 1919, when several dicriminating laws came in use, he started his campaign of civil disobeyance to the Brittish empire. He got massive support both from Muslims and Hindus. Gandhi took the power over the Indian National Congress (INC), and in a short time he transformed it into a national massmovement. In 1922 he called of the campaign, because it had gone violent in a small city, and this was totaly against Gandhi's princips.

Gandhi’s non-violence tactics

Gandhi spent a total of six years in prison. During this time he did some political activism. According to him, India should do it's owns housekeeping, and therefor he started a boycott of Brittish gods. He wanted to encourage Indias industry and handicraft, and the spinning wheel became a symbol for this.

End of Gandhi

In 1930 he organized massive protests against the Brittish salttax, and togheter with his followers he did a 400 kilometers walk to the coast in order to produce salt. His keept on with his struggle, and in 1947 India was independent from the Brittish empire. But to Gandhi's big disappointment India was divided into one Hindu part (India), and one Muslim part (Pakistan). In 1948 Gandhi was shot to death by a Hindu nationalist.

What did all this lead to?

The independence if India was as much a spiritual self-realization as it was a political goal for Gandhi. He often used religious symbols in his fight. He several times tried to stop violent combats by hunger striking. Because of this people saw him as a holy man, and he got his nickname Mahatma, which means `great spirit'. In Gandhi's mind truth ruled the universe, and truth was the same as love. Gandhi saw the violence as the untruth. Now had Gandhi showed the world that it’s possible to do outstanding things with out violence. Instead of using violence for example he used boycotting and demonstrations. Gandhi was a precursor for fighters against racisim, colonialism, violence and destruction of the environment.