Mahatma Gandhi, byname of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, (born October
2, 1869, Porbandar, India—died January 30, 1948, Delhi), Indian lawyer, politician,
social activist, and writer who became the leader of the nationalist movement against
the British rule of India. As such, he came to be considered the father of
his country. Gandhi is internationally esteemed for his doctrine of nonviolent
protest (satyagraha) to achieve political and social progress.
In the eyes of millions of his fellow Indians, Gandhi was the Mahatma (“Great Soul”).
The unthinking adoration of the huge crowds that gathered to see him all along the
route of his tours made them a severe ordeal; he could hardly work during the day or
rest at night. “The woes of the Mahatmas,” he wrote, “are known only to the
Mahatmas.” His fame spread worldwide during his lifetime and only increased after
his death. The name Mahatma Gandhi is now one of the most universally recognized
on earth.
Youth
Gandhi was the youngest child of his father’s fourth wife. His father—Karamchand
Gandhi, who was the dewan (chief minister) of Porbandar, the capital of a small
principality in western India (in what is now Gujarat state) under British
suzerainty—did not have much in the way of a formal education. He was, however, an
able administrator who knew how to steer his way between the capricious princes,
their long-suffering subjects, and the headstrong British political officers in power.
Gandhi’s mother, Putlibai, was completely absorbed in religion, did not care much
for finery or jewelry, divided her time between her home and the temple, fasted
frequently, and wore herself out in days and nights of nursing whenever there was
sickness in the family. Mohandas grew up in a home steeped in Vaishnavism—
worship of the Hindu god Vishnu—with a strong tinge of Jainism, a morally rigorous
Indian religion whose chief tenets are nonviolence and the belief that everything in
the universe is eternal. Thus, he took for granted ahimsa (noninjury to all living
beings), vegetarianism, fasting for self-purification, and mutual tolerance between
adherents of various creeds and sects.
The educational facilities at Porbandar were rudimentary; in the primary school that
Mohandas attended, the children wrote the alphabet in the dust with their fingers.
Luckily for him, his father became dewan of Rajkot, another princely state. Though
Mohandas occasionally won prizes and scholarships at the local schools, his record
was on the whole mediocre. One of the terminal reports rated him as “good at
English, fair in Arithmetic and weak in Geography; conduct very good, bad
handwriting.” He was married at the age of 13 and thus lost a year at school.
A diffident child, he shone neither in the classroom nor on the playing field. He loved
to go out on long solitary walks when he was not nursing his by then ailing father
(who died soon thereafter) or helping his mother with her household chores.
He had learned, in his words, “to carry out the orders of the elders, not to scan
them.” With such extreme passivity, it is not surprising that he should have gone
through a phase of adolescent rebellion, marked by secret atheism, petty thefts,
furtive smoking, and—most shocking of all for a boy born in a Vaishnava family—
meat eating. His adolescence was probably no stormier than that of most children of
his age and class. What was extraordinary was the way his youthful transgressions
ended.
“Never again” was his promise to himself after each escapade. And he kept his
promise. Beneath an unprepossessing exterior, he concealed a burning passion for
self-improvement that led him to take even the heroes of Hindu mythology, such
as Prahlada and Harishcandra—legendary embodiments of truthfulness and
sacrifice—as living models.
In 1887 Mohandas scraped through the matriculation examination of the University
of Bombay (now University of Mumbai) and joined Samaldas College
in Bhavnagar (Bhaunagar). As he had to suddenly switch from his native language—
Gujarati—to English, he found it rather difficult to follow the lectures.
Meanwhile, his family was debating his future. Left to himself, he would have liked to
have been a doctor. But, besides the Vaishnava prejudice against vivisection, it was
clear that, if he was to keep up the family tradition of holding high office in one of the
states in Gujarat, he would have to qualify as a barrister. That meant a visit
to England, and Mohandas, who was not too happy at Samaldas College, jumped at
the proposal. His youthful imagination conceived England as “a land of philosophers
and poets, the very centre of civilization.” But there were several hurdles to be
crossed before the visit to England could be realized. His father had left the family
little property; moreover, his mother was reluctant to expose her youngest child to
unknown temptations and dangers in a distant land. But Mohandas was determined
to visit England. One of his brothers raised the necessary money, and his mother’s
doubts were allayed when he took a vow that, while away from home, he would not
touch wine, women, or meat. Mohandas disregarded the last obstacle—the decree of
the leaders of the Modh Bania subcaste (Vaishya caste), to which the Gandhis
belonged, who forbade his trip to England as a violation of the Hindu religion—and
sailed in September 1888. Ten days after his arrival, he joined the Inner Temple, one
of the four London law colleges (The Temple).
Sojourn in England and return to
India of Mahatma Gandhi
Gandhi took his studies seriously and tried to brush up on his English and Latin by
taking the University of London matriculation examination. But, during the three
years he spent in England, his main preoccupation was with personal
and moral issues rather than with academic ambitions. The transition from the halfrural atmosphere of Rajkot to the cosmopolitan life of London was not easy for him.
As he struggled painfully to adapt himself to Western food, dress, and etiquette, he
felt awkward. His vegetarianism became a continual source of embarrassment to
him; his friends warned him that it would wreck his studies as well as his health.
Fortunately for him he came across a vegetarian restaurant as well as a book
providing a reasoned defense of vegetarianism, which henceforth became a matter
of conviction for him, not merely a legacy of his Vaishnava background. The
missionary zeal he developed for vegetarianism helped to draw the pitifully shy youth
out of his shell and gave him a new poise. He became a member of the executive
committee of the London Vegetarian Society, attending its conferences and
contributing articles to its journal.
In the boardinghouses and vegetarian restaurants of England, Gandhi met not only
food faddists but some earnest men and women to whom he owed his introduction to
the Bible and, more important, the Bhagavadgita, which he read for the first time in
its English translation by Sir Edwin Arnold. The Bhagavadgita (commonly known as
the Gita) is part of the great epic the Mahabharata and, in the form of a
philosophical poem, is the most-popular expression of Hinduism. The English
vegetarians were a motley crowd. They included socialists and humanitarians such
as Edward Carpenter, “the British Thoreau”; Fabians such as George Bernard Shaw;
and Theosophists such as Annie Besant. Most of them were idealists; quite a few
were rebels who rejected the prevailing values of the late-Victorian establishment,
denounced the evils of the capitalist and industrial society, preached the cult of the
simple life, and stressed the superiority of moral over material values and of
cooperation over conflict. Those ideas were to contribute substantially to the shaping
of Gandhi’s personality and, eventually, to his politics.
Painful surprises were in store for Gandhi when he returned to India in July 1891.
His mother had died in his absence, and he discovered to his dismay that
the barrister’s degree was not a guarantee of a lucrative career. The legal
profession was already beginning to be overcrowded, and Gandhi was much
too diffident to elbow his way into it. In the very first brief he argued in a court in
Bombay (now Mumbai), he cut a sorry figure. Turned down even for the part-time
job of a teacher in a Bombay high school, he returned to Rajkot to make a modest
living by drafting petitions for litigants. Even that employment was closed to him
when he incurred the displeasure of a local British officer. It was, therefore, with
some relief that in 1893 he accepted the none-too-attractive offer of a year’s contract
from an Indian firm in Natal, South Africa.
Years in South Africa
Africa was to present to Gandhi challenges and opportunities that he could hardly
have conceived. In the end he would spend more than two decades there, returning
to India only briefly in 1896–97. The youngest two of his four children were born
there.
Emergence as a political and social activist
Gandhi was quickly exposed to the racial discrimination practiced in South Africa. In
a Durban court he was asked by the European magistrate to take off his turban; he
refused and left the courtroom. A few days later, while traveling to Pretoria, he was
unceremoniously thrown out of a first-class railway compartment and left shivering
and brooding at the rail station in Pietermaritzburg. In the further course of that
journey, he was beaten up by the white driver of a stagecoach because he would not
travel on the footboard to make room for a European passenger, and finally he was
barred from hotels reserved “for Europeans only.” Those humiliations were the daily
lot of Indian traders and labourers in Natal, who had learned to pocket them with the
same resignation with which they pocketed their meagre earnings. What was new
was not Gandhi’s experience but his reaction. He had so far not been conspicuous for
self-assertion or aggressiveness. But something happened to him as he smarted
under the insults heaped upon him. In retrospect the journey from Durban to
Pretoria struck him as one of the most-creative experiences of his life; it was his
moment of truth. Henceforth he would not accept injustice as part of the natural or
unnatural order in South Africa; he would defend his dignity as an Indian and as a
man.
While in Pretoria, Gandhi studied the conditions in which his fellow South Asians in
South Africa lived and tried to educate them on their rights and duties, but he had no
intention of staying on in South Africa. Indeed, in June 1894, as his year’s contract
drew to a close, he was back in Durban, ready to sail for India. At a farewell party
given in his honour, he happened to glance through the Natal Mercury and learned
that the Natal Legislative Assembly was considering a bill to deprive Indians of
the right to vote. “This is the first nail in our coffin,” Gandhi told his hosts. They
professed their inability to oppose the bill, and indeed their ignorance of the politics
of the colony, and begged him to take up the fight on their behalf.
Until the age of 18, Gandhi had hardly ever read a newspaper. Neither as a student in
England nor as a budding barrister in India had he evinced much interest in politics.
Indeed, he was overcome by a terrifying stage fright whenever he stood up to read a
speech at a social gathering or to defend a client in court. Nevertheless, in July 1894,
when he was barely 25, he blossomed almost overnight into a proficient political
campaigner. He drafted petitions to the Natal legislature and the British government
and had them signed by hundreds of his compatriots. He could not prevent the
passage of the bill but succeeded in drawing the attention of the public and the press
in Natal, India, and England to the Natal Indians’ grievances. He was persuaded to
settle down in Durban to practice law and to organize the Indian community. In 1894
he founded the Natal Indian Congress, of which he himself became
the indefatigable secretary. Through that common political organization, he infused a
spirit of solidarity in the heterogeneous Indian community. He flooded the
government, the legislature, and the press with closely reasoned statements of Indian
grievances. Finally, he exposed to the view of the outside world the skeleton in the
imperial cupboard, the discrimination practiced against the Indian subjects of Queen
Victoria in one of her own colonies in Africa. It was a measure of his success as a
publicist that such important newspapers as The Times of London and The
Statesman and Englishman of Calcutta (now Kolkata) editorially commented on the
Natal Indians’ grievances.
In 1896 Gandhi went to India to fetch his wife, Kasturba (or Kasturbai), and their
two oldest children and to canvass support for the Indians overseas. He met
prominent leaders and persuaded them to address public meetings in
the country’s principal cities. Unfortunately for him, garbled versions of his activities
and utterances reached Natal and inflamed its European population. On landing at
Durban in January 1897, he was assaulted and nearly lynched by a white
mob. Joseph Chamberlain, the colonial secretary in the British Cabinet, cabled the
government of Natal to bring the guilty men to book, but Gandhi refused to
prosecute his assailants. It was, he said, a principle with him not to seek redress of a
personal wrong in a court of law.
Resistance and results
Gandhi was not the man to nurse a grudge. On the outbreak of the South African
(Boer) War in 1899, he argued that the Indians, who claimed the full rights of
citizenship in the British crown colony of Natal, were in duty bound to defend it. He
raised an ambulance corps of 1,100 volunteers, out of whom 300 were free Indians
and the rest indentured labourers. It was a motley crowd: barristers and accountants,
artisans and labourers. It was Gandhi’s task to instill in them a spirit of service to
those whom they regarded as their oppressors. The editor of the Pretoria
News offered an insightful portrait of Gandhi in the battle zone:
After a night’s work which had shattered men with much bigger frames, I came across
Gandhi in the early morning sitting by the roadside eating a regulation army biscuit.
Every man in [General] Buller’s force was dull and depressed, and damnation was
heartily invoked on everything. But Gandhi was stoical in his bearing, cheerful and
confident in his conversation and had a kindly eye.
The British victory in the war brought little relief to the Indians in South Africa. The
new regime in South Africa was to blossom into a partnership, but only between
Boers and Britons. Gandhi saw that, with the exception of a few Christian
missionaries and youthful idealists, he had been unable to make a perceptible
impression upon the South African Europeans. In 1906 the Transvaal government
published a particularly humiliating ordinance for the registration of its Indian
population. The Indians held a mass protest meeting at Johannesburg in September
1906 and, under Gandhi’s leadership, took a pledge to defy the ordinance if it
became law in the teeth of their opposition and to suffer all the penalties resulting
from their defiance. Thus was born satyagraha (“devotion to truth”), a new technique
for redressing wrongs through inviting, rather than inflicting, suffering,
for resisting adversaries without rancour and fighting them without violence.
Mohandas Gandhi: Fact or Fiction?
The struggle in South Africa lasted for more than seven years. It had its ups and
downs, but under Gandhi’s leadership, the small Indian minority kept up its
resistance against heavy odds. Hundreds of Indians chose to sacrifice their livelihood
and liberty rather than submit to laws repugnant to their conscience and self-respect.
In the final phase of the movement in 1913, hundreds of Indians, including women,
went to jail, and thousands of Indian workers who had struck work in the mines
bravely faced imprisonment, flogging, and even shooting. It was a terrible ordeal for
the Indians, but it was also the worst possible advertisement for the South African
government, which, under pressure from the governments of Britain and India,
accepted a compromise negotiated by Gandhi on the one hand and the South African
statesman Gen. Jan Christian Smuts on the other.
“The saint has left our shores,” Smuts wrote to a friend on Gandhi’s departure from
South Africa for India, in July 1914, “I hope for ever.” A quarter century later, he
wrote that it had been his “fate to be the antagonist of a man for whom even then I
had the highest respect.” Once, during his not-infrequent stays in jail, Gandhi had
prepared a pair of sandals for Smuts, who recalled that there was no hatred and
personal ill-feeling between them, and when the fight was over “there was the
atmosphere in which a decent peace could be concluded.”
As later events were to show, Gandhi’s work did not provide an enduring solution for
the Indian problem in South Africa. What he did to South Africa was indeed less
important than what South Africa did to him. It had not treated him kindly, but, by
drawing him into the vortex of its racial problem, it had provided him with the ideal
setting in which his peculiar talents could unfold themselves.
The religious quest
Gandhi’s religious quest dated back to his childhood, the influence of his mother and
of his home life in Porbandar and Rajkot, but it received a great impetus after his
arrival in South Africa. His Quaker friends in Pretoria failed to convert him to
Christianity, but they quickened his appetite for religious studies. He was fascinated
by the writings of Leo Tolstoy on Christianity, read the Qurʾān in translation, and
delved into Hindu scriptures and philosophy. The study of comparative religion,
talks with scholars, and his own reading of theological works brought him to the
conclusion that all religions were true and yet every one of them was imperfect
because they were “interpreted with poor intellects, sometimes with poor hearts, and
more often misinterpreted.”
Shrimad Rajchandra, a brilliant young Jain philosopher who became Gandhi’s
spiritual mentor, convinced him of “the subtlety and profundity” of Hinduism, the
religion of his birth. And it was the Bhagavadgita, which Gandhi had first read
in London, that became his “spiritual dictionary” and exercised probably the greatest
single influence on his life. Two Sanskrit words in the Gita particularly fascinated
him. One was aparigraha (“nonpossession”), which implies that people have
to jettison the material goods that cramp the life of the spirit and to shake off the
bonds of money and property. The other was samabhava (“equability”), which
enjoins people to remain unruffled by pain or pleasure, victory or defeat, and to work
without hope of success or fear of failure.
Those were not merely counsels of perfection. In the civil case that had taken him to
South Africa in 1893, he had persuaded the antagonists to settle their differences out
of court. The true function of a lawyer seemed to him “to unite parties riven
asunder.” He soon regarded his clients not as purchasers of his services but as
friends; they consulted him not only on legal issues but on such matters as the best
way of weaning a baby or balancing the family budget. When an associate protested
that clients came even on Sundays, Gandhi replied: “A man in distress cannot have
Sunday rest.”
Gandhi’s legal earnings reached a peak figure of £5,000 a year, but he had little
interest in moneymaking, and his savings were often sunk in his public activities.
In Durban and later in Johannesburg, he kept an open table; his house was a virtual
hostel for younger colleagues and political coworkers. This was something of an
ordeal for his wife, without whose extraordinary patience, endurance, and selfeffacement Gandhi could hardly have devoted himself to public causes. As he broke
through the conventional bonds of family and property, their life tended to shade
into a community life.
Gandhi felt an irresistible attraction to a life of simplicity, manual labour, and
austerity. In 1904—after reading John Ruskin’s Unto This Last, a critique of
capitalism—he set up a farm at Phoenix near Durban where he and his friends could
live by the sweat of their brow. Six years later another colony grew up under Gandhi’s
fostering care near Johannesburg; it was named Tolstoy Farm for the Russian writer
and moralist, whom Gandhi admired and corresponded with. Those two settlements
were the precursors of the more-famous ashrams (religious retreats) in India, at
Sabarmati near Ahmedabad (Ahmadabad) and at Sevagram near Wardha.
South Africa had not only prompted Gandhi to evolve a novel technique for political
action but also transformed him into a leader of men by freeing him from bonds that
make cowards of most men. “Persons in power,” the British Classical scholar Gilbert
Murray prophetically wrote about Gandhi in the Hibbert Journal in 1918,
should be very careful how they deal with a man who cares nothing for sensual pleasure,
nothing for riches, nothing for comfort or praise, or promotion, but is simply determined to
do what he believes to be right. He is a dangerous and uncomfortable enemy, because his
body which you can always conquer gives you so little purchase upon his soul.
Return to India
Gandhi decided to leave South Africa in the summer of 1914, just before the outbreak
of World War I. He and his family first went to London, where they remained for
several months. Finally, they departed England in December, arriving in Bombay in
early January 1915.
Emergence as nationalist leader
For the next three years, Gandhi seemed to hover uncertainly on the periphery of
Indian politics, declining to join any political agitation, supporting the British war
effort, and even recruiting soldiers for the British Indian Army. At the same time, he
did not flinch from criticizing the British officials for any acts of high-handedness or
from taking up the grievances of the long-suffering peasantry in Bihar and Gujarat.
By February 1919, however, the British had insisted on pushing through—in the teeth
of fierce Indian opposition—the Rowlatt Acts, which empowered the authorities to
imprison without trial those suspected of sedition. A provoked Gandhi finally
revealed a sense of estrangement from the British raj and announced
a satyagraha struggle. The result was a virtual political earthquake that shook the
subcontinent in the spring of 1919. The violent outbreaks that followed—notably
the Massacre of Amritsar, which was the killing by British-led soldiers of nearly 400
Indians who were gathered in an open space in Amritsar in the Punjab region (now
in Punjab state), and the enactment of martial law—prompted him to stay his hand.
However, within a year he was again in a militant mood, having in the meantime
been irrevocably alienated by British insensitiveness to Indian feeling on the Punjab
tragedy and Muslim resentment on the peace terms offered
to Turkey following World War I.
By the autumn of 1920, Gandhi was the dominant figure on the political stage,
commanding an influence never before attained by any political leader in India or
perhaps in any other country. He refashioned the 35-year-old Indian National
Congress (Congress Party) into an effective political instrument of Indian
nationalism: from a three-day Christmas-week picnic of the upper middle class in
one of the principal cities of India, it became a mass organization with its roots in
small towns and villages. Gandhi’s message was simple: it was not British guns but
imperfections of Indians themselves that kept their country in bondage. His
program, the nonviolent noncooperation movement against the British government,
included boycotts not only of British manufactures but of institutions operated or
aided by the British in India: legislatures, courts, offices, schools. The campaign
electrified the country, broke the spell of fear of foreign rule, and led to the arrests of
thousands of satyagrahis, who defied laws and cheerfully lined up for prison. In
February 1922 the movement seemed to be on the crest of a rising wave, but, alarmed
by a violent outbreak in Chauri Chaura, a remote village in eastern India, Gandhi
decided to call off mass civil disobedience. That was a blow to many of his followers,
who feared that his self-imposed restraints and scruples would reduce the nationalist
struggle to pious futility. Gandhi himself was arrested on March 10, 1922, tried for
sedition, and sentenced to six years’ imprisonment. He was released in February
1924, after undergoing surgery for appendicitis. The political landscape had changed
in his absence. The Congress Party had split into two factions, one under Chitta
Ranjan Das and Motilal Nehru (the father of Jawaharlal Nehru, India’s first prime
minister) favouring the entry of the party into legislatures and the other
under Chakravarti Rajagopalachari and Vallabhbhai Jhaverbhai Patel opposing it.
Worst of all, the unity between Hindus and Muslims of the heyday of the
noncooperation movement of 1920–22 had dissolved. Gandhi tried to draw the
warring communities out of their suspicion and fanaticism by reasoning and
persuasion. Finally, after a serious outbreak of communal unrest, he undertook a
three-week fast in the autumn of 1924 to arouse the people into following the path of
nonviolence. In December 1924 he was named president of the Congress Party, and
he served for a year.
Return to party leadership
During the mid-1920s Gandhi took little interest in active politics and was
considered a spent force. In 1927, however, the British government appointed
a constitutional reform commission under Sir John Simon, a prominent English
lawyer and politician, that did not contain a single Indian. When the Congress and
other parties boycotted the commission, the political tempo rose. At the Congress
session (meeting) at Calcutta in December 1928, Gandhi put forth the crucial
resolution demanding dominion status from the British government within a year
under threat of a nationwide nonviolent campaign for complete independence.
Henceforth, Gandhi was back as the leading voice of the Congress Party. In March
1930 he launched the Salt March, a satyagraha against the British-imposed tax on
salt, which affected the poorest section of the community. One of the most
spectacular and successful campaigns in Gandhi’s nonviolent war against the British
raj, it resulted in the imprisonment of more than 60,000 people. A year later, after
talks with the viceroy, Lord Irwin (later Lord Halifax), Gandhi accepted a truce
(the Gandhi-Irwin Pact), called off civil disobedience, and agreed to attend
the Round Table Conference in London as the sole representative of the Indian
National Congress.
The conference, which concentrated on the problem of the Indian minorities rather
than on the transfer of power from the British, was a great disappointment to the
Indian nationalists. Moreover, when Gandhi returned to India in December 1931, he
found his party facing an all-out offensive from Lord Irwin’s successor as viceroy,
Lord Willingdon, who unleashed the sternest repression in the history of the
nationalist movement. Gandhi was once more imprisoned, and the government tried
to insulate him from the outside world and to destroy his influence. That was not an
easy task. Gandhi soon regained the initiative. In September 1932, while still a
prisoner, he embarked on a fast to protest against the British government’s decision
to segregate the so-called “untouchables” (the lowest level of the Indian caste system;
now called Scheduled Castes [official] or Dalits) by allotting them separate
electorates in the new constitution. The fast produced an emotional upheaval in the
country, and an alternative electoral arrangement was jointly and speedily devised by
the leaders of the Hindu community and the Dalits and endorsed by the British
government. The fast became the starting point of a vigorous campaign for the
removal of the disenfranchisement of the Dalits, whom Gandhi referred to as
Harijans, or “children of God.”
In 1934 Gandhi resigned not only as the leader but also as a member of the Congress
Party. He had come to believe that its leading members had adopted nonviolence as a
political expedient and not as the fundamental creed it was for him. In place of
political activity he then concentrated on his “constructive programme” of building
the nation “from the bottom up”—educating rural India, which accounted for 85
percent of the population; continuing his fight against untouchability; promoting
hand spinning, weaving, and other cottage industries to supplement the earnings of
the underemployed peasantry; and evolving a system of education best suited to the
needs of the people. Gandhi himself went to live at Sevagram, a village in central
India, which became the centre of his program of social and economic uplift.
The last phase
With the outbreak of World War II, the nationalist struggle in India entered its last
crucial phase. Gandhi hated fascism and all it stood for, but he also hated war. The
Indian National Congress, on the other hand, was not committed to pacifism and was
prepared to support the British war effort if Indian self-government was assured.
Once more Gandhi became politically active. The failure of the mission of Sir Stafford
Cripps, a British cabinet minister who went to India in March 1942 with an offer that
Gandhi found unacceptable, the British equivocation on the transfer of power to
Indian hands, and the encouragement given by high British officials
to conservative and communal forces promoting discord between Muslims and
Hindus impelled Gandhi to demand in the summer of 1942 an immediate British
withdrawal from India—what became known as the Quit India Movement.
Mohandas K. Gandhi
Mohandas K. Gandhi, 1931.
James A. Mills/AP/Shutterstock
In mid-1942 the war against the Axis powers, particularly Japan, was in a critical
phase, and the British reacted sharply to the campaign. They imprisoned the entire
Congress leadership and set out to crush the party once and for all. There were
violent outbreaks that were sternly suppressed, and the gulf between Britain and
India became wider than ever before. Gandhi, his wife, and several other top party
leaders (including Nehru) were confined in the Aga Khan Palace (now the Gandhi
National Memorial) in Poona (now Pune). Kasturba died there in early 1944, shortly
before Gandhi and the others were released.
Aga Khan Palace (Gandhi National Memorial)
Aga Khan Palace (Gandhi National Memorial), Pune, India.
© Hemera/Thinkstock
A new chapter in Indo-British relations opened with the victory of the Labour
Party in Britain 1945. During the next two years, there were prolonged triangular
negotiations between leaders of the Congress, the Muslim League under Mohammed
Ali Jinnah, and the British government, culminating in the Mountbatten Plan of
June 3, 1947, and the formation of the two new dominions of India and Pakistan in
mid-August 1947.
Witness the funeral procession for Mahatma Gandhi, February 2, 1948
Funeral procession for Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi, February 2, 1948, with a quote from the
eulogy by Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru.
Public DomainSee all videos for this article
It was one of the greatest disappointments of Gandhi’s life that Indian freedom was
realized without Indian unity. Muslim separatism had received a great boost while
Gandhi and his colleagues were in jail, and in 1946–47, as the final constitutional
arrangements were being negotiated, the outbreak of communal riots between
Hindus and Muslims unhappily created a climate in which Gandhi’s appeals to
reason and justice, tolerance and trust had little chance. When partition of the
subcontinent was accepted—against his advice—he threw himself heart and soul into
the task of healing the scars of the communal conflict, toured the riot-torn areas
in Bengal and Bihar, admonished the bigots, consoled the victims, and tried to
rehabilitate the refugees. In the atmosphere of that period, surcharged with suspicion
and hatred, that was a difficult and heartbreaking task. Gandhi was blamed by
partisans of both the communities. When persuasion failed, he went on a fast. He
won at least two spectacular triumphs: in September 1947 his fasting stopped the
rioting in Calcutta, and in January 1948 he shamed the city of Delhi into a communal
truce. A few days later, on January 30, while he was on his way to his evening prayer
meeting in Delhi, he was shot down by Nathuram Godse, a young Hindu fanatic.
Place in history of Mahatma Gandhi
The British attitude toward Gandhi was one of mingled admiration, amusement,
bewilderment, suspicion, and resentment. Except for a tiny minority of Christian
missionaries and radical socialists, the British tended to see him at best as a utopian
visionary and at worst as a cunning hypocrite whose professions of friendship for the
British race were a mask for subversion of the British raj. Gandhi was conscious of
the existence of that wall of prejudice, and it was part of the strategy of satyagraha to
penetrate it.
Pune, Maharasthra, India: Gandhi Memorial Stone
Gandhi Memorial Stone, Gandhi National Memorial, Pune, Maharasthra, India.
© Hemera/Thinkstock
His three major campaigns in 1920–22, 1930–34, and 1940–42 were well designed
to engender that process of self-doubt and questioning that was to undermine
the moral defenses of his adversaries and to contribute, together with the objective
realities of the postwar world, to producing the grant of dominion status in 1947. The
British abdication in India was the first step in the liquidation of the British
Empire on the continents of Asia and Africa. Gandhi’s image as a rebel and enemy
died hard, but, as it had done to the memory of George Washington, Britain, in 1969,
the centenary year of Gandhi’s birth, erected a statue to his memory.
Gandhi had critics in his own country and indeed in his own party. The liberal
leaders protested that he was going too fast; the young radicals complained that he
was not going fast enough; left-wing politicians alleged that he was not serious about
evicting the British or liquidating such vested Indian interests as princes and
landlords; the leaders of the Dalits doubted his good faith as a social reformer; and
Muslim leaders accused him of partiality to his own community.
Research in the second half of the 20th century established Gandhi’s role as a great
mediator and reconciler. His talents in that direction were applied to conflicts
between the older moderate politicians and the young radicals, the political terrorists
and the parliamentarians, the urban intelligentsia and the rural masses, the
traditionalists and the modernists, the caste Hindus and the Dalits, the Hindus and
the Muslims, and the Indians and the British.
It was inevitable that Gandhi’s role as a political leader should loom larger in the
public imagination, but the mainspring of his life lay in religion, not in politics. And
religion for him did not mean formalism, dogma, ritual, or sectarianism. “What I
have been striving and pining to achieve these thirty years,” he wrote in his
autobiography, “is to see God face to face.” His deepest strivings were spiritual, but
unlike many of his fellow Indians with such aspirations, he did not retire to a cave in
the Himalayas to meditate on the Absolute; he carried his cave, as he once said,
within him. For him truth was not something to be discovered in the privacy of one’s
personal life; it had to be upheld in the challenging contexts of social and political
life.
Gandhi won the affection and loyalty of gifted men and women, old and young, with
vastly dissimilar talents and temperaments; of Europeans of every religious
persuasion; and of Indians of almost every political line. Few of his political
colleagues went all the way with him and accepted nonviolence as a creed; fewer still
shared his food fads, his interest in mudpacks and nature cure, or his prescription
of brahmacarya, complete renunciation of the pleasures of the flesh.
Gandhi’s ideas on sex may now sound quaint and unscientific. His marriage at the
age of 13 seems to have complicated his attitude toward sex and charged it with
feelings of guilt, but it is important to remember that total sublimation, according to
one tradition of Hindu thought, is indispensable for those who seek self-realization,
and brahmacarya was for Gandhi part of a larger discipline in food, sleep, thought,
prayer, and daily activity designed to equip himself for service of the causes to which
he was totally committed. What he failed to see was that his own unique experience
was no guide for the common man.
Scholars have continued to judge Gandhi’s place in history. He was the catalyst if not
the initiator of three of the major revolutions of the 20th century: the movements
against colonialism, racism, and violence. He wrote copiously; the collected edition
of his writings had reached 100 volumes by the early 21st century.
Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi: postage stamp
Image of Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi depicted on a postage stamp from Cyprus.
© iStock/Thinkstock
Much of what he wrote was in response to the needs of his coworkers
and disciples and the exigencies of the political situation, but on fundamentals he
maintained a remarkable consistency, as is evident from the Hind Swaraj (“Indian
Home Rule”), published in South Africa in 1909. The strictures on Western
materialism and colonialism, the reservations about industrialism and urbanization,
the distrust of the modern state, and the total rejection of violence that was
expressed in that book seemed romantic, if not reactionary, to the pre-World War I
generation in India and the West, which had not known the shocks of two global wars
or experienced the phenomenon of Adolf Hitler and the trauma of the atom bomb.
Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru’s objective of promoting a just and egalitarian
order at home and nonalignment with military blocs abroad doubtless owed much to
Gandhi, but neither he nor his colleagues in the Indian nationalist movement wholly
accepted the Gandhian models in politics and economics.
In the years since Gandhi’s death, his name has been invoked by the organizers of
numerous demonstrations and movements. However, with a few outstanding
exceptions—such as those of his disciple the land reformer Vinoba Bhave in India
and of the civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr., in the United States—those
movements have been a travesty of the ideas of Gandhi.
Yet Gandhi will probably never lack champions. Erik H. Erikson, a distinguished
American psychoanalyst, in his study of Gandhi senses “an affinity between Gandhi’s
truth and the insights of modern psychology.” One of the greatest admirers of Gandhi
was Albert Einstein, who saw in Gandhi’s nonviolence a possible antidote to the
massive violence unleashed by the fission of the atom. And Gunnar Myrdal, the
Swedish economist, after his survey of the socioeconomic problems of the
underdeveloped world, pronounced Gandhi “in practically all fields
an enlightened liberal.” In a time of deepening crisis in the underdeveloped world, of
social malaise in the affluent societies, of the shadow of unbridled technology and the
precarious peace of nuclear terror, it seems likely that Gandhi’s ideas and techniques
will become increasingly relevant.
Leadership Qualities
Mahatma Gandhi was a very empowering and Visionary leader. Mahatma Gandhi was an empowering
leader no only because he empowered all Indians on a salt march to corrupt the British economic
system. Since he was pioneer of Satyagraha, he also inspired all Indians to understand and
learn resistance through non-violent civil disobedience. Gandhi was a visionary leader. He
gave Indians a new spirit, a sense of self-respect and a feeling of pride in their civilization, he is
something more than a mere politician. He is a great statesman and a man of vision.
In India, Gandhi established the acknowledgment by leading through example, he established himself
as a slave of the people of India, empowering the general public. He made it his policy to practice what
he preached, even the small things like spinning yarn to make his clothes. He resorted to simple and
poor living, just like millions in the country, hence people looked at Gandhi as one of their own, they
could see their own sufferings in him.
Gandhi had already been recognized through his work and movements in South Africa. People
already had great honor and hopes from him due to what he had achieved, his non-violent methods
were also very well respected within the Indian society. Since he was already visionary and
empowering, Mahatma Gandhi was a Transformational leader. He always empowered his followers
towards success, he gave them hope where there may be none. One of the most outstanding
qualities of Gandhi which makes him a great transformational leader of modern history was his long
term vision, self confidence which was perhaps perceived as someone who was stubborn and strong
principles of righteousness
Had he come of age today, Gandhi might have branded himself as a “social entrepreneur”. In reality,
few social entrepreneurs have achieved anywhere near the scale of impact that Gandhi was able
to. But the comparison is apt, as Gandhi was never a head of state or government, but instead, the
head of a private organization - the Indian National Congress, that, along with its many partners,
mobilized an incredibly diverse and complex peoples into a united movement against British
imperialism. He led first and foremost by understanding the diversity of India and its people –
economically, culturally, religiously, and deeply integrating that diversity into the Independence
movement. He further integrated himself into the movement by dedicating his life to the cause,
living as much among the people as possible, and actually risking death many times for the
cause. While there may never be another Gandhi, there is no reason that today’s committed social
entrepreneurs can’t embrace their own version of Gandhi’s personal and political leadership
commitment.
Arguably, Gandhi’s greatest leadership trait was his ability to visualize the qualities of a successful,
post-Independence Indian nation, and maintain a life-long focus on the four intertwined challenges
that he believed must be collectively addressed for India to achieve success as a nation. The four
challenges, or goals, as articulated by Ramchandra Guha in his book, “Gandhi, The Years That
Changed The World”; were: to free India from British occupation, to end untouchability, to improve
relations between Hindus and Muslims, and to make India into a self-reliant nation – economically
and socially. Gandhi aligned most of the social movements he led around these four goals - starting
with his work in South Africa and continuing until his death. He believed firmly that without
addressing all four challenges simultaneously, India could not acquire independence and become a
successful nation. Without communal harmony between Hindus and Muslims, or between upper
caste and lower caste Hindu’s, for example, Gandhi did not believe India would ever achieve its
potential.
A second element of Gandhi’s leadership was his lifelong commitment to achieving that intertwined
vision of a successful Indian nation. Starting in the 1890’s with his work in South Africa until his
death in 1948, Gandhi wrote, mobilized and preached about the same goals of freedom, inclusion,
harmony, diversity and empowerment. Today, few of the most committed social entrepreneurs
have the energy to stay engaged on the same set of issues for 50-60 years. Dr. Muhammad Yunus of
the Grameen Bank has been one, very notable exception.
Gandhi’s most well-known, and most-studied, leadership trait was his willingness to live like the
majority of Indians that he sought to help, and his exhortation that all Indians “be the change they
wish to see in this world”. It seems obvious, but in a day and age when NGO leaders are in Davos,
London and New York as much as they are in the villages, and when NGO salaries remain a hot topic,
Gandhi’s ability to live comfortably among villagers and the urban poor – to be the change he wished
to see, brought him the credibility, trust and intellectual understanding needed to lead India’s
independence movement. While today’s social entrepreneurs also have compelling visions for
change, they are often unable to separate themselves from the global elite to which they have
historically belonged. And fairly or unfairly, many for-profit entrepreneurs and social enterprises are
perceived as seeking to profit off the backs of the world’s poor, and never gain credibility, even
when their primary objective and motivation is to improve the human condition.
Gandhi’s least studied leadership trait was his ability to use the fast as a social and political
weapon. Over the course of his life time, Gandhi fasted 14 times for social, religious or political
purposes – a skill he mastered through personal practice. He would fast for personal penance and to
build his own capacity for sacrifice, ahimsa and brahmacharya.
Today in business and entrepreneurship, we often talk about core competency and disruptive
innovation. Entrepreneurs are told to develop a product or service that is difficult to compete
against - technically complex, different from the past and very difficult to replicate by others.
Gandhi’s ability to fast for social change was his core competency. It took him many years to train
his body and mind to function without food, and only later did he use the fast as a political
weapon. No one else could do it and there was no answer for it – from anyone. The British never
had an effective response, nor did angry Indian communal rioters. In each case, Gandhi’s fasts
brought capitulation to his wishes, because anything was a more acceptable solution than to allow
Gandhi’s death. It was a great innovation in social movements that, except for Cesar Chavez’s fasts
for farm workers in California, has never been remotely replicated.
The elements of Gandhi’s leadership model remain relevant today. Whether a leader is seeking to
end sexual discrimination, eradicate HIV/AIDS or legislate a jobs program, they will need their own
version of Gandhi’s leadership model - re-imagined in their own vision. In the age of the #MeToo
movement, for example, leaders for gender equality and an end to sexual harassment must attack
the intertwined issues of religion, family structure, sexism, and the transformation of labor
markets. Similarly, to eradicate the HIV virus will require new drugs and vaccines, but will also
transformation in the health care system, cultural norms around sexuality, building rural health
delivery programs and many other things. These will take a life time to achieve and require leaders
with great credibility and trust amongst the communities they are seeking to help and
change. Gandhi was able to maintain the support of India’s upper caste Hindu’s and industrialists
while maintaining the trust of the rural and poor.
What’s missing today is the 2019 version of the fast. We have major global crises in areas like
climate change and forced migration, but no leaders who have yet found tools, like Gandhi’s fast-tilldeath, to push public opinion and government leaders to action. Our greatest commemoration of
Gandhi’s life may be to find the tools that lead to large-scale change non-violently, but forcibly in the
same manner that he did so effectively.
Champions of Human Rights
MAHATMA GANDHI (1869–1948)
Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi is widely recognized as one of the twentieth
century’s greatest political and spiritual leaders. Honoured in India as the father
of the nation, he pioneered and practiced the principle of Satyagraha—resistance
to tyranny through mass nonviolent civil disobedience.
While leading nationwide campaigns to ease poverty, expand women’s rights,
build religious and ethnic harmony and eliminate the injustices of the caste
system, Gandhi supremely applied the principles of nonviolent civil disobedience,
playing a key role in freeing India from foreign domination. He was often
imprisoned for his actions, sometimes for years, but he accomplished his aim in
1947, when India gained its independence from Britain.
Due to his stature, he is now referred to as Mahatma, meaning “great soul.”
World civil rights leaders—from Martin Luther King, Jr. to Nelson Mandela—have
credited Gandhi as a source of inspiration in their struggles to achieve equal
rights for their people.
Bapu's leadership qualities and skills
Gandhi would teach us countless lessons about life, leadership and much more.
Gandhi learnt his Leadership skills during his years in South Africa, and honed them
in India.
He was naturally charismatic. He had a "feel" for his Follower's needs which was
uncannily correct. But he did develop formal tools and methods to become a better
Leader over time. He had a rock-solid value system from which all of his activities
stemmed, he wanted to make major changes at every turn in his life, and he had a
totally interdependent relationship with his followers. As a man of action, he
used the 4 E's throughout his life: Envision, Enable, Empower, and
Energize. Although there are many traits and behaviors that caused the success of
Gandhi, the research has a few picked ingredients:
1. Leadership by examples
Gandhi's greatest ability was to walk his talk at every level and in every way. India
continues to be a nation of many diverse nationalities but never did they so
unanimously identify with another leader as they identified with Gandhi and this was
across classes and communities which were even more sharply divided than they are
these days. He practiced what he preached at every possible level. Be it how he
dressed like the poorest Indian with a hand woven cotton cloth that barely covered his
body and had the simplest of watches and glasses. When it came to personal
possessions, unlike today's leaders he had the barest of minimum.
2. Treatment to others
His letters and writings to other great leaders in India, the world and even to young
children never had a patronizing or "holier-than-thou" element but always looked at
everyone as equals. Leaders who have put their interests over the organizations they
created have prospered as individuals but always at the cost of the institution they built
or worked for. He made an effort to truly understand his people. He spoke from their
point of view...from what motivated them. It has been said that, when he spoke publicly
to large audiences it was like he was speaking to you individually.
3. Persistence
A critical success for Gandhi was the support he got across the nation and in the
international community. A significant part of this was due to his extraordinary
persistence once he had articulated his vision and his methods. His determination in
following through on what he preached was often at cost to his own well-being.
4. Constant Growth
Gandhi would understand the importance of continual growth in his life. Despite being
an accomplished leader in his community, he continually sought out greater
understanding through much study of religious scripture. As a leader, one must also
understand the need for constant growth.
5. Strength Is Not Shown Through Muscle Power
Gandhi displayed great strength, not through using his strength to force others to bend
to his will, but by using nonviolent means to achieve his goals. As a leader, it is a very
simple matter to leverage on your position or your authority to coerce people to bend
to your will. However, it is your true strength as a leader that can persuade and
convince people to follow you with their hearts. Learn to use respect to win people
over, instead of using power to bend people to your will. The force of power never wins
against the power of love. Right Against Might...Mahatma.
6. An Eye For An Eye Will Only Make The Whole World Blind
History can attest to the fact that most human conflicts have been as a result of a
stubborn approach by our leaders. Our history would turn out for the better if our
leaders could just learn that most disputes can be resolved by showing a willingness
to understand the issues of our opponents and by using diplomacy and compassion.
No matter where we live, what religion we practice or what culture we cultivate, at the
heart of everything, we are all humans. We all have the same ambitions and
aspirations to raise our family and to live life to its fullest. Our cultural, religious and
political differences should not provide the backbone to invoke conflicts that can only
bring sorrow and destruction to our world.
7. Become The Change, We Want To See
A great leader always leads with an exemplary life that echoes his ideals. Mahatma
Gandhi sacrificed his thriving law practice and adopted a simple life to live among the
millions who lived in poverty during his freedom struggle. Today, we see modern
leaders cajoling the masses with promises that they never intend to keep - let alone
practicing what they preach in their own lives. One cannot bring world peace to all
unless a leader demonstrates peaceful acts of kindness daily.
8. Reasonable
Even after stating that India would be divided over his dead body, he realised that
partition was inevitable as the only solution to the Hindu-Muslim divide, and accepted
it. Although Gandhi was a man of faith, he did not create any specific dogma for his
followers. Gandhi believed in the unity of all mankind under one God, and preached
Hindu, Muslim and Christian ethics.
9. Strategist
Ideas travel very fast. Gandhi is a fascinating figure. He was a wonderful strategist,
showman and leader. He had an amazing public relations network and a very good
relationship with the press then. For instance, the Dandi march, if Gandhi had gone
there quietly, it would just not have made an impact. He knew he had to create an
event to make an impact and so he took his followers on a march that stirred popular
imagination of the time. He had a total understanding of the human psychology and
used it along with his public relation skills.
10. Discipline
Mahatma believed that challenging his self discipline heightened his commitment to
achieving his goals. He was a focused leader that had a "Do or Die" attitude. He 'would
free India or die in the process. Mahatma would do extraordinary things to improve his
discipline and his commitment.
IMPLICATION OF HIS TRAITS IN MANAGEMENT TODAY
Management is best an expertise. Do what others cannot so you gain authority over
them. So, to be a good leader you need to be very skillful to construct bridges of
empathy with people. Else one will never be in their shoes and they will not follow...
because you don't know them and they can feel it. This is also why most people find it
easier to be managers. Management can be taught. Leadership must be cultivated.
Mahatma Gandhi was a leader who kept working on himself till he became the man
worthy of gaining a country's following. He took a stand on issues. He said, "A 'No'
uttered from the deepest conviction is better than a 'Yes' merely uttered to please, or
worse, to avoid trouble." A manager would try to please in order to diffuse a situation.
A leader will not worry about creating a situation.
1. Reinvent
Gandhi reinvented the rules of the game to deal with a situation where all the available
existing methods had failed. He broke tradition. He understood that you cannot fight
the British with force. Resource constraint did not bother him. Have the courage to
invent the means. Change the paradigm on how we can run.
2. Clarity of Goals and Definite Purpose
He aimed at a common agenda. That was the motivation. He suggests that India needs
to fundamentally change the way it can grow. He unleashed the power of ordinary
people in the country to fight under a unifying goal. If one can understand the motive
of your opponent's leadership; one can find ways to tackle it.
3. Adopt Styles To Suit The Culture (Flexibility)
We keep feeling that models of people in the West are the ones we should follow. In
a way, we remain subservient to the leadership values and models of the West. But
since the last two to three years these models are being doubted even in the West,
and so it is time for India to look within itself for leadership examples. The country
today stands divided on whether what he did was good or bad. There was neither a
leader before him nor one after him who could unite us all and bring us out in the
streets to demand for what rightfully ours. Gandhi advocated having leadership styles
that were dependent on the circumstances. When Gandhi was in South Africa, he
launched his protests in a suit and a tie. But when he came back to India, he thought
of khadi and launched non-violent protests on a greater scale. At times Gandhi had to
be quite flexible leader. At times he had to change his plans around to counter British
rules and tactics.
4. People's Empowerment
According to him, Gandhi's style of leadership as applied to corporate India would
involve making even the lowest person in the organization believe in it and the
significance of his contribution towards it. In business, empowerment is all about
making sure everyone is connected to the organization's goals. Gandhi has a way of
doing that: making sure that everyone in the cause is connected to the goal. Gandhi's
example as a manager and leader is extraordinary. There was no one like him who
could get people together to embrace his vision as their vision. His belief was probably
the most important factor in Mahatma's success. He not only had self belief but he had
the ability to inspire the Indian people to believe in themselves and their goal of
freedom, even through all the hardships that they faced. One of Mahatma's beliefs
was Willpower Overcomes Brut Force.
5. Social Progress
Leadership is a necessary part of the social process. Any group, association,
organization or community functions the way its leader leads it. It is truer in the
collectivistic cultures like India where people follow the path shown by the great
people. Leadership is an integral part of work and social life. In fact in any given
situation where a group of people want to accomplish a common goal, a leader may
be required. Leadership behaviour occurs in almost all formal and informal social
situations. Even in a non formal situation such as a group of friends some sort of
leadership behaviour occurs wherein one individual usually takes a lead in most of the
group activities.
6. Transcend Adversaries
The first time Mahatma got up to speak in court, when he was working as a lawyer, he
could not speak one word out loud due to fear. This caused him great humiliation.
Even though he failed miserably, those failures eventually lead to him becoming one
of the best public speakers of all time. There were quite a number of times Gandhi
failed; each time he used the failure to improve his leadership skills and to improve
himself and the task at hand. Mahatma shows us that the even the best leaders still
fail and make mistakes. He also shows that the difference between good leaders and
great leaders is that the great leaders acknowledge and learn from their mistakes.
7. Inspire and Motivate
Leader must have ability to move the masses; it's not just true for political leaders, but
also organizational leaders. Simply lead with your heart and show that you actually
believe in the purpose of what you stand for. Emotions are contagious, both that of
optimism & pessimism and must be guarded in public. Even in crucial and uncertain
times, it's important to keep positive emotions. While it is important to communicate
reality, it's equally necessary to give sense of hope. Leaders must encourage a culture
of pride in the employees; they should be able to harness the collective creative
energies of an organization. A leader must have the ability to bring out the best in
others, to enable others to act. When the employees feel that they "only work here",
the leadership has typically failed.
8. Credibility
Credibility is single most important quality of a good leader; it is the foundation. A
foundation that is build with honesty, integrity, and self-discipline. Employees look up
the leaders as the role models, or simply the person who brings meaning to their daily
job. If the leaders can't practice the solid values they preach, their ideas will be
shrugged off. Every leader must realize that employees are constantly observing and
analyzing their actions, evaluating consistency between their work and their deeds,
judging their integrity. Leaders must exercise self-discipline by suppressing their own
personal egos or emotions.
9. Long lasting relationships
In today's era on communication, relationships are not only important but crucial.
Opinion of every person counts. A leaders job is not only limited to planning, creating
strategies and organizational structure, but to make sure that they are establishing the
kind of personal relationships that employees wish to seek. Employees must find their
leaders accessible, they like to hear from them first hand rather than through their
managers. The open door policy should not be used as a mere buzz word.
Truly, management is completely different from leadership. Like opposite ends of a
coin. While Gandhi might have been 'managing' the Indian freedom movement with a
troop of comrades on clockwork precision, he was actually leading a change of
mindset that effected change in everyone who participated with him.
CONCLUSIONS AND FINDINGS
Gandhi’s entire life story is about action, to bring about positive change. He both
succeeded and failed in what he sought to do, but he always moved forward and he
never gave up the quest for improvement, both social and spiritual, and both for
individuals and for the Nation as a whole. Today, Gandhi is remembered not only as
a political leader, but as a moralist who appealed to the universal conscience of
mankind. He changed the world.
Gandhi’s effect on the world was and still is immense. He also gave to the world a way
of thinking about and acting upon value systems that profoundly influenced such
important figures as Martin Luther King and Malcolm X. From a practical viewpoint, his
focus on "Swadeshi" formed the core of India’s industrial policy. Gandhi’s success and
continued reputation make him a leader worthy to learn from. All of us who aspire to
lead ethically may never “be like him”.
Gandhi’s relevance, is more so today as many more are educated, articulate and
ambitious. In such times, leaders can lead only if they not only have their content right
but are also better people with a vision for themselves and others. While Gandhi might
have been ‘managing’ the Indian freedom movement with a troop of comrades, he was
actually leading a change of mindset that effected change in everyone who
participated with him.
One of his most admirable qualities was that he led by example and never preached
what he himself was not willing to do.
He was charismatic, but he was also deliberate and analytical. He was a
transformational and transactional leader too.
Mahatma Gandhi taught us that we can bring harmony to our world by becoming
champions of love and peace for all.
If all of us do our bit, to be like him in every relationship we forge at work and
elsewhere, we have no doubt that our successors will inherit a better world.
SUGGESTIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS
You can manage people but that will only be because you have the authority to do so
bestowed upon you. But you can lead from anywhere, so that your influence infects
others and regardless of your position or authority, they follow what you say. The
leadership skills that he showed stemmed from his focus on a definite purpose,
discipline and his belief systems. Business gurus in India are talking about a new role
model: Mahatma Gandhi. The Father of the Nation is now being held up as the master
strategist, an exemplary leader, and someone whose ideas and tactics corporate India
can emulate.
Gandhi's ideas are of particular relevance to India at this juncture to become an
economic superpower. So the leadership styles in management that we see with
Gandhi famous quotes are distinctively what anyone can evolve into being.
Mahatma Gandhi's Leadership - Moral And Spiritual
Foundations
Mahatma Gandhi is universally accepted as an exemplary model of ethical and moral
life, with a rare blending of personal and public life, the principles and practices, the
immediate and the eternal. He considered life to be an integrated whole, growing from
'truth to truth' every day in moral and spiritual status.
He believed in a single standard of conduct founded on dharma of truth and
nonviolence. He successfully led nonviolent struggles against racial discrimination,
colonial rule, economic and social exploitation and moral degradation. So long as
these manifestations of violence remain, Gandhi will remain relevant. Gandhi was "a
good man in a world where few resist the corroding influence of power, wealth and
vanity".1
Among the vital messages of Gandhi's leadership are: even one person can make a
difference; strength comes not from physical capacity but from an indomitable will;
given a just cause, nonviolence and capacity for self-suffering, and fearlessness,
victory is certain; leadership by example is the one most effective. He asserted: "We
only wish to serve our fellowmen wherever we may be..." (CWMG 54:233)
Considering Gandhi's unique and multi-faceted leadership, an attempt has been made
to study his leadership under three main headings:
Ethico-social Parameters of Gandhian Leadership;
Gandhian Leadership - The Vision and the Way; and
Gandhian Political-Economic-Social Order.
I
Ethico-Social Parameters
Gandhi spoke in a low tone and was a hesitant public speaker. Yet people of all
classes were drawn to him and instinctively felt him to be a leader of deeply spiritual
and moral perceptions, which he sought to realize through the pursuit of Truth. Over
54 years of Gandhi's public life were lived as an open book. He lived in South Africa
for 21 years and then in India from 1915. All through his life he remained a seeker
after Truth.
A central quality of his leadership was its natural evolution through intense interaction
with the people and the events. He was acutely conscious of his own imperfections.
"One great reason for the misunderstanding lies in my being considered almost a
perfect man...I am painfully conscious of my imperfections, and therein lies all the
strength I posses, because it is a rare thing for a man to know his own limitations"
(CWMG 21:457-9). The more he realized about human fallibility, the more he tried to
evolve morally and spiritually. When nothing else availed, he would seek refuge in God
and yet carry on.
Gandhi single-handedly made nonviolence a universal substitute for violence and the
bed-rock of his leadership. His nonviolence was the way to counter injustice and
exploitation, and not run away from a righteous battle. He associated the qualities of
humility, compassion, forgiveness and tolerance as corollaries of nonviolence.
Humility, to him, is "an indispensable test of ahimsa. In one who has ahimsa in him it
becomes part of his very nature," and, it must not be "confounded with mere manners
or etiquette," but it "should make the possessor realize that he is as nothing" (CWMG
44:205-6).
To Gandhi the spirit of service and sacrifice was the key to leadership. For the spirit of
service to materialize we must lay stress on our responsibilities and duties and not on
rights. He illustrated it through the example of "concentric circles": one starts with
service of those nearest to one and expands the circle of service until it covers the
universe, no circle thriving at the cost of the circles beyond. Service to him implied
self-sacrifice. He said: "Sacrifice is the law of life. It runs through and governs every
walk of life. We can do nothing or get nothing without paying a price for it...in other
words, without sacrifice" (CWMG 4:112).
The commitment to service, however demands a strong sense of conscience (moral
imperative), courage (fearlessness, bravery, initiative), and character (integrity). To
Mahatma Gandhi, 'inner voice' was synonymous with conscience. Leaders need to
develop and follow their conscience even more than ordinary people as they set the
path for others. Hence, he wrote: "None of us, especially no leader should allow
himself to disobey the inner voice in the face of pressure from outside. Any leader who
succumbs in this way forfeits his right of leadership (CWMG 34:363-4). For a leader
to follow the right path requires courage and its associated qualities: "Courage,
endurance and above all, fearlessness and spirit of willing sacrifices are the qualities
that are required today in India for leadership" (CWMG 21:152).
Gandhi in his time wielded more power over the minds of people than any other
individual but it was not the power of weapons, or terror, or violence; it was the power
of his convictions, his pursuit of truth and nonviolence, fearlessness, love and justice,
working through incessant service and sacrifice for fellow human beings. His power
came from empowering the weak, to lead the masses in the fight against injustice,
exploitation, violence and discrimination. Satyagraha elevated the struggle for survival
to the highest moral-spiritual levels and ordinary, emaciated people turned heroes. His
power arose through the people whom he gave a sense of self-respect, purpose and
moral strength.
We may thus conclude that Gandhi's leadership was a running ethical lesson to his
followers as well as his opponents on 'how to live'. An outline of the basic ethical tenets
of Gandhian leadership, proceeding from the eternal verities towards the more applied
principles of conduct are given below:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
Truth
Nonviolence
Right Means and Right Ends
Primacy of Duties over Right
The Deed, not the Doer
True Religion (Universality and Brotherhood)
Aparigraha or Non-possession (voluntary Poverty)
Yajna (Sacrifice and Service)
Satyagraha or Nonviolent Conflict Resolution
II
The Vision And The Way
Gandhi's Vision
Mahatma Gandhi was not an armchair academician or a cloistered visionary. He was
deeply concerned with the world around him. He disclaimed being a visionary. He said:
"Mere discipline cannot make leadership. The latter calls for faith and vision" (CWMG
72:217). The core of his vision for the people of India was contained in his concept of
Swaraj, the fountainhead from which the whole range of the concepts of Gandhian
philosophy flow. It necessarily starts with political self-rule as a means to achieving
economic, social and moral freedom. It applies equally to the individual, the society
and the state.
His concept of freedom was self-rule, i.e. self-restraint and not freedom from all
restraint which "independence often means" (CWMG 45:264). "Swaraj means
freedom not only for oneself but "for your neighbour too" (CWMG 60:254), because,
"Men aspiring to be free could hardly think of enslaving others. If they try to do so, they
would only be binding their own chains of slavery tighter" (CWMG 87:162). He defined
Swaraj as a social state "in which the poorest shall feel it is their country in whose
making they have an effective voice....no high class and low class of people....all
communities shall live in perfect harmony....no room in such an India for the curse of
untouchablility or....of intoxicating drinks and drugs. Women will enjoy the same rights
as men" (CWMG 47:389).
Inherent in his vision of Swaraj was his vision of democracy: "Democracy, disciplined
and enlightened, is the fines thing in the world" (CWMG 47:236).
Gandhi's Way: Satyagraha
The philosophy of Satyagraha has been explained in simple terms by Gandhi himself,
as appearing in the 'Congress Report on the Punjab Disorders, chap. IV: Satyagraha'
(see CWMG 17:151-58):
"The principles of satyagraha, as known today, constitute a gradual evolution. Its root
meaning is 'holding on to truth'; hence truth-force. I have also called it love-force or
soul force. In the application of satyagraha, I discovered in the earliest stages that
pursuit of truth did not admit of violence being inflicted on one's opponent, but that he
must be weaned from error by patience and sympathy. For what appears to be truth
to one, may appear to be an error to the other. And patience means selfsuffering....Satyagraha....has been conceived as a weapon of the strongest, and
excludes the use of violence in any shape or form ...I feel that nations cannot be one
in reality, nor can their activities be conducive to the common good of the whole
community, unless there is this definite recognition and acceptance of the law of the
family in national and international affairs...Satyagraha has therefore been described
as a coin, on whose face you read love and on the reverse you read truth...A
satyagrahi does not know what defeat is..."
"And as a satyagrahi never injures his opponent and always appeals, either to his
reason....or his heart....satyagraha is twice blessed; it blesses him who practices it,
and him against whom it is practiced. Satyagraha....is essentially a....process of
purification and penance. It seeks to secure reforms or redress of grievances by selfsuffering."
In the Gandhian philosophy of satyagraha, dialogue and compromise―except on
basic principles―play a vital part. He writes in his Autobiography: "All my life through,
the very insistence on truth has taught me to appreciate the beauty of compromise. I
saw in later life that this spirit was an essential part of satyagraha" (CWMG 39:122).
III
Gandhian Political-Economic-Social Order
Spiritualizing Politics
Mahatma Gandhi never sought a public or political office or title. He was in politics for
spiritual reasons. He explained in a speech in London (23.9.1931) "...although to all
appearances my mission is political...its roots are―if I may use the term―spiritual...I
claim that at least my politics are not divorces from morality, from spirituality, from
religion...a man who is trying to discover and follow the will of God, cannot possibly
leave a single field of life untouched. I found through bitter experience that, if I wanted
to do social service, I could not possibly leave politics alone" (CWMG 48:50). Later he
said: "The call to lead India did not come to me in the nature of a sudden realization. I
prepared for it by fasting and self discipline. My political work grew out of my spiritual
preparation" (CWMG 48:63)
He was misunderstood when he said, "I cannot conceive politics as divorced from
religion. Indeed, religion should pervade every one of our actions." He explained that,
"Here religion does not mean sectarianism. It means a belief in the ordered moral
government of the universe. This religion transcends Hinduism, Islam, Christianity,
etc. it does not supercede them. It harmonizes them and gives them reality" (CWMG
71: 177-8).
"....if I seem to take part in politics, it is only because politics encircles us today like
the coil of a snake from which one cannot get out....I wish therefore to wrestle with the
snake....I have been experimenting with myself and my friends by introducing religion
into politics...Religion which changes one's very nature, which binds one indissolubly
to the truth within and which ever purifies (CWMG 17:406).
Early after arrival in India he had exhorted in a speech (8.5.1915): "You and I have to
act on the political platform from a spiritual side and if this is done we should conquer
the conquerors" (CWMG 13:82).
Patriotism, Nationalism and Internationalism
Mahatma Gandhi's patriotism and nationalism were not narrow-minded or exclusive,
but were part of his search for truth through unity in diversity and through service.
These were expressions of his swadeshi spirit, which seeks food of the nearer society
as a part of the global good. "I am patriotic because I am human and humane. It is not
exclusive. I will not hurt England and Germany to serve India" (CWMG 19:427). For
nationalism he said: "Internationalism is possible only when nationalism becomes a
fact...It is not nationalism that is evil, it is the narrowness, selfishness, exclusiveness
which is the bane of modern nations which is evil (CWMG 27:255). To him nationalism
was a step towards internationalism.
He believed in the ideal of self-reliance along with that of interdependence and
cooperation. He said: "Individual liberty and interdependence are both essential for life
in a society. When a man has done all he can for the satisfaction of his essential
requirements, he will seek the cooperation of his neighbours for the rest. That will be
true cooperation" (CWMG 82:396). Even his struggle for India's freedom was imbued
with this spirit: "I want freedom of my country so that other countries may learn
something from this free country of mine...so that the resources of my country may be
utilized for the benefit of mankind" (CWMG 28:129).
The concept of sacrifice under Gandhian thinking became a continuous chain from the
individual to the world. He described this in a idiom thus: "The logical conclusion of
self-sacrifice is that the individual sacrificed himself for the community, the community
sacrificed itself for the district, the district for the province, the province for the nation,
and the nation for the world. A drop torn from the ocean perished without doing any
good. If it remains a part of the ocean, it shared the glory of carrying on its bosom a
fleet of mighty ships" (CWMG 86:23).
A New Meaning of Democracy
All through his public life, Gandhi was thinking how to institutionalize swaraj or true
democracy, including Gram swaraj and village panchayats. T him democracy meant
"the art and science of mobilizing the entire physical, economic and spiritual resources
of all....in the service of the common good of all" (CWMG 69:50).
In an interview (9.1.1927), he defined the required qualities of leaders under swaraj
thus: "My ideal is that every person should realize dharma. In that case there would
be no need left for any representatives. That is the ideal swaraj...(CWMG 35: 528-31).
He was acutely conscious of the pitfalls and corruption in parliamentary democracies,
and continued to lay stress on purification of the public life and political process. As
early as 1934, he would write: "....corruption and hypocrisy ought not to be the
inevitable products of democracy as they undoubtedly are today; nor bulk a true test
of democracy" (CWMG 59: 11-2)
Towards a Humanistic Social Order
Gandhian vision of swaraj covered all aspects of human life, including the vital area of
'Political Economy'. Gandhian economics is normative, a means to obtaining a nonviolent, egalitarian, sustainable, progressive and happy social order.
To him economics and ethics go together: "True economics never militates against
the highest ethical standard, just as all true ethics....must at the same time be also
good economics. As economics that inculcates mammon worship and enables the
strong to amass wealth at the expense of the weak, is a false and dismal
science...True economics....stands for social justice; it promotes the good of all
equally, including the weakest and is indispensable for decent life" (CWMG 66:168).
He had made his first major statement on socio-economic order in his paraphrase of
John Ruskin's 'Unto This Last' (1860) in his booklet titled 'Sarvodaya' ('Welfare of all',
1908). He summed up his understanding of the lessons of Ruskin's book in his
Autobiography as:
"1. That the good of the individual is contained in the good of all.
2. That a lawyer's work has the same value as a barber's, in as much as all have the
same right of earning their livelihood from their work.
3. That a life of labour....is the life worth living" CWMG 39:239).
In a speech delivered (22.12.1916) at Muir College Economic Society, Allahabad, he
defined 'real economics' thus: "In a well-ordered society, the securing of one's
livelihood should be and is found to be the easiest thing in the world. Indeed the test
of orderliness in a country is not the number of millionaires it owns, but the absence
of starvation among its masses... These are real economics" (CWMG 13:312).