Eassy on Mahatma Gandhi, non- violence and evolution of freedom in India
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Answer:If the Indian National Congress had not accepted his basic tenet of non-violence in 1920, he would have had nothing to do with its struggle for liberation from British rule. 'I would like to repeat to the world, times without number', Gandhi said in 1931, 'that I will not purchase my country's freedom at the cost of non-violence.' Nine years later, in the midst of the Second World War, when he was asked what he would do if India became independent during his lifetime, he replied: 'If India became free in my lifetime and I have still energy left in me ... I would take my due share, though outside the official world, in building up the nation strictly on non-violent lines.' We must remember that Gandhi applied his method of non-violent resistance not only against foreign rule, but against social evils such as racial discrimination and untouchability. Indeed, he claimed that non-violence lay at the root of every one of his activities, and his mission in life was not merely the freedom of India but the brotherhood of man. His satyagraha was designed not only for India, but for the whole world; it could transform relations between individuals, as well as between communities and nations. In the early 1920s, when he had just emerged as the stoutest champion of nationalism in Asia, Gandhi unequivocally subscribed to the ideal of a world federation. 'The better mind of the world desires today', he told the Belgaum Congress in 1924, 'not absolutely independent states warring against each other but a federation of friendly interdependent states.' In the late 1930s, when the forces of violence were gathering momentum in Europe, he reaffirmed his faith in non-violence.Through the pages of his weekly paper, Harijan, he expounded his approach to political tyranny and military aggression. He advised weaker nations to defend themselves by offering non-violent resistance to the aggressor. A non-violent Abyssinian, he argued, needed no arms and no succour from the League of Nations; if every Abyssinian man, woman, and child refused cooperation with the Italians, willing or forced, the latter would have to walk to victory over the dead bodies of their victims and to occupy their country without the people. The motive power of Nazi and Fascist aggression was the desire to carve out new empires, and behind it all was a ruthless competition to annex new sources of raw materials and fresh markets. In Gandhi's opinion, wars were thus rooted in the overweening greed of men as also in the purblind tribalism that placed nationalism above humanity. In the ultimate analysis, to shake off militarism, it was necessary to end the competitive greed and fear and hatred which fed it.
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