by Mohd Ishfaq Shah
“SOME ARE BORN GREAT, SOME ACHIEVE GREATNESS AND SOME HAVE GREATNESS THRUST UPON THEM.”
– SHAKESPEARE
Gandhi Jayanti is celebrated yearly on 2 October and is observed in all states and territories. It is marked by prayer services and tributes across India, including Gandhi’s memorial, Raj Ghat, where he was cremated in New Delhi. Popular activities include prayer meetings, and commemorative ceremonies in different cities by colleges, local government institutions, and socio-political institutions. On this day awards are granted for projects in schools and the community encouraging a nonviolent way of life as well as celebrating Gandhi’s effort in the Indian independence movement. Gandhi’s favorite bhajan (Hindu devotional song), Raghupati Raghava Raja Ram, is usually sung in his memory. Statues of Mahatma Gandhi throughout the country are decorated with flowers and garlands, and some people avoid drinking alcohol or eating meat on the day. Public buildings, banks, and post offices are closed. Gandhi Jayanti is a national holiday in India, celebrated annually on 2 October to honor the birth of Mahatma Gandhi, one of the key leaders of the Indian independence movement and a pioneer of the philosophy and strategy of nonviolence. It is one of the three national holidays in India.. Referred to as the “National Father” by Subhas Chandra Bose, Gandhi’s principles of nonviolent resistance played a crucial role in India’s successful struggle for independence from British colonial rule.
Innumerable instances may serve as illustrations to know and understand how Gandhi Ji defeated the violent British through the means of non-violence and how he succeeded in his mission. Indian history reveals that 1920 was the era of the civil disobedience movement initiated by this great leader against the colonel masters. The most striking episodes being the Champaran Satyagrah, Gujarat mill workers’ strike, and salt Satyagrah, etc. as a reference I would like to quote Louis Fisaher who in his book’ The life of Mahatma Gandhi” mentions: When I first visited Gandhi in 1942 at his ashram in Sevagram, in central India, he said, “I will tell you how it happened that I decided to urge the departure of the British. It was in 1917.” He had gone to the December 1916 annual convention of the Indian National Congress party in Lucknow. There were 2,301 delegates and many visitors. During the proceedings, Gandhi recounted, “a peasant came up to me looking like any other peasant in India, poor and emaciated, and said, ‘I am Rajkumar Shukla. I am from Champaran, and I want you to come to my district’!’’
“They, thereupon, obtained agreements from the sharecroppers to pay them compensation for being released from the 15 percent arrangement. The sharecropping arrangement was irksome to the peasants, and many signed willingly. Those who resisted engaged lawyers; the landlords hired thugs. Meanwhile, the information about synthetic indigo reached the illiterate peasants who had signed, and they wanted their money back. At this point, Gandhi arrived in Champaran. He went to a house and, using it as headquarters, continued his investigations. A report came in that a peasant had been maltreated in a nearby village. Gandhi decided to go and see; the next morning he started on the back of an elephant. He had not proceeded far when the police superintendent’s messenger overtook him and ordered him to return to town What would be the impact of synthetic indigo on the prices of natural indigo? Gandhi complied.
The messenger drove Gandhi home where he served him with an official notice to quit Champaran immediately. Gandhi signed a receipt for the notice and wrote on it that he would disobey the order. In consequence, Gandhi received a summons to appear in court the next day. All night Gandhi remained awake. He telegraphed Rajendra Prasad to come from Bihar with influential friends. He sent instructions to the ashram. He wired a full report to the Viceroy. Morning found the town of Motihari black with peasants. They did not know Gandhi’s record in South Africa. They had merely heard that a Mahatma who wanted to help them was in trouble with the authorities. Their spontaneous demonstration, in thousands, around the courthouse was the beginning of their liberation from fear of the British. The officials felt powerless without Gandhi’s cooperation. He helped them regulate the crowd. He was polite and friendly. He was giving them concrete proof that their might, hitherto dreaded and unquestioned, could be challenged by Indians.
The government was baffled. The prosecutor requested the judge to postpone the trial. The authorities wished to consult their superiors. Gandhi protested against the delay. He read a statement pleading guilty. He was involved, he told the court, in a “conflict of duties”— on the one hand, not to set a bad example as a lawbreaker; on the other hand, to render the “humanitarian and national service” for which he had come. He disregarded the order to leave, “not for want of respect for lawful authority, but in obedience to the higher law of our being, the voice of conscience”. He asked about the penalty due. The magistrate announced that he would pronounce the sentence after a two-hour recess and asked Gandhi to furnish bail for those 120 minutes. Gandhi refused. The judge released him without bail. When the court reconvened, the judge said he would not deliver the judgment for several days. Meanwhile, he allowed Gandhi to remain at liberty. Rajendra Prasad, Brij Kishor Babu, Maulana Mazharul Huq, and several other prominent lawyers had arrived from Bihar. They conferred with Gandhi….Gandhi received a written communication from the magistrate informing him that the lieutenant governor of the province had ordered the case to be dropped. Civil disobedience had triumphed, for the first time in modern India. Gandhi and the lawyers now proceeded to conduct a far-flung inquiry into the grievances of the farmers. Depositions by about ten thousand peasants were written down, and notes made on other evidence. Documents were collected.
The whole area throbbed with the activity of the investigators and the vehement protests of the landlords. In June, Gandhi was summoned to Sir Edward Gait, the Lieutenant-Governor. Before he went he met 1. The events in this part of the 1 text illustrate Gandhi’s method of working. Can you identify some instances of this method and link them to his ideas of satyagraha and leading associates and again laid detailed plans for civil disobedience if he should not return? Gandhi had four protracted interviews with the Lieutenant Governor who, as a result, appointed an official commission of inquiry into the indigo sharecroppers’ situation. The commission consisted of landlords, government officials, and Gandhi as the sole representative of the peasants. Gandhi remained in Champaran for an initial uninterrupted period of seven months and then again for several shorter visits. The visit, undertaken casually on the entreaty of an unlettered peasant in the expectation that it would last a few days, occupied almost a year of Gandhi’s life. The official inquiry assembled a crushing mountain of evidence against the big planters, and when they saw this they agreed, in principle, to make refunds to the peasants. “But how much must we pay?” they asked Gandhi.
They thought he would demand repayment in full of the money that they had illegally and deceitfully extorted from the sharecroppers. He asked only 50 percent. “There he seemed adamant,” writes Reverend J. Z. Hodge, a British missionary in Champaran who observed the entire episode at close range. “Thinking probably that he would not give way, the representative of the planters offered to refund to the extent of 25 percent, and to his amazement Mr. Gandhi took him at his word, thus breaking the deadlock.” This settlement was adopted unanimously by the commission. Gandhi explained that the amount of the refund was less important than the fact that the landlords had been obliged to surrender part of the money and, with it, part of their prestige. Therefore, as far as the peasants were concerned, the planters had behaved as lords above © NCERT not to be republished Indigo/53 the law. Now the peasant saw that he had rights and defenders. He learned courage. Events justified Gandhi’s position. Within a few years, the British planters abandoned their estates, which reverted to the peasants.
Indigo sharecropping disappeared. Gandhi never contented himself with large political or economic solutions. He saw the cultural and social backwardness in the Champaran villages and wanted to do something about it immediately. He appealed to teachers. Mahadev Desai and Narhari Parikh, two young men who had just joined Gandhi as disciples, and their wives, volunteered for the work. Several more came from Bombay, Poona, and other distant parts of the land. Devadas, Gandhi’s youngest son, arrived from the ashram and so did Mrs. Gandhi. Primary schools were opened in six villages. Kasturbai taught the ashram rules on personal cleanliness and community sanitation. Health conditions were miserable. Gandhi got a doctor to volunteer his services for six months. Three medicines were available — castor oil, quinine, and sulfur ointment. Anybody who showed a coated tongue was given a dose of castor oil; anybody with malaria fever received quinine plus castor oil; anybody with skin eruptions received ointment plus castor oil. Gandhi noticed the filthy state of women’s clothes. He asked Kasturbai to talk to them about it. One woman took Kasturbai into her hut and said, ‘‘Look, there is no box or cupboard here for clothes. The sari I am wearing is the only one I have.” During his long stay in Champaran, Gandhi kept a long-distance watch on the ashram. He sent regular instructions by mail and asked for financial accounts. Once he wrote to the residents that it was time to fill in the old latrine trenches and dig new ones otherwise the old ones would begin to smell bad episode was a turning point in Gandhi’s life.
I declared that the British could not order me about in my own country.” But Champaran did not begin as an act of defiance. It grew out of an attempt to alleviate the distress of large numbers of poor peasants. This was the typical Gandhi pattern — his politics were intertwined with the practical, day-to-day problems of the millions. His was not a loyalty to abstractions; it was a loyalty to living, human beings. In everything Gandhi did, moreover, he tried to mold a new free Indian who could stand on his own feet and thus make India free. Early in the Champaran action, Charles Freer Andrews, the English pacifist who had become a devoted follower of the Mahatma, came to bid Gandhi farewell before going on a tour of duty to the Fiji Islands. Gandhi’s lawyer friends thought it would be a good idea for Andrews to stay in Champaran and help them. Andrews was willing if Gandhi agreed. But Gandhi was vehemently opposed.
Every year we celebrate Gandhi Jayanti on 2nd October. And every year we commemorate Gandhi Ji on his birth anniversary. We recall his philosophy, moralism, and social and political contributions by this great leader. But the matter of introspection is whether there is any impact upon today’s world that is full of violence not only in terms of war and violence but also in terms of other social and political like corruption, nepotism, fraud and cheating throughout the world. ironically saying that the UNO is a mere spectator and enjoying the dance of violence the more ironic thing is that the UNO declared this day as a way of non-violence in 2007 hence indicating that it is the greatest caretaker of peace and harmony. Wars take place every year. And the fact is that on this very day and date, the world is witnessing one more war between Israel and Iran. This too is an undeniable fact that the conflict between the two nations has intensified just after the fresh clashes between Palestine and Israel as a result of the harsh attack on the part of Hamas- an armed group fighting for the cause of Palestine’s freedom from Israel. Just a year or two back, the Russian invasion of Ukraine was a strategy to prevent the USA from controlling her intervention in her territories.
So, the matter of deep reflection is that the current world is making fun of such great personalities by celebrating their days and at the same time violating their ideals and principles. The tragedy of the character is that Gandhi Ji could not spare himself from violence while being non-violent right from the beginning. If the current world relay needs peace, Gandhian principles of non-violence and truth are of the utmost importance and are being followed in letter and spirit.
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