Skip to main content

MAHATMA-‘Father of the Nation’.


It all began when Gandhiji was thrown out of the train, while he was travelling to Pretoria, although he had a first-class ticket. This so happened on the complaint of a white man who was having to share seat with this black Indian. And thanks to that white man that this black Indian could later become our ‘Father of The Nation’.
With the overwhelming feelings of fear and neglect, he felt like leaving South Africa at once. But destiny had a treasure in store for him. A task so great and befitting for him. His courage took over his fears and he thus decided to stay back in South Africa, working for 21 years.
As protest for this ‘Apartheid’, he formed the Natal Indian Congress in 1894. This organization strived to put an end to the oppression of the native Africans and Indians by using non-violent protests.
Gandhiji came back to India in 1896, for a brief time to gather 800 free Indians to work with him back in South Africa. Their arrival was greeted with violence by an irate mob and Gandhiji was badly injured in this violence.
He, along with 1,100 Indians had organized the Indian Ambulance Corps for the British in 1899 Boer war. Yet, the torture and discrimination on the Indians did not end.
Inspired by English artist John Ruskin’s book, ‘Unto This Last’, Gandhiji set up a farm names ‘phoenix’ farm in Durban where he trained his cadres on the ideals of ‘Satyagraha’. Yes, the great ‘satyagraha’ movement was born here, however, in his second camp in Tolstoy farm, Satyagraha was shaped into a weapon of protest.
The first satyagraha campaign was organized in 1906. This was in protest against the Asiatic ordinance which was directed against the Indian immigrants in Transvaal. Again in June, 1907, he organized Satyagraha against compulsory registration of Asiatic (The Black Act).
He had to stand trial in 1908, for instigating the Satyagraha movement. He spent two months in prison and this was for the first time he was in jail. He then made a compromise with the General Smuts but after he came out, he was attacked for making the compromise and thus he had to relaunch the Satyagraha.
He was sentenced to three months imprisonment in Volkshurst and Pretoria jails in 1909, after which he went to England to enlist support for the Indian community.
In 1913, he helped in the campaign against nullification of marriages celebrated not according to the Christian rights.
He had also launched the third Satyagraha by leading 2000 Indian miners across the Transvaal border. He was unconditionally released by December in hope of compromise.
He had to live a life of so much self-restraint and discipline. He changed his feeding to minimal, was his own doctor, embraced The Gita and led the life of ‘Brahmacharya’ (celibacy).
Suffering himself to eradicate suffering from the life of thousands of oppressed, he set an example of true sacrifice.

Thus, he was rightly given the heavy-weight, befitting title for his lofty deeds, ‘MAHATMA’, by our most loved and respect, world renowned Rabindranath Tagore.
By Sayan Adhikary( 5th semester, RKMVU)

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Traditional Marital Status of Santal Community

The important phase of life cycle is marriage. In the turning point of life marriage is very much significant in human social life. It is found among the every people of the society. It not only provides to make contact with the other people of the society but also gives an individual a social status. So, there are many rites and rituals are related with marriage. Marriage is socially recognized bonding of man and woman as this term is culturally constructed typically for the purpose of legitimate reproduction, the establishment of family or a creation of new household. So when mating gets social approval and when it controls the relation of a mated pair to each other, their kinsmen, their offspring and society at large, it will be known as marriage. Thus, marriage is the basis of the human society. Marriage in Santals community is a sign of prosperity and beginning of new life. The institution of marriage is very strong among them. Among them marriage is known as “ Bapla ”. ...
4 comments
Read more

Resource Map helps you to make better decisions

Resource Map is a free, open-source tool that helps you make better decisions by giving a better insight into the location and distribution of your resources . With Resource Map , our team can collaboratively record, track, and analyse resources at a glance using a live map In PRA (Participatory Rural Appraisal) Resource Map is a very effective tool to know about the resource of the place, and it is also a good method to involve all person at the same time as because of its large size. Everyone can contribute their ideas and knowledge about the place in Resource mapping. It is also a good tool to attract people’s mind into PRA as because we use various colour and different materials as needed it is quite interesting than other tools of PRA. In our Resource Map at Anjan gram of Gumla Dist. of Jharkhand we use different materials like tiles, green grasses, coloured powder, sketch pens, sand, stone of different size, chart paper, etc. Our team is divided into groups, the mass ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Rabindranath Tagore's idea of rural reconstruction

Rabindranath Tagore was not only a great poet rather he had got deep feeling for rural reconstruction in India. He always tried to make people happy not only economically rather by his songs Dave's and dharma also.                                              After successfully starting of Shatiniketan at Bolepur in West Bengal he thought about another separate Centre for rural all round development. It was Sriniketan. It visualized for self-supporting steps of rural people. Starting with neighboring villages, the institute has conducted it's activities in many villages. These villages are graped under sub-centers for the convenience of administration the area has been divided into two zones 1. Intensive area, 2. Extensive area. The first comprises 26 vil...
Post a Comment
Read more