Ng eng teng biography of mahatma gandhi
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He also led Non-Cooperation Movement, Civil Disobedience Movement, Swaraj, and Quit-India movement against the British government.
Gandhi-Irwin Pact
Mahatma Gandhi: Satyagraha
Gandhi identified his overall method of non-violent action as Satyagraha. But he returned to India in 1915 as Mahatma.
As advised by Gopal Krishna Gokhale, Gandhiji spent one year travelling in India and studying India and her people.
During its final phase in 1913, hundreds of Indians living in South Africa, including women, went to jail, and thousands of striking Indian miners were imprisoned, flogged and even shot. Gandhiji landed at Durban and soon he realized the oppressive atmosphere of racial snobbishness against Indians who were settled in South Africa in large numbers.
He particularly advocated the manufacture of khaddar, or homespun cloth, in order to replace imported textiles from Britain. When British Government ordered Gandhiji to leave Champaran, he defied the order by declaring that “British could not order me about in my own country”. In the course of his struggle in South Africa, Gandhiji, developed the concepts of Ahimsa (non-violence) and Satyagraha (holding fast to truth or firmness in a righteous cause).
The magistrate postponed the trial and released him without bail and the case against him was withdrawn. He was in high school at that time. British authorities arrested Gandhi in March 1922 and tried him for sedition; he was sentenced to six years in prison but was released in 1924 after undergoing an operation for appendicitis.
Gandhi’s eloquence and embrace of an ascetic lifestyle based on prayer, fasting and meditation earned him the reverence of his followers, who called him Mahatma (Sanskrit for “the great-souled one”). Mahatma Gandhi's Satyagraha was based on true principles and non-violence.
"Live as if you were to die tomorrow. He realized that absolute continence or brahmacharya was indispensable for the purpose as one could not live both after the flesh and the spirit.
He supported the British war effort in World War I but remained critical of colonial authorities for measures he felt were unjust. However, the violence broke out; Gandhiji had to suspend the movement as people were not disciplined enough. An offer from Dada Abdulla & Company to go to South Africa to instruct their consul in a law suit opened up a new chapter in his life.
They did not quite know why; they did not quite know what he stood for. Thereafter 10 days after arrival, he joined the Inner Temple, one of the four London law colleges, and studied and practiced law. In London, he also joined a Vegetarian Society and was introduced to Bhagavad Gita by some of his vegetarian friends. Gandhiji asked the workers to strike work, on condition that they took pledge to remain non-violent.
That train journey served as a turning point for Gandhi, and he soon began developing and teaching the concept of satyagraha (“truth and firmness”), or passive resistance, as a way of non-cooperation with authorities.
The Birth of Passive Resistance
In 1906, after the Transvaal government passed an ordinance regarding the registration of its Indian population, Gandhi led a campaign of civil disobedience that would last for the next eight years.