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Bindu Puri
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Narrator
It is 7 June 1893 and a young, immaculately dressed lawyer walks through the city of Durban towards the station. He's just arrived in South Africa to work for a major businessman and Today he's traveling 300 miles to fight a
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Narrator/Storyteller
case in the town of Pretoria.
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Narrator
As he walks, another commuter swears loudly as he passes him on the pavement. But the lawyer is too preoccupied by the complex case ahead to think anything of it. At the station, the train is waiting.
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Narrator/Storyteller
He finds his carriage first class as
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Narrator
befits a London trained barrister. He settles down in the wood paneled compartment as the engine begins to pull through his window. The sun sets over the valley of a thousand hills, the rivers turning deep red before darkness falls. It's winter in Natal, as cold as it gets in this region. The lawyer reads through papers, trying not to think about past failures in court.
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Narrator/Storyteller
This is a fresh start for the
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Narrator
23 year old, though he's had to leave his growing family thousands of miles away. The train stops at Peter Moritzburg and a white middle aged passenger opens the
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Narrator/Storyteller
door to the compartment.
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Narrator
The lawyer smiles politely, but the man only scowls, slams the compartment door and disappears down the corridor. A few minutes later, the train hasn't moved off. Now a guard bursts in, accompanied by the aggrieved passenger, and demands to see the lawyer's ticket. He shows it calmly, but the guard shouts back that he has no right to be in first class because the young lawyer is Indian or as the
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Narrator/Storyteller
guard puts it, colored.
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Narrator
He must move to a van compartment, the lawyer protests. He introduces himself as Mohandas Gandhi, a barrister and citizen of the British Empire. The guard just laughs. There are no colored lawyers in South Africa. Gandhi tries not to lose his temper, pushing through the small crowd that's gathered in the corridor to see what's happening. A policeman now demands. Gandhi moves, but still he refuses. His employer has paid for the ticket and he's entitled to sit here. The policeman disagrees. He drags Gandhi out and along the corridor, then pushes him down the metal train steps. As the lawyer tumbles onto the rough ground at the side of the track, he realizes that his bag containing Confidential correspondence is still on the train. Just at that moment, the case is thrown out, only just missing Gandhi's head. As he scrambles to retrieve it, the whistle blows and the train steams off without him. Body bruised, suits dusty, shivering from shock and the cold night air, Gandhi tries to make sense of what has happened. He spent years training in British justice, yet here in one of her colonies, he's being judged not on his abilities, but on but on the color of his skin. He's not naive. He knows prejudice exists and has been treated less favorably on occasion, but nothing as blatant as this. Now though, he sees everything in a new light. He thinks of the man who swore at him on the way to the station and remembers how someone in his office had warned that Indians were forbidden from walking on pavements. Gandhi had dismissed the idea, but here in this bleak waiting room, he begins to understand how deep rooted the divisions run.
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Narrator/Storyteller
Though he's too cold to sleep, he's
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Narrator
burning with a new emotion, outrage.
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Narrator/Storyteller
This cannot stand.
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Narrator
Perhaps this is the real reason why fate has brought him to South Africa to fight this injustice, to right wrongs. It's an encounter that changed the course of Gandhi's life. Abandoning his career as a traditional lawyer, he fought for those oppressed because of their race and their status. And after campaigning against unjust laws in South Africa, back home in India, he led the movement against the British rule he once supported. Just as importantly, Gandhi also changed the entire nature of protest with his commitment to non violence. But his dreams of a peaceful future for India were shattered when independence from Britain came with an outbreak of horrendous sectarian violence. So how did a shy, unpromising young schoolboy turn into a leader whose ideas and life continue to influence millions of people? Where did his ideals and approach to conflict come from? And how did they change the course of the independence movement in India? Why, despite his own commitment to non violence, did his life end so suddenly? I'm John Hopkins from the Noiza Network. This is a short history of Mahatma Gandhi. The man who will become known as India's greatest civil rights leader is born on 2nd October 1869.
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Narrator/Storyteller
His parents name him Mahandas Karamchand Gandhi. They live in the coastal city of Porbanda, now part of the western state of Gujarat.
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Narrator
The country is home to well over 200 million people and has been ruled over by the British for 11 years. Queen Victoria is in charge of the vast nation in an era known as the Raj, the Hindu name for rule or kingdom. The British have by now colonized, over a quarter of the world's population making theirs the largest empire in history. And with its huge natural resources, strategically important location and large army, India is considered the jewel of the crown. Mohandas Gandhi is the youngest of four siblings. His father works as a senior minister serving local Indian princes who run the region. The family comes from the bania, part of the trading and farming category of the Hindu caste system. This Hierarchy dates back 3,000 years and affects almost every aspect of life from work to marriage. Gandhi's family are well off compared to most people. They own several properties and all four children benefit from a good education. But money doesn't protect the family from suffering. Gandhi's mother is his father's fourth wife. Two of his previous spouses died young. Mohandas Gandhi is a shy, skinny child who doesn't shine in academic work or sports. But even as a child he has an absolute aversion to lying and dishonesty. Though this strong morality will define his
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Narrator/Storyteller
adulthood, as a youth it's the source
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Narrator
of friction when peer pressure makes him do things his parents forbid. A friend tempts him to try smoking, visit a brothel and try meat. Even though Gandhi comes from a strictly vegetarian family. But his reaction to the deceit marks him out as different to most teenagers. Bindu Puri is professor of contemporary Indian philosophy at Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi and the author of Gandhi for the 21st century religion, morality and Politics.
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Bindu Puri
He takes up with a boy who convinces him that the English are strong because they eat meat and that's why they have been able to colonize the Indians. So he went to a lonely spot by the river and in secret he had meat but he couldn't relish it. He had horrible nightmares. What he found unbearable was the lying to his parents parents because there was a lot of lying involved. So he wrote a letter to his father and his father on receiving the letter cried. And when he cried he felt that he learned the first lesson in non violence. What's that lesson? That love converts and transforms. And therefore his father sweeping transformed him more than any shouting that the father might have done.
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Narrator
Religion is key to his upbringing. Gandhi is surrounded by people from many of the faiths followed in India. His mother is a devout Hindu while his father has friends from diverse backgrounds including Muslims and Jains.
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Bindu Puri
There was an atmosphere of lot of inter religious harmony. Father had very little religious training as such, but he used to visit religious places. The mother influenced him much more deeply. She was very religious. She was doing daily prayers. She visited the vaishnava temple. She also did a lot of ritual fasting. Often she had only one meal a day.
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Narrator
At the age of 13, Gandhi marries a girl of the same age, Kasturba, known as Ba. Though arranged marriages between young people are customary, the transition from childhood to husband and wife is a tense time.
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Bindu Puri
Kasturba is simple and she's independent. And he's a very suspicious, jealous kind of a husband. He often made restrictions on her. Where is she going? What is she doing? And this led to anger and quarrels between them. So he records this. I wanted to make my wife an ideal wife and I wanted to make her live a pure life, identify her life and thought with my own life and thought.
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Narrator
Though Kastuba still spends a lot of time living with her parents early in the marriage, the young couple enjoy a passionate relationship. But Gandhi is troubled by guilt around sex. His father dies when he's only 16 years old and a decision he makes during his father's last days will affect his attitudes for the rest of his life.
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Bindu Puri
All the struggles that he had with desire, with lust are recorded most minutely by him. This kind of a lust had a deep impact on his psyche. And the impact, you can kind of see happened because of some incident that took place. And this was the death of his father. His father was sick and though he. He used to look after his father a lot, on one occasion his uncle came to relieve him and he went to his wife. He later on really regretted it that I could have been holding the hand of my father when my father passed. So the shame of leaving his father's bed and going to his wife never left him.
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Narrator
Despite being the youngest son, his widowed mother and older brother believe Mohandas has the ability to head up the family. So they plan for him to study law, in which is considered the ideal preparation for government work back home. But there is a fear that Britain might corrupt him. Though he promises not to drink alcohol or eat meat before he leaves to sail to England, he's cut adrift by senior members of his caste. His family are even forbidden from seeing him off at the dock. Even so, aged 18, he leaves his wife and newborn baby at home and makes the journey from Bombay to England. In September 1888, when he set sail
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Bindu Puri
on this ship, he did not know anything about eating with knives and forks and he did not really know what to converse about because he was so shy. So most of the time he had his meals in the cabin. He landed at Southampton on a cold Saturday with four four letters of introduction. It was far from easy for him. He was lonely, he was uneasy.
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Narrator
Gandhi enrolls at London's prestigious Inner Temple intending to become a barrister. Though he's a dedicated student, his shyness means he struggles with the cut and thrust of the courtroom. But he tries hard to fit in as a British citizen and lawyer to be. For a while he tries to become an English gentleman taking elocution and French lessons and learning to dance and play the violin. Knowing how much his family have invested in his education, he budgets carefully. He walks rather than takes public transport whenever he can and writes down everything he spends. Alongside his studies, he also reads Hindu and Christian texts for the first time and keeps his vow to his mother about avoiding meat. Gandhi joins London's vegetarian society and soon his diet becomes about more than keeping a promise.
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Bindu Puri
He said, look, you eat not for enjoyment, but you eat to live. And he started eating boiled spinach and believed that taste is not in the tongue, taste is in the mind. And here you see that for Gandhi, there was an integrity in what you believe and what you do. Every aspect of your life has to be integrated around your fundamental moral commitment.
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Narrator
After three years of study, he qualifies and returns home in 1891 ready to support his family. But sad news is waiting. His beloved mother died while he was away but it was kept from him in case grief damaged his results. Though he has made the grade academically, his timidity is still a problem. His first case collapses because he can't ask the right questions in court.
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Bindu Puri
His first case in the small cases court, he couldn't really do it. When he stood up in court, his head reeled. He had to give up the case to one Mr. Patel who of course completed it with no problems. So Gandhi felt, I can't take any more cases till I have the courage to conduct them.
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Narrator
He tries to get alternative work teaching English. But when that fails, he returns to his home state of Gujarat with his wife Bar, who is pregnant with their second son. Struggling for employment, he contacts a British official he'd met in London. But the man accuses him of abusing his connections and has Gandhi thrown out of his office.
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Bindu Puri
This incident changed the course of his life because now he realized the colonial attitude of the officers was stifling. At this stage, had this not happened, maybe Gandhi would have just settled down to this life of the small lawyer and gone on and the world would have lost so much. But the officer motivated this man and he began to think about politics.
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Narrator
In 1893, he's offered work abroad on a case for an Indian Muslim firm. So Gandhi leaves his family for a year to work in the British colony of Natalia, part of what is now KwaZulu Natal, South Africa. From the moment he arrives in Durban, he faces direct discrimination and hostility. When he wears a turban in court, the magistrate makes him leave and Gandhi writes to the press defending his rights. And as the weeks pass, he understands the depth of the prejudice against Indians who work in South Africa. Being thrown out of the first class carriage of the train at Pietermaritzburg is the turning point for Gandhi. As he continues his journey the next day from the British run Natal colony in the Dutch Boer run Transvaal, he's attacked by a carriage driver who believes Gandhi should sit at his feet rather than inside with white passengers. Later he struggles to find hotel accommodation. The laws that restrict his countrymen's rights are strict and getting worse.
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Bindu Puri
There was a law in 1888 that said that Indians could only stay as waiters or pursue other menial callings. And then there was the decision that Indians would pay a poll tax of three pounds as fee for entry into the Transvaal. They could not own land except in locations set aside for them. They had no franchise. They could not walk on footpaths. They could not be outdoors after 9pm Without a permit.
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Narrator
Gandhi becomes convinced that overturning these injustices is his destiny. What was originally planned as a year long contract ends up lasting two decades. He helps found the Natal Indian Congress and in 1896 he returns to India to bring his wife and children to live with him while he's home. He writes about the discrimination in South Africa. So when he arrives back in Durban with his family, he faces real opposition from white residents.
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Bindu Puri
The passengers were not allowed to disembark at first because of him. Finally, when they went ashore, he was trying to go. People caught him. They pelted him with stones, stone brickbats and rotten eggs. They began to kick him. But he's saved by the wife of a police superintendent who knew him. Now here's the scene. This woman, Mrs. Alexander, saves him. I think it was with her parasol which she puts in the middle of Gandhi and the assailants.
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Narrator
Though the police offer to prosecute his attackers, he asks them not to. He believes the mob were reacting to misleading reports of what Gandhi had written about whites in Natalia. When this is revealed in the local newspapers, his reputation grows among whites and the Indians he hopes to help as he becomes involved in challenging discrimination. His commitment to justice also extends beyond his work life. A few years after bringing his family over, he sets up a collective farm or ashram, near Durban. The Phoenix Settlement brings together people from different religions and castes in a large family unit. There are no special privileges for Gandhi or his wife, Ba. It's around now that Gandhi, aged 38, also takes a vow of celibacy. Ba's health has been very poor after the births of each of her four children and they fear what might happen if she becomes pregnant again. But the vow also reflects both his guilt about lust and his commitment to making difficult promises that test and strengthen character. His misgivings about the British notwithstanding, when the second Anglo Boer War breaks out between Britain and the two Boer Republics Gandhi sees it as his duty to help defend the Empire. As a pacifist, he doesn't want to fight. Instead, he sets up a volunteer ambulance force of over a thousand Indians who work as stretcher bearers during battles. He's later awarded the Queen's South Africa Medal. When the war ends, the loyalty of the Indians to the British is quickly forgotten and their rights come under a fresh attack. In 1906, the now British Transvaal Colony forces existing Indian and Chinese residents to apply for permits to live there.
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Bindu Puri
They would surrender their old permit and they would state in their application their name, residence, caste, age, etc. The registrar was to note down the important marks of identification and take the finger and thumb impression. And every Indian who failed thus to apply for registration was to forfeit his right of residence. And this was also the case for the wives and also for children. Even a person who was walking on the road could be asked to furnish this registration document. Now, Gandhi and the community were very horrified with this new change in and they decided to hold a public meeting.
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Narrator
That meeting takes place on 11 September 1906 in the Imperial Theater in Johannesburg. The city's streets, empty of hawkers and shops, are shattered as thousands of Indians from all religious backgrounds want to get inside. Inside. One speaker makes a vow that with God as his witness, he will not submit to the new rules.
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Bindu Puri
And Gandhiji stood up and spoke and said, look, taking a pledge before God is a very serious business and if we take it, we cannot flinch. No matter we lose every single penny that we own. We would have to stick to it and that I myself will stick to it and we will not give in to such a degrading legislation.
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Narrator
Gandhi is now more confident a speaker than before. He warns those assembled that they may face jail or worse but that if they stick to the vow, they cannot fail. After two and a half hours, they pass the Resolution. At the end of the meeting, they still sing God Save the King. The Registration act comes into force in July 1907 when the colony becomes self governing. From this time, Asian workers must carry the new cards in case they're stopped by the police. Many Indians are arrested for picketing the permit offices. And before long, Gandhi too is imprisoned for the first time in January 1908. He is held for 20 days. But if the government thinks the arrests and imprisonments will quell resistance, they are wrong. It is Sunday, August 16, 1908, in a working class suburb of Johannesburg. A sea of people is gathering. Though their destination is the local mosque, a whitewashed building with un and ornate detailing. The crowd includes Hindus and Christian as well as Muslims, but they're all immigrants from India or China. As carpenters finish building a small stage, people keep arriving. White haired elders carrying umbrellas in case of wintry showers. Family men in bright red fezzes bringing their sons to witness the campaign against the laws that will blight their future. At the edges of the crowd, street dogs sniff around hoping for dropped food. Two young brothers break away throwing and catching their school caps in an improvised game before their father tuts and slaps their legs. The younger boy squirms in the itchy suit and tie his mother made him wear for this serious occasion. The crowd falls silent and a man starts speaking. The younger boy squeezes through the adults towards the front where he sees a slim figure in an expensive suit addressing the crowd. He recognizes the man from the newspapers. It's the lawyer, Gandhi. More than once the boy has overheard his mother say that she'll hold this man responsible if Papa loses his grocery store and ends up in jail. Peering between the grown ups, the boy can see that next to the speaker stands a traditional three legged cooking pot. Now a fire is lit inside it with a pile of cards as kindling. Trying not to be distracted by the possibility of food being cooked, the boy listens to the speaker and Gandhi's words make sense. The boy knows about the new passes, but the lawyer is saying men should burn them and accept the consequences. The atmosphere in the crowd turns to one of fury, but also of something important about to happen. The boy looks for his father, but he's lost in the crowd. Now Gandhi and the other men on the podium hold their passes above the cauldron. One sloshes liquid over them and the boy smells paraffin. The flames leap up and as the men drop their cards, the fire sizzles. The boy's eyes sting. He is swept along as the crowd surge towards the little stage, they're fighting to be the next to burn their passing. A Chinese worker with the scarred hands of a miner sees his distress and points to a box that he can stand on from up here. He finally sees his father and watches him drop his own card in the flames. But now, from his elevated position, the boy notices something the adults haven't seen over the heads of the crowd on the main street alongside the mosque, white policemen are advancing, batons ready. He jumps down, weaving through the throng to grab his father's sleeve and tell him what he's seen. They hurry away just as the police begin to shout, ordering the crowd to disperse.
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Narrator/Storyteller
Almost 2000 passes and trading licenses are burned that day. Gandhi is not arrested at this protest, but he is imprisoned for the second time two months later.
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Bindu Puri
And now passive resistance is born. And at this point he felt why is the name passive resistance being used? Because passive resistance seemed to connote that we are going to resist non violently only so long as violence is not available for us. We must find a new name. And the name that was settled on was Satya, which means firmness or non violence in the interest of truth. That means the only way to arrive at truth is really to be non violent and take on suffering in your own person rather than make the untruthful other suffer.
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Narrator/Storyteller
Between 1908 and 1913, Gandhi is arrested six times and imprisoned four. Many thousands of others suffer just as he had predicted and further measures like the de recognition of marriage among non Christians cause even more hardship. But finally the size of the protest means that a settlement is reached between Gandhi and the colonial secretary in the Transvaal, Jan Smuts.
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Bindu Puri
And by the year 1914 all this culminated in an inquiry commission. And finally the recommendations were friendly to Indians. There was a repeal of the three pound tax legislation of marriages celebrated according to rites of Hinduism and Islam were to be accepted. Entry of educated Indians to a limited number was to be permitted and there was an assurance that the existing laws affecting Indians would be administered justly.
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Narrator/Storyteller
Though Gandhi is successful, his work for equality of Indians has been criticized for its attitude to African people. Some of his early writings suggest that he saw Indians and whites as racially superior to black men and women. Writing to the Natal Parliament soon after arriving in South Africa, he complained that a general belief seems to prevail in the colony that Indians are little better, if at all, than savages or the natives of Africa.
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Bindu Puri
So when Gandhi first had come to South Africa, he had an unsympathetic attitude to the Africans for the first few years. But it's very interesting, Gandhi started working alongside the Africans and at that time he started thinking about their predicament. So on 22 October, in Indian Opinion 1910, he wrote, the Negroes alone are the original inhabitants of this land. We, that is the Indians, have not seized this land from them by force. We live here with their goodwill. The whites, on the other hand, have occupied the country forcibly and appropriated it to themselves. So you see that by now, 1910, he's very much understanding what is the problem.
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Narrator/Storyteller
A few years later, at the outbreak of the First World War, Gandhi is in England. He once again gets involved in organizing a medical corps and later even recruits soldiers for the British army. But soon he's returning to India with his wife and four sons. Firmly in his sights. Now is the biggest prize of all, home rule for India. When his ship arrives at Bombay in January 1915, Gandhi is greeted by adoring crowds who've heard about his successes in South Africa. It's around now that people begin calling him Gandhi Mahatma, a Sanskrit word meaning great soul. Before he gets started, though, he wants to get to know his own country better. He founds an ashram, or communal farm near his birthplace and welcomes people from across India's caste system, including a family of so called untouchables. It's a controversial, even outrageous move, but he is resolute. Gandhi then travels extensively around the vast nation, keen to understand its diverse communities. He is approached to help workers who are forced to grow indigo, a fabric dye, for hardly any payment.
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Bindu Puri
Gandhi doesn't agree at once. He spends a year thinking about the issue and then says, I'll intervene in the case of the indigo workers only if I'm able to visit there and ascertain the situation for himself. And Gandhi did this. He went to Champaran. And he at that stage was so moved by the plight of the indigo workers and by the poverty he saw that he decided to wear just Indian clothing, a dhoti for life.
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Narrator/Storyteller
He begins to wear the dhoti, or loincloth that will become one of his most recognizable features. Later, he will wear only clothing. He has spun himself on a simple wheel.
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Bindu Puri
There was a complete change in his way of dress, in his way of thinking, in the manner in which he decided to identify with the Indian masses. And this bearing homespun, was connected to ecology, politics, aesthetics, economics and morality.
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Narrator/Storyteller
His alignment with the poor and his new style of dress cause a sensation.
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Narrator
As part of his commitment to ahimsa,
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Narrator/Storyteller
or non violence, he also turns to a practice he saw his mother undertake as a boy.
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Bindu Puri
He brings in fasting as an aspect of this satyagraha. What is fasting? Fasting means we saw that his mother used to fast, live on very little food. Why did Gandhiji bring it in? Because he was a man who was very, very familiar with the Indian philosophical tradition. There was a concept in that tradition of accepting voluntary pain as a method of purification of the body and the mind. And fasting became Gandhi's way of engaging in such a tapas.
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Narrator/Storyteller
Fasting furthers his spiritual journey, but for the political change he so craves. Gandhi works with Indian Muslim leaders to call for a Swaraj, or self government. But in 1919, the British Pass the Rollout act which allows for indefinite detention of political prisoners. Gandhi, now 49, asks Indians to practice civil disobedience and at the end of March he organizes a general strike, or hatal, throughout India. The country simply stops. Though it's successful in showing united resistance to the laws. Rioting grips several provinces, including the Punjab, and Gandhi suspends the actions. But the crackdown by the British will have appalling consequences. On April 13, a group of up to 10,000 men, women and children gather at Jalliavala Bagh, an enclosed square in the city of Amritsar in Punjab. Some are there for a spring festival and others to mount a peaceful protest against arrests. Many don't know that the public gatherings have been banned. The British Brigadier General leads his men onto the square and orders them to shoot on the defenceless crowd. When they try to flee through the main entrance, their way is blocked by troops and two armored cars. The firing doesn't stop until all ammunition has been used. It's an appalling massacre, with estimates of deaths varying between 380 and over 1000. The attack is condemned in India and in Britain. The Brigadier General is subjected to an inquiry but without Indian representatives present. Gandhi sees it as not the act of one man, but as the consequence of British occupation.
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Bindu Puri
This atrocity changed the mind of the leaders in India towards the Raj. And Gandhi and all the other leaders began to see a future for India, a future free of colonialism. Some people consider this episode a decisive step towards the end of British rule in India.
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Narrator/Storyteller
By 1921, Gandhi is the leader of the powerful Indian National Congress, a broad based political party which brings together many of those who want independence. The non cooperation campaign continues. Gandhi returns his Boer War medal and other Indians renounce honors bestowed by the colonists and resign from jobs in the law and education. But in 1922, after 23 policemen are killed by protesters, Gandhi is charged with sedition and is convicted for the first time in India. Though the British judge comments that he respects Gandhi's ideals, he is sentenced to six years imprisonment. But his health suffers and he develops issues with his heart and blood pressure. Refusing all but the essential medicines, he struggles with the harsh prison conditions. There is growing pressure to release him on health grounds and in 1924 he is freed four years early. He continues his campaign for a free India and tries to bring unity to his country. He works to find common ground with other leaders, including Hindu nationalist Jawaharlal Nehru and Muhammad Ali Jinnah, the leader of the All India Muslim League. Both are London trained barristers like Gandhi. But Jinnah disapproves of civil disobedience and Nehru is impatient for change. The lack of British movement towards independence has a unifying effect on the Indian National Congress. In January 1930, in a bitterly cold winter session in Lahore, Gandhi presents a resolution for independence. It doesn't have a legal or constitutional structure, but reads more like a manifesto. The resolution is passed by a majority paving the road to independence. The move launches a new series of nonviolent mass protests, the first of which is the Salt March or Salt Satyagraha.
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Bindu Puri
The government had a tax on salt, which was an essential commodity and it was needed more by the poor who use salt sometimes as the only thing to improve the taste of what they ate.
- [39:25]
Narrator/Storyteller
It is April 6, 1930, in the Gujarati village of Dande. A photographer watches, camera ready, as a group of men approach the beach here where the coast meets the Arabian Sea. The tide is out. Left behind is a vast swathe of sand and mud, rippled and sparkling with white grains of salt. And that's exactly why almost 80 men dressed in white homespun robes have made a 240 mile journey here on foot. The photographer, Swiss born Walter Bossard, has been sent to cover India's independence movement by a German newspaper. He's representing just one of dozens of Indian, European and American newspapers along with film companies who have been covering the event. And now, as boss Hart fits a new lens to his Leica camera. He is in the front row as history is being made. At the head of the procession is Mahatma Gandhi. Despite being twice the age of most of the group, the 61 year old moves as fast as ever, using his wooden staff to speed his progress along the marsh. This is the endpoint of the Salt Satyagraha, a march to protest against the British salt tax. Which makes this essential mineral unaffordable for the poorest Indians, even though it appears naturally on the beaches and is essential for health in this hot climate. Villagers face arrest if they harvest it. Any moment now, Gandhi intends to break the law, whatever the consequences. Bossard moves closer, ready to shoot. It's a moment of peace, but also danger as the protesters approach their destination. They have been dubbed the White river thanks to their simple dress. Last night, when they arrived in the village after 20, after 24 days traveling, the mood was celebratory, with 50,000 people coming out to greet them. Well wishers are here today too, stretching over two miles behind Gandhi, beating out a rhythm on drums and cymbals. But the atmosphere is more somber because as more people walk onto the seabed, Bossad isn't the only one watching. A group of policemen are also waiting for the moment when Gandhi breaks the British law. It appears to the photographer that the renowned activist is prepared for arrest. And it's hardly going to be the first time. He walks out barefoot onto the fine wet sand alongside one of his sons and his young grandson. They smile as their feet are cooled by the shallow water and Gandhi wades out to swim for a short while. As the old man emerges from the water, Bossard raises his camera. Gandhi walks across to the mudflats. The receding tide has left dark deposits and on top, sheets of white salt that the Indian people are prohibited from using, no matter how poor they are. Gandhi closes his eyes to pray before crouching down. Bossard focuses on his face, the whitening mustache, the glasses and the thoughtful eyes behind them. Then he steps back to get a wider shot as the Mahatma grabs a handful of white salt and holds it up. The crystals glisten in his hand. With this, he announces, I am shaking the foundations of the British Empire. As the crowd cheers, his followers gather pans full of seawater to boil to create purer salt. Bossad stays to capture the moments as the other pressmen race off to the Jalapur post office, where 700 telegrams will send the world confirmation that Gandhi has broken the law. After Dandi, he continues southward along the coast, making salt and addressing crowds of thousands. People across India follow suit with mass meetings where salt is sold illegally. The government arrests tens of thousands, including Gandhi, his wife and the congress leader Nehru. At one protest, hundreds of Indians are badly beaten as they approach assault works. Wave after wave are clubbed to the ground but refuse to strike back or even defend themselves despite British census. A journalist's account of the violence is published in over 1000 newspapers worldwide, the coverage focuses attention on India's fight for freedom and on Gandhi's determination to always consider the poorest or weakest person. He calls this symbolic character the Last Man.
- [44:40]
Bindu Puri
It symbolized who Gandhi stood for, his famous talisman that whatever you do, think of the face of the Last man and think whether the step you're going to contemplate is going to be of use to him or her. The reason the Dandi March became so important in the annals of history was because it symbolized Gandhi's commitment to the Last man.
- [45:05]
Narrator/Storyteller
Gandhi is held for violating the salt law but is not tried. He is released nine months later, in 1931. He agrees to call off the protest in exchange for an equal place at the negotiating table. During talks in London about India's future, the nervous student who tried so hard to act the part of a British barrister four decades earlier is now a key part of the negotiation. Returning To London aged 62, he stays in an East End community centre rather than a hotel. He meets local people, university students and workers. Throughout, he sticks to his commitment to his simple clothing. When asked by a journalist whether he would change his outfit if invited to dinner with the King, he replies, in any other dress I should be most discourteous to him because I should be artificial. But the talks fail and Gandhi and other delegates return home. As the 1930s progress, he faces multiple arrests. When he uses fasts to protest, his health suffers and the government, terrified of what would happen if he died, releases him from custody. Disillusioned, Gandhi focuses on trying to help the poor, promoting health and education and campaigning for the so called untouchable people. Nehru and Jinnah continue to fight for independence, though they disagree on what form it should take. In 1935, the British passed the Government of India act, giving India's provinces much more authority in a nationwide federation. But the British still have the power to suspend government and the plans are rejected by both Jinnah and Nehru, who calls the legislation a machine with strong brakes but no engine. When British officials pull India into World War II without consultation, at first Gandhi does support Britain against the Nazis. But by 1942 he is urging London to quit India. He is imprisoned in the Aga Khan's palace. Though the surroundings are grand, it's a difficult time. Bar is also held and in February 1944 she dies aged 74, with her head resting on her husband's shoulder. Gandhi has lost the woman who has been by his side since they were both 13.
- [47:43]
Bindu Puri
And I think it's Very, very telling that when she died actually Gandhi wrote a letter and in that he wrote that we ceased to be two different entities without my wishing it. She chose to lose herself in me. The result was that she truly became my better half.
- [48:09]
Narrator/Storyteller
He is released three months later, one month before D Day and meets other Indian politicians to try to agree on a plan for the future. But though independence is coming closer, the visions about how that will look are very different. Jinnah and the Muslim League want a separate nation to be founded for Muslims. The nationalist Nehru wants an industrialized India based around the development of larger cities.
- [48:39]
Bindu Puri
Gandhi wants village India. They are divided on industrialization. So Gandhi remains committed to the idea that India is an India built up in concentric circles with the village at the center and with very decentralized model.
- [48:59]
Narrator/Storyteller
But Gandhi's hopes are thwarted at a conference with Lord Mountbatten, the last Viceroy of India. In June 1947 the British propose a partition creating two nations, India and Pakistan. Gandhi, who wants an India where people are united by their hopes, not separated by faith, is heartbroken. When Independence day comes in August 1947, he does not join the celebration. Hostility breaks out across India and the new nation of Pakistan as 15 million people flee their homes to find safety. The toll is impossible to quantify but it's estimated that more than half a million people die during the violence following partition.
- [49:47]
Bindu Puri
What does Gandhi do? He doesn't stay in Delhi celebrating independence, but he stays in Bengal. He goes to Nkhali. He settles down in a village, he holds prayer meetings, he tours all the riot areas. He fasts for Hindu Muslim unity. He's greatly disturbed by the loss of his program of non violence. On January 13th, 1948, he starts a fast for the reunion of community. He breaks it on 18 January 1948 when he's convinced that there is some kind of rapprochement between the Hindus and the Muslims.
- [50:39]
Narrator/Storyteller
After breaking his fast, Gandhi heads to Birla House in New Delhi to recuperate. Living with members of his family, he leads multi faith prayers and speaks about his vision of decentralized power held by the community. Five months after partition, Gandhi is outdoors ready for a prayer meeting. As he walks onto the platform, helped by his great nieces, a man bows as though he's going to touch the Mahatma's feet. Instead he fires three bullets at point blank range. One into Gandhi's chest, two into his abdomen. Gandhi dies at the age of 78. His killer is a Hindu nationalist who believes Gandhi has done too much to support Indian Muslims. He is later executed for murder. That night, Prime Minister Nehru goes on the radio and tells Indians that the light has gone out of their lives. The next day over a million people attend his funeral. The five mile route stretches from the place where he was assassinated to Raj Ghat in Delhi where his body is cremated.
- [51:58]
Bindu Puri
His ashes were collected. They were placed in several different boxes and distributed to different parts of India. Then in a grand coordinated effort on 14th February 1948, they were emerged in the rivers or seas, in towns and cities across India. So Gandhi literally became one with the India which he served and loved all through his life.
- [52:25]
Narrator/Storyteller
In the decades since his murder, Mahatma Gandhi's work has inspired leaders to including Martin Luther King Jr. Nelson Mandela and Czech President Vaclav Havel. Gandhi's autobiography, the Story of My Experiments with Truth sets out his philosophy. While scholars read his extensive correspondence with key figures of his day, his image is still instantly recognizable as a symbol of peaceful protest.
- [52:57]
Bindu Puri
We need to recognize that Gandhi is not just relevant to India, but the world. And of course we know how much influence he had on the civil rights movements of African Americans, the influence he had on Nelson Mandela, on Martin Luther King and on Obama. Obama, when he came to India, went to Bombay and he said I, I could see Gandhi sitting there and I felt like asking him how did you do so much with so little? To my mind, that's the question I would like to ask Gandhi. How did you do so much with so little?
- [53:37]
Narrator/Storyteller
As the Indian subcontinent continues to grow as an economic and global power base, the debate around his legacy continues. Critics argue that his vision of a decentralized India could never have worked. Many have also pointed out that his personal choices were inappropriate, especially through a modern lens. His so called celibacy experiments have drawn heavy criticism, especially from those closest to him. In order to prove his commitment to his vow, Gandhi would often sleep naked with young women, including his own family members, something he claimed tested his faith. Those affected, however, have later reflected that this abuse of power left themselves feeling uncomfortable and even violated. Many of Gandhi's supporters have defended the practice, claiming, as Gandhi himself did, that his intentions were purely to deepen his religious understanding. Those who admire him and study his words argue that many of his philosophies are as relevant today as they were 75 years ago. From his messages of equality and simplicity to his determination to respect even the humanity of his oppressors, Gandhi's vision was driven by a desire for peace and unity all too rare in a century of unprecedented conflict. Next time on Short History of We'll bring you a short history of Martin Luther King.
- [55:09]
Martin Luther King Jr. Narrator
All of us won't be able to preach like Martin Luther King Jr. We won't be able to put together words and phrases in a way that can shoot electricity through human beings and their hearts. But one of the things that we can take away from him, that all of us can emulate and seek to cultivate within ourselves, is hope for the future and commitment. Then Martin King hoped for a better future. He never let that go, and he was always committed, even when that commitment was politically inconvenient.
- [55:49]
Narrator/Storyteller
That's next time,
- [56:00]
Martin Luther King Jr. Narrator
Sam.