Political Strategies of Gandhi

Gandhi, who received the honorific title Mahatma ("great soul") during his lifetime, was assassinated at the age of 80 in 1948, following the achievement of India's absolute independence from British rule. A Hindu religious extremist conspiracy supporting the shooter, one Nathuram Godse, later executed for the murder, was behind the assassination. The persistence of feeling against Gandhi was expressed in 2000 by 80-year-old Gopal Godse, who served prison time for his own part in the conspiracy and who remained unapologetic about it: "Gandhi was a hypocrite. Even after the massacre of the Hindus by the Muslims, he was happy. The more the massacres of the Hindus, the taller he raised his flag of secularism" ("Gandhi's principle," 2000, p. 17; emphasis added). As of 2002, the religious basis of murderous violence persists within India and betwe

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gh. What the effects of violent sectarianism and factionalism do not capture is that by the time of his death Gandhi had, over a period of decades, brought the British Empire more or less to its knees and presaged a momentum toward a series of colonialist and imperialist divestitures that were to take place in Asia and Africa over the last half of the 20th century. More important, he had mobilized virtually an entire nation for political revolution without recourse to overt military engagement of India's imperial masters. Instead, the mechanism of mobilization was a systematic, indeed militant, "battle-cry" (Runes, 1950, p. 413) of nonviolent confrontation and noncooperation with British authority--tyranny, in Gandhi's formulation--in India. The familiar characterization of Gandhi's political ethos is "passive resistance." Gandhi rejected that characterization of his methods and struggle. Their principal mechanisms were ahimsa and satyagraha, or civil disobedience aimed at effecting political change. Disobedience need not be equated with violence or aggression, in Gandhi's formulation. Rather, it emphasizes engagement that carries risk, not to the object of confrontation (the civil government), but to its agent (the activist): "I
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Some common words found in the essay are:
Asia Africa, Orderly British, Africa Gandhi, Congress Party, British Raj, Spirit Truth, India Soon, Christianity Gandhi, Pakistan India, Rule Self-Rule, fischer 1962, cited fischer, cited fischer 1962, indian independence, mohandas gandhi, runes 1950, home rule, south africa, naran 2000, fischer 1962 pp, civil disobedience, 1962 pp, indian home rule, cd-rom chicago encyclopaeda, chicago encyclopaeda britannica,
Approximate Word count = 2770
Approximate Pages = 11 (250 words per page)

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