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Mahatma Gandhi and Winston Churchill

Mahatma Gandhi and Winston Churchill were two of the leading figures of this century. They came from very different backgrounds and represented different traditions and ideals, with Gandhi fighting against many of the British views that men like Churchill represented.

Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi was born at Porbandar, Kathiawar in 1869. He was the youngest son in a family of three sons and one daughter. Mohan was an ordinary child who was halting in his speech and nearly frightened of his own shadow, and much of what he saw in the external world puzzled him. He was not a very good student, and books did not interest him. He was left largely to himself by his classmates. At home, the family rigidly observed the Hindu pieties (Shahani, 1961, 1-3).

Mohan was betrothed to Kasturbai Makanji at the age of seven and was married to her at the age of 14. He was educated in India and then went to England in 1888 to study law at the Inner Temple. He returned to India in 1891 and started practicing law, but he found it difficult to earn a living. He went to South Africa as a lawyer for an Indian firm in 1891, and he was persuaded to remain in the Indian community there to help its members overcome discrimination. He was soon successful as both a lawyer and a politician and established several ashrams, or religious communities, in that country. He founded a newspaper and organized an Indian congress. He devised his technique of non-violent resistance in 1906 for an effort to overcome discrimination. He derived the idea from his reading of Henry Thoreau, Leo Tolstoy, the New Testament, and the Hindu scriptures, and he called his method satyagraha, or truth- or soul-force. He was imprisoned many times for his non-violent campaigns (Homer, 1996). He stated at first that this would be a program of "passive resistance," but he did not like his own description and sought another. For one thing, he did not want an essentially India...

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Mahatma Gandhi and Winston Churchill. (1969, December 31). In LotsofEssays.com. Retrieved 10:13, March 28, 2024, from https://www.lotsofessays.com/viewpaper/1700728.html