How Did Gandhi Contribute To The Freedom Movement

Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, also known as Mahatma, “The great-souled one”, was an Indian nationalist leader and architect of one of the most famous forms of civil disobedience, Satyagraha or more commonly known as non-violent passive resistance. Satyagraha had a large impact on the world and still remains as one of the most potent philosophies in freedom struggles throughout the world today. Gandhi spent some time as an Indian immigrant in South Africa and eventually moved back to India in the early 1900’s. During this period, between 1917 and 1947, Mohandas Gandhi, through his relentless campaigning and use of non-violent passive resistance, played a pivotal role in the achievement of Indian national sovereignty in 1947. This is evident through
For example, in 1920, Gandhi led the famous non-cooperation movement which was a significant phase of the Indian independence movement. This movement was supported by the Indian National Congress and was aimed to resist the British rule in India through a non-violent means. The success of this movement came as a total shock to British authorities; however, the movement resulted in a number of violent clashes between the local police and protesters in which three were killed by police firing. At this stage, Mahatma Gandhi began to feel that the movement was veering off course and was disappointed at how the movement lost its non- violence. A couple of years later, Gandhi devised a civil disobedience campaign between 1919-1922 and as a result was jailed for conspiracy in 1922. However, in 1930, Gandhi led the landmark Salt march in which many Indians marched to the sea to collect salt to symbolise the government monopoly. This act defied the British law that mandated Indians to buy salt from the government and prohibited them from collecting their own. This famous salt march was a pivotal advance for Indian independence and set off a mass campaign of disobedience that swept the country and led to 100,000 arrests. Furthermore, this act of defiance led to the British Government abolishing the salt laws. Moreover,
In 1914 after Gandhi became the leader of the Indian National Congress, an organisation for wealthy Indians, he successfully expanded the congress so that it accommodated Indians from every class. In addition, Gandhi successfully applied non-violence and continually overcame what was thought to be impossible. Furthermore, Gandhi defeated and overturned a number of unjust laws that oppressed the Indians in South Africa, liberated India from British rule and ended various violent uprisings during the partition in India. Gandhi claimed, “I have been practicing with scientific precision non-violence and its possibilities for an unbroken period over fifty years. I have applied it in every walk of life- domestic, institutional, economic and political. I know of no single case in which it has failed.” This quote has illustrated how successful Gandhi’s application of non-violence was in creating change and success. In addition, Gandhi’s use of non-violence was so influential that 20 years after Indian independence and his assassination, civil rights activist, Martin Luther King followed in his footsteps by using Gandhi’s method of non-violence to achieve civil rights for African Americans. Martin Luther King once said, “Christ furnished the spirit and the motivation, while Gandhi furnished the