Making of Mahatama

PGPX

Making of Mahatma: A summary of presentations and discussions Abhishek G, Harsha M, Maulik G,
Pranav S, Rajneesh K, Sanjiva S,
Sreedhar G

Introduction: Making of Mahatma
We all know Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi as a great leader, the torchbearer of peace, the frail man who made the mighty British bow to his non-violent means, the “Mahatma” who got independence for
India. However, he was not born as a perfect leader. The movie presents the story of his transformation from an average citizen to a great leader. The movie also shows a series of dualities – fine line between self-centred and devoted to the world, dedicated to a public cause versus family responsibilities, among others. At this stage in our careers when most of us are looking forward to take up leadership roles, these dualities present an interesting study of leadership, values and ethics for us.
Organization of the report
We begin with salient features of Gandhi’s leadership and how he acquired them. Next, we move on to dilemma and conflicts he faces in his public vs. personal responsibilities. Finally we compare Gandhi’s character with other characters that we have discussed in LVE class. Interesting class discussions that ensued during our presentations and our views on them have been captured in appropriate sections.

A Visionary Leader
Gandhi was a visionary leader. He had the vision to mobilise the Indian community in South Africa against the discriminatory laws. He evolved the concepts of Satyagrah, non-violence and civic disobedience which emerged as an effective tool against the tyranny of mighty forces. Gandhi founded the “Indian Opinion” a first journal for the Indian community and also inspired women to join the struggle, again an innovative move at that time. It was his vision and learning from his experiences that turned him as a “Mahatma” in the eyes of the people around him.
However, he also appears to be self-centred. He hardly budged from what he believed. Be it the incident of being thrown away from train or sending kids to an English school. But one can argue: was he really a self-centred or was he visionary? Perhaps, it was not a question of being visionary or being self-centred.
For a leader to really follow his values and ethics he needs to be a visionary and a self-centred person.
When the leader is driven by his values and ethics, he may appear as a self-centred person to others.
However, we believe that this drive is critical for a leader to have. If he is not focused on his principles, he will not be able to implement his vision.

Courageous and Inspirational
Gandhi comes across as an extremely courageous leader. He was not afraid of the consequences of doing what he believed in. He was not afraid of taking the path that was never traversed before such as non – violence. Nor did he shy away from rigorous imprisonment that he often endured.
He inspired people to hate crime and not the criminal through his own examples. It was his leading by example that he was able to inspire the people in a different country and mobilize them on such a large scale to participate in the non-violent protests. He never turned away from any hardships. It was only
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through these hardships that he could realise his true potential. To be such an inspirational leader it was important for him to lead from the front. Indeed, to remain credible among your followers, you cannot deviate from your core values which your followers have identified and aligned with. And Gandhi never deviated even once from this, as seen in the examples of miner’s strike - he asked them to vacate the houses and not use company’s ration during the strike.

Perseverance
Mahatma Gandhi had deep faith in his value systems which gave him the courage and the self-belief to fight on his own terms. It was his perseverance on his chosen path which gave him the credibility as a leader. He used it to overcome all the difficulties on his path. However there were also two very important lessons for him – not giving up on his objectives too soon and at same time knowing exactly when to quit. It is important to understand this fine balance. It helps the leaders to identify when is it that perseverance will help them meet their objectives and when to change the methods.
“Strength does not come from winning. Your struggles develop your strengths. When you go through hardships and decide not to surrender, that is strength”.
-Mahatma Gandhi

Continuous learning
The journey of Mohandas Gandhi to Mahatma Gandhi was journey of continuous learning. After every major incident we can see how it transformed Gandhi. He was ready to learn from every action. He was ready to experiment various things including learning from different religions.
Another aspect of the continuous learning process was his ability to look at the larger impact. He could identify themes to connect with the people and communicate effectively. He showed how leadership is not a position. It is a process of self-learning and self –development over and over again.

Empathy, Forgiveness and Humility – towards the level 5 leadership
Mahatma Gandhi’s own experience in South Africa developed a deep sense of empathy for the whole community. He was ready to give up all his own possessions and pleasures to better understand the paid of others. He underwent selfless suffering for the larger cause. In today’s world how many leaders are really able to show this kind of commitment to all.
Forgiveness was another important trait for him. He was able to easily forgive people around him for their actions. He was ready to disassociate the person and the action and then fought against the actions and not the person. Towards the end of the movie we see how easily he is able to talk to General
Smuts. He does not carry any bitterness with him for the General who had betrayed Gandhi and even got him arrested on multiple times. He was focused on his cause and hence was not worried about
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General’s actions.
One of the most important traits he was able to present was that of Humility. Mahatma Gandhi was not always a very humble man. He had traits of arrogance with him when he landed first in South Africa as an England educated barrister. However, slowly as he progressed on the leadership ladder he was able to become a true level 5 leader. He did not let his ability to influence people around him feed his ego. In fact, he slowly rose above his arrogance and ego to develop a greater sense of humility.

Leader’s dilemma: balancing personal and public life
Gandhi is an interesting study of a struggle that unfolds between his personal and public life during his years in Africa. The movie indeed has portrayed this conflict vividly. As Gandhi ascends in his public profile and his ideologies shape up, he constantly find himself in choosing between what he truly believes in and responding to family situations. For instance, he decides not to send his children to
English school even as he could have used his influence to get them admitted. Undoubtedly, as a result, the children were denied better education opportunities. In another example, he forced his wife and kids not to accept gifts from Indian families in Africa even as these gifts were presented not to Gandhi but to his wife and children as a departing gift. He argues that these costly gifts are actually pay-back for the services he renders to the Indian community in Africa and therefore are unacceptable to him.
It is important to enquire why he acts this way. First, Gandhi had a very strong ideology and a system of beliefs and he takes great care to ensure a unifying message to public. His ideology is self-sufficiency, frugal living and leading by example not simply by preaching. He often questions himself about conflicting image that might be conveyed if he acts differently in his family matters. More than image though, he is concerned about his own conviction and he tests this by being hard and stubborn in his family decisions wherever they get into his strong beliefs.
But in this entire conflict we also see a necessary and unavoidable compromise that public leaders often have to make in order to lead a consistent public life. A public leader, who leads a different personal life than what he professes, is always in danger of diluting his impact and his ability to mobilize masses.
Gandhi has avoided that. However, the sufferings of his family in his quest of public living is immense – right from Children’s complain that they were denied better opportunity to his wife, Kasturba, who often complained that Gandhi led a very self-centred life and neglected dreams and desires of his wife and family.

Was he a leader in all contexts? (Joan of Arc)
To say that Gandhi is a role model in any context would be an overstatement. Gandhi was the right leader / role model in the context of “fight for your rights” / “Freedom struggle”. Could he have successfully led the country once it was free? This would remain a question. As seen in the movie and other relevant stories, it seemed that he was not flexible. Could he have survived in today’s world of coalition politics?
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The type of leader required for certain context would not be able to lead or get results in another context. For example, Anna Hazare was able to command the respect of the nation for a cause - to remove corruption from the society by introduction of “Jan Lokpal Bill”. However after the cause is resolved, once the bill is passed, in what context Hazare can lead his group of followers?
Mahatma Gandhi had vision and his own method to fight for freedom. Can we use it in today’s context?
Can we imitate them? Don’t we all fight for freedom in different context even today? Can we use some of his teachings in these struggles? Can he be the role model to follow today? The ultimate role model is you yourself. It is the lessons which you can draw from such personalities and use in your own life in your own context with your own personality that matters.

Duality (DON QUIXOTE)
Mahatma Gandhi was the most remarkable leader in many senses but he was also the most unremarkable person in other areas, for examples he was not good in studies, he never shined in any field where he worked - like he was not a great barrister. However he was a person who had strong set of values - forgiveness, truthfulness, authenticity, loyalty and deep conviction to take a stand, shaped by his circumstances in early life.
His father was Diwan of Rajkot and his mother Putlibai was a devout Hindu. He came from a well to do family. He had tried everything (all kinds of vices) early in his life as he explains in his book “My experiments with Truth” and he had also confessed to his father via a letter. His father’s greatest punishment met out to him was that he didn’t say a word to him on the letter. That is the day Gandhi decided that he would never again do any of those things.
When he landed on the shores of South Africa, he was not the ideal man which we epitomise him to be now. However he was adaptable and he did adapt to the situation for a cause. He changed his way of dressing, he was ready to remove his turban once he became member of SA bar etc. No doubt he was a very shrewd person and he used his adaptability to fight what cannot be fought with physical might.
In the initial years in SA, he realized the amount of oppression that Indians and other migrants are facing from the British. Being strongly convinced about is barrister background and alignment to English, he wanted to fight against it head on. However with time, he figures out two important lessons which mere mortals wouldn’t have:
1) You cannot fight back physically - there has to be another way and he comes up with the concept of
“Satyagraha” based on non-violence which is about taking a moral high ground.
2) Fighting for a greater cause - Injustice and oppression was faced by many Indians and other migrants in SA and he decided to fight for a greater cause / greater good.
He was a great leader, who knew and wanted to work for removing suffering of his fellow Indians and
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others in SA. However what about the sufferings of his family, friends and kids? It was the price he and his family paid for working for greater good. The question is can anyone do both?
It’s interesting to note is that the very points which make you strong also make you vulnerable.

Shrewd Strategist (CHANKAYA)
What helped him in this fight was his deep conviction based on his values of what is right and what is wrong. He had a clear idea about what he wanted and could communicate it well to his followers, which helped in establishing his credibility and created a large group of followers. He was able to also figure out what would work and what wouldn’t as demonstrated by his use of women to protest against the
British to revive Satyagrah movement. His shrewdness is also demonstrated through “change the game” tactic used in this case and he was able to prove that you can get the same results still by following a different track.
We have seen this in numerous other cases e.g. in David V/s Goliath, David would have been killed had he gone for close combat with Goliath. However he chose to adopt a different strategy and used his slingshot - a relatively less powerful weapon to destroy Goliath.
Isn’t this is what’s happening even the area of strategy followed by disruptive companies? Nucor steel is famous case: it came from low end of steel segment with low technology and usurped the market from the market leaders like USX steel.
The essence of Satyagraha was to show the oppressors that they are doing something wrong, the world is watching, their conscience is questioning them, their family and friends are questioning them. At the end of it, a thief or a murderer doesn’t want to be known as a thief or murderer. Everyone wants to be seen in good light or want to think good about them or want others to think good about them. The effective use of “soft power” is what was able to help Mahatma Gandhi win in Africa and later in India.
This way of fighting was what flummoxed the British most. They were savvy to good old violence, but they had no inkling of where to start in this battle, without being seen in poor light. It made them feel helpless and Gandhi knew this.

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