Whether it’s on the face of Indian currency, or as quotes on college dorm walls, it’s nigh on impossible to escape the life and teachings of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, better known to the people of India as “Mahatma” (Great Soul) Gandhi. For a diminutive, scantily clad figure, Gandhi had a larger-than-life presence on the shaping of post-colonial India, and indeed redefined the very nature of political struggle. Looking at the ways in which Gandhi led a nation in its fight towards independence, and the ideals he held in that fight, one can see how he functioned as a public intellectual at various levels.
Born into a middle-class Gujarati family in 1869, Gandhi had the good fortune of being able to study law in London. Work as a lawyer took him to South Africa, another land besieged by the all-powerful British Empire; there he experienced the harsh reality of racism and segregation and began to formulate ideas on nonviolent protest for civil rights, even leading some moderately successful protests against British administration for increased civil rights for the South Asian population. Realising his goal to emancipate the Indian people from their colonial overlords, Gandhi moved back to India with his family in 1915, aged 45. On his return, Gandhi participated in grassroots movements across India, banding together traditionally disadvantaged and impoverished groups of people to protest against civil inequities, particularly against the colonial rulers. These movements caught the attention of the Indian National Congress, India’s major political activism group at the time, who named Gandhi as president in 1921. Gandhi’s role in the Congress included declaring independence on several occasions, including when the Viceroy declared war on Germany in 1939 without seeking approval from the Indian National Congress. It was this declaration of independence that saw Gandhi endure one of several jail stints during India’s freedom struggle.
During his thirty-two year stint in British India, Gandhi used a bevy of tactics to oppose colonial rule, based upon ideals discussed in detail further in the essay. These tactics included nonviolent protest, which often took administration by surprise and led to reform over time, such as in the case of indigo farmers in 1917, boycotts of tariffs, deals with the British Raj and non-cooperation: the idea that if Indians refused to cooperate with British rulers, the Raj would crumble. The non-cooperation was one of the hallmarks of India’s freedom struggle, with Gandhi calling on his fellow Indians to respond to British measures such as the Rowlatt Act, which further restricted Indians’ civil liberties, with peaceful protest. His theory was tested to the utmost degree when British troops fired upon peaceful protesters on multiple occasions. Gandhi’s insistence on redoubling the peaceful efforts was his legacy as the father of India’s freedom struggle. Gandhi furthered this nonviolent style in his ‘swadeshi policy’, which meant a boycott of British goods in favour of Indian ones. The swadeshi movement’s most famous moment was in 1924, when Gandhi led a group of 78 followers from Ahmedabad to Dandi, in what is now known as the ‘Dandi March’. The idea behind the march was to voluntarily break salt laws that levied steep taxes on salt to Indians. Gandhi implored tens of thousands of Indians to join him during the twenty-five day trek to Dandi, to which thousands did. The British government responded by beating the protestors at Dandi, and imprisoned 60,000 Indians as well. Gandhi’s principle of nonviolence was upheld, however, with protestors refusing to retaliate to police brutality. It was around this time that Gandhi began to negotiate for India’s independence with the British, only to be stonewalled by Britain’s then prime minister, Winston Churchill. On returning to India, Gandhi began a hunger-strike to protest communal voting laws, which was met with such public outrage that the British Raj was forced to repeal the laws in favour of a more conciliatory position.
Gandhi’s final movement was the Quit India movement, which stated, in no uncertain terms, that
The British must leave India, and called for complete non-cooperation from the Indian people. While this speech got Gandhi arrested, the resulting public outcry went a long way in India’s eventual independence. Following his release, the political climate allowed India’s progression to independence, due in no small part to World War II weakening Britain’s forces. However, the Muslim League and their president, Muhammad Ali Jinnah, pressed for an independent nation for the subcontinent’s muslims. The resulting partition led to millions displaced and dead, and chaos at the border. Soon after the partition, which Gandhi had strongly opposed, he was assassinated by Hindu nationalist, Nathuram Godse, due to his apparent sympathy for India’s muslims.
As one can see, Gandhi’s political career was a revolutionary one that saw him function as a public intellectual on many levels. His mass protests brought about change in ways never seen before at this scale, using non-cooperation and peaceful protest in a coordinated and systematic way that harnessed the power of a huge populace. The quote from Stephen Mack’s essay, “Are Public Intellectuals a Thing of the Past?”, “we need to be more concerned with the work public intellectuals must do, irrespective of who happens to be doing it”, is particularly prescient. Mack argues that the action is more significant than the doer, and that is remarkably true in Gandhi’s case, to certain extents. In the eye of the Indian public, Gandhi was every Indian man. He wore Indian clothes, was an ascetic, was deeply religious and held himself with quiet disposition. It was his actions that set him apart, which made him a public intellectual. However, where my analysis of Gandhi differs from Mack’s point is that Gandhi’s comments in the international media and to British rulers were important because of his status as an inferior. In colonial India, it was unheard of for the brown man to rise against his colonial oppressor in any way, which is why Gandhi’s actions were even more pronounced. By looking at Gandhi's ideologies, and how he dissipated these ideas as a public intellectual, one gets a clearer picture of his impact on India’s freedom struggle. His key philosophy was ahimsa, or nonviolence. This idea stemmed from the works of Leo Tolstoy, with whom Gandhi was in close correspondence with in the early 20th century. Gandhi believed that by reacting violently to a violent oppressor, one is but the same as them. He was also astutely aware of the international blowback if India retaliated violently to Britain. After practicing this strategy to gain votes for Indians in the Natal region of South Africa, he gained fame in India, allowing him an audience for his intellectual preachings. Furthermore, Gandhi was in a unique position where he had been educated in England, lived in Africa and now was working in India. This allowed him to communicate as a public intellectual very differently depending on his audience. With Indians, he was a man of the people, stressing his bare-basics lifestyle and India-first mentality. To foreigners, he was articulate in English, yet firm on his ideals. He published works in several languages, including several papers and books in English that spread his message internationally. He preached nonviolence through his time in India, and is most famously known in India for that ideal. His consistent emphasis on this ideal, despite every opportunity, every unprovoked violent attack and every arrest, made him strike his mark as a public intellectual.
Gandhi’s other ideal was swadeshi, which means a move towards domestic manufacturing. He used symbolic use of the handloom, which Gandhi was often seen using himself. Gandhi used himself as the personification of swadeshi. He lived as an ascetic outside the city, where he often participated in menial work like scrubbing toilets and making food. He wore only Indian-made clothes, which he implored his wide following to do as well. By leading by example, Gandhi went against the traditional mold of an intellectual, who may publish works to a theory, rather than use himself as a social experiment to those ideas. The swadeshi movement was met with fervent support, with regular burnings of british goods as a symbol of self-reliance. The last major ideal discussed in this essay is swaraj, or self-rule. This was Gandhi’s eternal goal for India: to be a self-sustaining, self-ruled, sovereign republic. Gandhi put this idea to the Indian people early– even when the idea seemed decades away. The idea was to create a unified country, not just on a map, but also in the public consciousness. As a public intellectual, Gandhi often spoke about this republic at the detriment of his own personal freedom, and was often arrested for his words. This was a sign to the Indian public that democracy was a difficult goal, but not an impossible one. The more the British cracked down on Gandhi and the Indian National Congress, the closer they felt to swaraj as they felt Britain getting more and more desperate. As a public intellectual, Gandhi expressed his point of view in simple terms to the mass audience, despite his beliefs being founded upon careful research.
One criticism of Gandhi, over the years, was his handling of the India-Pakistan partition, and the insinuations that he had motivations for a Hindu-dominated state. As seen in the Stephen Mack essay, ‘The Cleric as Public Intellectual’, “...a more important challenge would center on how religion is being used, not whether it is used. Or, not whether they are talking politics, but who they are talking politics to. Just as enlightened religious thinkers have used the terms of their faith to build a sense of a larger American community, it has also been used to insulate particular Americans within the cultural walls of more narrow communities.” What Mack says is that religion is often used to bring a group together, not necessarily to propagate specific religious values. It is with this lens that one can see Gandhi’s use of Hindu ideas, rather than one of religious extremism. All in all, one can see how Gandhi forged his personality and ideas on a colonial India, leaving it ever changed in his wake. Out of context, it may seem a little strange that a half-naked man clad in all white led the freedom of a billion people, but when one begins to understand Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, the public intellectual, one begins to understand how and why he was able to achieve all that he did.
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