Mahandas Karemchand Gandhi Essay, Research Paper

This essay will reflect how Mahandas Karemchand Gandhi was a man of peace and showed how he thought about war and peace. Mahandas Karemchand Gandhi was a spiritual person who believed in peace not war. Gandhi is better known as Mahatma that means great soul. Gandhi was a teacher and he taught people to master fear. He believed in non-violence and taught that to be truly non-violent required great courage.

Gandhi was a spiritual man who believed in peace and did not want any fighting in the world. He wanted everyone to live together and to get a long; pretty much he wanted world peace. He helped free India from British control by unique method of non-violent resistance. In 1947 India was granted freedom, but the partition brought India into the two nations of India and Pakistan, Gandhi was grieved. He also was saddened by a riot that followed which was between the two religious groups the Hindus and Muslims. For all that he has done for his country, he was repaid by violence. At the time that he was living, there was a lot of rebellion going, one could say that it was a violent time for Gandhi.

Gandhi had many beliefs, and he was known through out the world for his great beliefs. He believed that truth could be known only through tolerance and concern for others, and that finding a truthful way to solutions required constant testing; so he was always doing good deeds for the people. Gandhi developed a method of direct social action, based upon principles of courage, non-violence, and truth, which he called Satyagraha. Satyagraha was used to fight for India s independence and to bring about social change. He lived a simple life compare to how people are living new with cell phones and televisions. Of course there was not any of those thing when he was a live but still he did not want to live a luxurious life above the people, he wanted to live among the people. For the way he lived the people loved him for it. Gandhi was slight in built, but had limitless physical and moral strength. He needed to be for all things that he stood up for and all of his beliefs, which needed someone with a great mental and physical tolerance. One thing that he did which took a lot of strength was fasting. He use to fast for different reasons and beliefs and that helped him enable the people to listen to him; his faith was Hinduism so he was use to fasting for certain causes. Being a Hindu, a person must have a lot of mental and physical strengths to with stand the hunger of fasting unless a person puts themselves into a different state of mind such as meditation. Gandhi made an important rule for himself and that is that the rule is to stand by for his whole life. The important rule was never to use violence in his fights, even if others would use violence against him. If most of us used this rule than the world would be a better place and maybe would have world peace.

Gandhi and the British government did not get a long well because the British government did not accept Gandhi s beliefs and Gandhi did not like the way the Indians were treated. Gandhi protested against the British treatments against the Indians. He was arrested many times by the British, but his efforts brought important reforms. He used the time in jail to think and plan of other actions against the British. Once he asked the whole nation to strike for a day and they listened and followed. Nothing was working, so all the British people living in India felt trapped because they could not do anything about this massive strike that was going on. The British people who were living in India finally realized that Gandhi’s power in India was treatment and that scared them. Luckily Gandhi was a man of peace because if he was not there could have been a lot more violence and a lot of grievance. He did a lot of things to show how much power he had and how strong his beliefs were. 5 One day as a symbolic event he asked his followers on a big meeting to throw all of their British clothes on a big fire and encourage them not to buy any more British clothes but to produce and to buy their own Indian clothes. Because of what he did many of the British factories closed down. One of Gandhi s biggest battles against the British was when Gandhi was marching with his followers down the street a British General ordered his men to fire on an unarmed crowd, and almost 400 Indians were killed. This made Gandhi even more determined to develop Satyagraha and to win independence through non-violent resistance. The reason Gandhi was such a success was that the British did not know how to act against an enemy who does not use violence. Not a lot of people would know how to stop someone with out using violence. Certainly Bill Clinton could learn some thing form this Great Man. In 1919, the British Imperial Government introduced the Rawlatt bills to make it unlawful to organise opposition to the government. Which meant that Gandhi could not march nor have any rallies that were against the British Government s rule(s).

Towards the end of Gandhi s life India was granted freedom from British rule in 1947. On January 13, 1948, at the age of 78, Gandhi began his last fast. His purpose was to end the bloodshed among Hindu, Muslim, and other groups. Through out his life Gandhi did a lot of fasting for all the things that was going on at the time. He was somewhat like Jesus Christ when it came forgiving people from sins. Instead he was fasting for peace. On, January 18, their leaders pledged to stop fighting and Gandhi broke his fast. It seemed whenever Gandhi started to fast everyone would stop and think about what they were doing. Twelve days later, in New Delhi, Gandhi was assassinated on his way to a prayer meeting. He was shoot three times by a Hindu fanatic who opposed Gandhi s program of tolerance for all creeds and religions. Gandhi was a great man who didn t deserve such a violent death. Gandhi s assassination is ironic because he did not believe in any violence and he was result of such a violence that he opposed.

Through out his life Gandhi has played a very important role in the history of the India. He made a lot of waves, which the British government did not appreciate. Gandhi was truly a great man which everyone could learn from and could live better lives. One great man said of Gandhi Generations to come will scarcely believe that such a one as this walked the earth in flesh and blood. The great man who said this was Albert Einstein.