Besides his law studies he passed the University of London matriculation examination in June Gandhi did not participate in the newly established British Committee of the Indian National Congress but did attend meetings of the London Indian Society.
He passed his Roman law examination in March and passed the Bar finals in January Before leaving for London, Gandhi had promised his mother not to eat meat. He found it difficult at first but soon discovered vegetarian restaurants and joined the London Vegetarian Society. He often wrote for their journal the Vegetarian and became a member of the Executive Committee on 19 September Gandhi had also come into contact with the Theosophical Society in , and was introduced to Annie Besant before he left London on 12 June He lived in India until when he left for South Africa to practice law.
It was here he raised his family, established himself as a lawyer and then a political activist fighting the discrimination of Asians in Africa. By , he had emerged as the spokesman of Indians in Natal and Transvaal and in October that year he was once again in London to speak on behalf of the Indian community.
Imperial politics brought Gandhi to London again in July However, what concerned Gandhi the most this time was the status of highly educated Indians. On his voyage back to South Africa, he wrote his powerful book Hind Swaraj, or Indian Home Rule , in which he wrote about his increasing discontent with the West, the power of non-violence and the vision of self-rule. Between and , Gandhi received several invitations to return to India, but before doing so he visited London again in August , two days after the outbreak of the First World War.
The purpose of his trip was to visit his friend and mentor G. Gokhale but he had already left for Paris. With Gokhale gone, Gandhi met the poetess Sarojini Naidu instead. On 8 August, a reception was held for him at the Hotel Cecil. Coomaraswamy , Amir Ali and J. From Gandhi became highly politically active in India. Fellow immigrants convinced Gandhi to stay and lead the fight against the legislation. After a brief trip to India in late and early , Gandhi returned to South Africa with his wife and children.
Gandhi ran a thriving legal practice, and at the outbreak of the Boer War, he raised an all-Indian ambulance corps of 1, volunteers to support the British cause, arguing that if Indians expected to have full rights of citizenship in the British Empire, they also needed to shoulder their responsibilities. After years of protests, the government imprisoned hundreds of Indians in , including Gandhi.
Under pressure, the South African government accepted a compromise negotiated by Gandhi and General Jan Christian Smuts that included recognition of Hindu marriages and the abolition of a poll tax for Indians. In Gandhi founded an ashram in Ahmedabad, India, that was open to all castes.
Wearing a simple loincloth and shawl, Gandhi lived an austere life devoted to prayer, fasting and meditation. In , with India still under the firm control of the British, Gandhi had a political reawakening when the newly enacted Rowlatt Act authorized British authorities to imprison people suspected of sedition without trial. In response, Gandhi called for a Satyagraha campaign of peaceful protests and strikes.
Violence broke out instead, which culminated on April 13, , in the Massacre of Amritsar. Troops led by British Brigadier General Reginald Dyer fired machine guns into a crowd of unarmed demonstrators and killed nearly people. Gandhi became a leading figure in the Indian home-rule movement. Calling for mass boycotts, he urged government officials to stop working for the Crown, students to stop attending government schools, soldiers to leave their posts and citizens to stop paying taxes and purchasing British goods.
Rather than buy British-manufactured clothes, he began to use a portable spinning wheel to produce his own cloth. The spinning wheel soon became a symbol of Indian independence and self-reliance. Gandhi assumed the leadership of the Indian National Congress and advocated a policy of non-violence and non-cooperation to achieve home rule.
After British authorities arrested Gandhi in , he pleaded guilty to three counts of sedition. Although sentenced to a six-year imprisonment, Gandhi was released in February after appendicitis surgery. When violence between the two religious groups flared again, Gandhi began a three-week fast in the autumn of to urge unity.
He remained away from active politics during much of the latter s. Wearing a homespun white shawl and sandals and carrying a walking stick, Gandhi set out from his religious retreat in Sabarmati on March 12, , with a few dozen followers.
By the time he arrived 24 days later in the coastal town of Dandi, the ranks of the marchers swelled, and Gandhi broke the law by making salt from evaporated seawater. The Salt March sparked similar protests, and mass civil disobedience swept across India. Approximately 60, Indians were jailed for breaking the Salt Acts, including Gandhi, who was imprisoned in May Still, the protests against the Salt Acts elevated Gandhi into a transcendent figure around the world.
Gandhi was released from prison in January , and two months later he made an agreement with Lord Irwin to end the Salt Satyagraha in exchange for concessions that included the release of thousands of political prisoners. The agreement, however, largely kept the Salt Acts intact. But it did give those who lived on the coasts the right to harvest salt from the sea. Hoping that the agreement would be a stepping-stone to home rule, Gandhi attended the London Round Table Conference on Indian constitutional reform in August as the sole representative of the Indian National Congress.
Indian National Congress. Vinoba Bhave — spiritual leader in India. Martin Luther King — American Baptist minister and civil rights leader. See all related overviews in Oxford Reference ». Indian nationalist and spiritual leader. After early civil-rights activities as a lawyer in South Africa, in Gandhi returned to India, where he became prominent in the opposition to British rule and was frequently imprisoned.
The President of the Indian National Congress —34 , he never held government office, but was regarded as the country's supreme political and spiritual leader and the principal force in achieving India's independence. As independence for India drew near, he cooperated with the British despite his opposition to the partition of the sub-continent. In political terms Gandhi's main achievement was to turn the small, upper-middle-class Indian National Congress movement into a mass movement.
In intellectual terms his emphasis was upon the force of truth and non-violence ahimsa in the struggle against evil. His acceptance of partition and concern over the treatment of Muslims in India made him enemies among extremist Hindus. One such, Nathuram Godse, assassinated him in Delhi.
0コメント