Mahatma Gandhi.Pdf

James W Michaels, Journalist India: Something about him touched hearts all over the world. People didn’t know where India was, didn’t know what the issues were. There was something about him that touched their lives. Narrator: He was a man of many faces. Lady Pamela Hicks, Daughter of Last Viceroy of India: He had this tremendously wacky sense of humour and very mischievous and could be very, it sounds awful and disrespectful to say, naughty or wicked. Narrator: Leader of one fifth of world’s people. Dr Phillips Talbot, Journalist, India: He had extraordinary capacity to talk to this massive crowd on a one to one basis. I think everybody sitting there thought that Gandhi G. was talking to him. Narrator: Playful father and friend. Arun Gandhi, Grandson: In some of the cases they made him look like a monkey, and Grandfather used to laugh at that, and sometimes joke and say here’s your monkey, I’m coming in now. Narrator: Inspiration to future generations. His Holiness, The 4th Dalai Lama of Tibet: Mahatma Gandhi feel nonviolence is difficult to carry, unless you have some full conviction. Narrator: Rebel for a just cause. Dennis Dalton, Author, “Mahatma Gandhi”: He says yes we will go to prison. We will take a vow to God that we will go to prison and we will stay there until this law was withdrawn. Narrator: A willing martyr for his country. Bhikhu Parekh, Prof. of Political Theory, University of Hull, England: And he even said to one of his associates that I shall die at the hand of an assassin and when I do, please remember that if I accept that bullet courageously, with the name of God on my lips, only then believe that I was a true Mahatma. Mahatma Gandhi - Pilgrim of Peace Gandhi Historical Reading: There is an unalterable law governing everything and every being that exists or lives. I may not rely on the law or the law giver because I know so little it or him. God, to be God, must rule the heart and transform it. It is proved in the transformed conduct and character of those who have felt the real presence of God within. Narrator: Born into an ancient and mystical land Mohandas K. Gandhi saw his life as a search for ultimate truths, constantly evolving, seeking alternate ways of thinking and living. He called his autobiography, ‘The story of my experiments with truth’. His long journey of self-transformation began in 1869 from this middle class house in the Indian port city of Porbandar. From his earliest days, Gandhi was stirred by a role model of extraordinary discipline and devotion. Deeply religious his mother was given to frequent and extended episodes of fasting. Once in the rainy season, she vowed not to eat until the sun shone. Bhikhu Parekh, Prof. of Political Theory, University of Hull, England: Poor Gandhi and the other members of the family would constantly be looking out of the window, because they wanted their mother to eat because she was starving. And she said don’t worry about me. I am perfectly fine. If God doesn’t want me to eat today, I shan’t eat. Narrator: Gandhi revered his mother for her saintliness but was not yet ready to follow her example. The youngest of four children, he indulged in childish past times, stealing change to buy cigarettes. Fearful of his stern father, a prominent local politician, he nervously confessed to the petty theft. Arun Gandhi, Grandson, Founder/Dir. of the M. Gandhi Institute For Nonviolence: Instead of punishing his son, he embraced him for having the courage to say the truth and to confess and both of them cried and Grandfather writes in his biography that it was like washing away the impurities, the tears that both of them shed. But when you have this kind of discipline, so love it builds the humanity within you. And I think that’s what happened with Gandhi. Narrator: In keeping with Hindu tradition, at age 13 Gandhi was married to a young girl of the same age. Initially he was a jealous and possessive husband. At age 16 he faced his first great conflict between duty and desire. One night while nursing his sick father he slipped upstairs and to share his wife’s bed. Dennis Dalton, Author, “Mahatma Gandhi”: At this moment his father died. The servant comes to him and says your father is gone. Gandhi says his first impulse was ‘my God what have I done’. For all of his life, he says, he refers back to that incident when he deserted his father; when he did not fulfil his duty, his responsibility to his parent, and that becomes the basis of much of his sense of duty and responsibly. That he must be the son of all society; he must be the diligent and dutiful person serving humankind. Narrator: At age 17 Gandhi left his wife and family behind to attend law school in London. Immensely shy and naïve he found the bustle of the big city thoroughly intimating. Dennis Dalton, Author, “Mahatma Gandhi”: He was unaware of things like elevators. So he walks into what he thinks is a room in the hotel and suddenly the room is moving and he’s frightened of it going up. Here he is in an elevator, the doors open and he can’t conceive it. Narrator: For a time his highest ambition was to become an English gentleman. He sported a top hat and silver tip cane, took lessons in dancing, violin and French but no superficial skill could hide his inexperience and insecurity. Even after obtaining a law degree he doubted his ability to practice, later writing, ‘there was no end to my helplessness and fear’. Bhikhu Parekh, Prof. of Political Theory, University of Hull, England: He goes to India, takes up his first case and finds that when in the court of law he simply is not able to open his mouth before the judge. He froze and he was deeply distressed by it. Narrator: Humiliated he began searching for an escape. Salvation came in the form of a job offer from South Africa. Bhikhu Parekh, Prof. of Political Theory, University of Hull, England: As he said, ‘it was in that God forsaken country that I found my God’. Narrator: Just days after arriving in his new country, Gandhi experienced an epiphany. Unaware of discrimination against Indians in British run South Africa he innocently booked first class passage on a train to Pretoria. Bhikhu Parekh, Prof. of Political Theory, University of Hull, England: A white passenger spots him, complains to the conductor, and insists that he be placed in a third class compartment even though he has a first class ticket. Gandhi resists. At the first major stop, Pietermaritzburg, he is thrown off the train and I mean of thrown brutally off the train by the conductor. Arun Gandhi, Grandson: That humiliation was severely what sparked off his desire for change and he spent the whole night sitting on the platform wondering how to get justice. Narrator: Gandhi later described that long shivering winter night as the most creative experience of his life. He considered returning to India and rejected it as an act of cowardice. He considered accepting the discrimination but everything in him rebelled against submitting. He considered physically attacking his oppressors and gave that up as impractical. There was only one choice left, to stay and resist. The very next day he boarded another train, the next week he organised a meeting of Indian immigrants. In his 24th year, Gandhi’s concerns had grown beyond himself to encompass a greater cause. Bhikhu Parekh, Prof. of Political Theory, University of Hull, England: This made him feel that he had a destiny; that he had to stay; he had to fight for the rights of his people and eventually for the rights of all black people. Now that I think was really the beginning of the Mahatma the Mohandas Gandhi really begins to emerge as a Mahatma, a great soul. Narrator: In the South Africa of the 1890s, Africans and Indians alike endured the whims of their white masters, living under laws denying them the right to vote, own property or even walk the streets after dark. Dedicated to righting those wrongs, Gandhi was at first woefully naïve of the ways of power politics. Dennis Dalton, Author, “Mahatma Gandhi”: As a lawyer he believes that we change the laws, we change human behaviour and so from 1893 to 1906 he is bound and determined in the law courts to do something. Now the problem is that the British are smarter than he is during this time and every time he changes one law another law is put into place in order to make the discrimination work in another manner. Narrator: Victimised by white South Africans, Gandhi resolved to act as a unifying force. He began developing communities of people from different races and religions all brought together to live as equals. He insisted on treating his own family, which soon included four young sons, no differently to than anyone else. Despite his abhorrence of British oppression, until 1906 Gandhi considered himself a faithful member of the Empire even singing ‘God Save the Queen’ and teaching it to his children. So loyal, in fact, that he served as a stretcher bearer alongside British troops in the Boer War and the Zulu uprising of 1906. Dennis Dalton, Author, “Mahatma Gandhi”: It was actually the experiences in the Zulu War which really brought him very close to inhuman violence.

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