Vocabulary:
Prohibit: formally forbid (something) by law, rule, or other authority:
"laws prohibiting cruelty to animals"
Assassinate: to murder someone
Fanatic :a person filled with excessive and single-minded zeal, especially for an extreme religious or political cause.
Activist: a person especially active, vigorous advocate of a cause, especially a political cause.
Discrimination: treatment or consideration of, or making a distinction in favor of or against, a person or thing based on the group, class, or category to which that person or thing belongs rather than on individual merit.
"You must be the change you wish to see in the world." Gandhi
Mohatma Gandhi is another important activist who has influenced our world in a positive way. He was the primary leader of India’s independence movement and also the architect of a form of non-violent civil disobedience that would influence the world. Many activists like Martin Luther King and Nelson Mandela looked to Gandhi and his non violent civil disobedience as a way to protest and create changes where there were inequalities.
Gandhi was born on October 2, 1869, in Porbandar, India. Mahatma Gandhi studied law in England. He moved to South Africa and was surprised by the racism and discrimination. He was asked to take off his turban in the court room; he refused and walked out of the court room. In South Africa, he became an advocate for the civil rights of Indians, both at home under British rule and in South Africa.
In 1906, he organized his first mass civil-disobedience campaign, which he called “Satyagraha” (“truth and firmness”), in reaction to the government’s new restrictions on the rights of Indians, including the refusal to recognize Hindu marriages. After years of protests, the government imprisoned hundreds of Indians in 1913, including Gandhi. Under pressure, the South African government accepted a compromise and the recognition of Hindu marriages and the abolition of a poll tax for Indians.
In 1919, Gandhi became a leader in the Indian home-rule movement. He called for mass boycotts, and for 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. In 1930, Gandhi protested Britain’s Salt Acts, which not only prohibited Indians from collecting or selling salt but also imposed a heavy tax that hit the country’s poorest particularly hard. Gandhi planned a new Satyagraha campaign that entailed a 390-kilometer/240-mile march to the Arabian Sea, where he would collect salt in symbolic defiance of the government monopoly. This march put Gandhi in the world spotlight. He was named Time magazine’s “Man of the Year” for 1930.
As Great Britain became involved in World War II in 1942, Gandhi launched the “Quit India” movement that called for the immediate British withdrawal from the country. In August 1942, the British government arrested Gandhi, his wife and other leaders and imprisoned them. With his health failing, Gandhi was released after 19 months while his wife passed away.
Gandhi's vision of an independent India, however, was challenged in the early 1940s by a new Muslim nationalism which was demanding a separate Muslim homeland carved out of India. In August 1947, Britain granted independence, but the British Indian Empire was separated into a Hindu-majority India and Muslim Pakistan. As many displaced Hindus, Muslims, and Sikhs made their way to their new lands, religious violence broke out, especially in the Punjab and Bengal. Gandhi visited the affected areas, attempting to provide solace. In the months following, he undertook several fasts to promote religious harmony. Some Indians thought Gandhi was too accommodating to Muslims. Sadly, a Hindu fanatic, assassinated Gandhi on 30 January 1948 by firing three bullets into his chest at point-blank. Gandhi's legacy of non violence still lives on in great movements fighting for justice.