Gandhi (Chapter 1)

I was profoundly surprised at how little I actually knew Gandhi. We go through our entire lives learning about him year after year and after a while you think you know him. The basic label we give him as the founder of the nonviolence movement. But yet after reading just the first chapter of this short introduction about Gandhi I realized that I hardly knew him or his values. Like that Gandhi had a problem with sexual temptations or that he was too shy to open his mouth in court for example. Two things I didn’t even remotely think of when I thought about Gandhi.

There are a few other things that really surprised me: his endorsement of the first world war and his promotion of communism/socialist. For someone who was preaching nonviolence I thought that it was a major contradiction to be supporting a war. While I can understand why he supported the war, I think that it probably hurt his reputation with the people. Finally, it seems that Gandhi was an avid supporter of some form of socialism because of his desire to transform India into a collective agrarian society. I understand Gandhi’s desire of equal treatment for all people in India, as we can see from his campaigns to get rid of the caste system and more specifically those considered untouchables. And I do see the merits behind socialism; but I doubt that outside of theory that something like this is sustainable and plausible in the real world. From discussion in class, it seems that many Indians criticized him because they thought that this approach helped make India a backwards country. While I agree with that criticism, I found it interesting that Indians would be willing to criticize him. I thought that he was considered a national hero and thus was immune to criticize, but I guess not.

Just reading the first chapter one can see the differences in opinions with many Indian leaders and Gandhi on multiple subjects. Like how many Indian leaders thought that the first priority was political independence and not moral regeneration. Here I thought that India got its’ freedom from just nonviolence movements, but here I learned that many different channels were pursued to gain independence. While Gandhi was the face of the Indian independence movement he was not the one player nor was he looked upon as an all-knowing leader. Just how Indian leaders differed in priorities, they also differed in tactics. For example, when Gandhi was fasting many began criticizing him saying that he was using himself as a weapon to force people to stop committing violent acts and stating things like Gandhi of political naivety. I just find these bits of information interesting because it has changed my perspective not just of Gandhi and his movement but of everything I know, and has asked me to ask myself “how much do I really know?”