How did Gandhi use peaceful methods to win over the British? Well, let's start at the beginning (Mahatma) Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi was born in Purbandar in October 2, 1869(Severance, 15). He grew up being afraid of serpents, ghosts, and the dark (Demi, 4). He was a very shy boy, and on the slightest offence he would mope (Gandhi, 15). Gandhi did not like school. Right when school ended he would literally run home because he did not want anybody to make fun of him because he was so shy and easy to offend.
One time, when Gandhi was in high school, his teacher wanted him to write five words. His teacher came around for an inspection and saw Gandhi had spelled “kettle” wrong. His teacher saw this slip up and threatened to give him a good boot. He came around actually to check to make sure everybody was copying off their neighbor's slate, which is what they wrote on back then. Gandhi never figured out the art of copying. To Gandhi's discontent, everyone else had a perfect slate, so he went home feeling dim-witted (Gandhi, 6). Gandhi was married when he was 13, which would be junior high for modern times, and I would be getting married this year!!
Gandhi did badly in school and did not have many friends. One time he lost a friend over who ate meat and who did not (Gandhi, 19-20).
Sadly, when Gandhi was sixteen his father died of fistula. Gandhi was upset because he was not with his father when he died. Gandhi turned right around and tried hard in school. He finally went to law school in Britain. When Gandhi got to England he was disoriented by the fashion and just about anything there; he did not even know the language well (Bush, 29). When he was in Britain he was surrounded by meat eaters, and after a long time of looking he finally found a vegetarian restaurant because of his ethic reasons. He also found a vegetarian sweepstakes, so he became a vegetarian fan and liked it so much he even wrote articles about it in magazines (Bush, 30). His vegetarianism did come with a price. When he was a lawyer, his classmates met him with prejudice because he was a vegetarian. In addition his landlord fed him with bread and oatmeal, because she had probably never met a vegetarian before; she did not know what to feed him (Bush, 29).
Gandhi said that British Law was Very Boring and Tedious
(Gandhi, 93). When Gandhi was a lawyer he had a requirement where he had to attend six out of twenty-four meetings if he wanted to stay a lawyer. Gandhi was a flourishing lawyer (Reynolds, 41). One of the appalling things that Indian law did is Sutti. Sutti requires the wife to jump on her husband's funeral pyre. This writer thinks that it is a bad law and a bad way to die. Gandhi was against it, too.
When the British were in control over India, Sutti was made illegal; so British law did have some good parts to it. English law had its bad parts, too. The English had a lot of admiration of themselves, and did a lot of mooching off the Indians and taking India's riches all for themselves. One of the laws enforced the law on untouchables. Untouchables are very poor people who are met with bigotry; the rich people would not even touch, let alone talk with the people. Gandhi was trying to stop this, even though it was a British law to not touch these poor people (Yates).
When Gandhi was a lawyer, he went to a headquarters in South Africa because he did not like India because of the British that were there. One time while he was traveling by train South Africa, he was sitting in first class. A white man came and went, then came again; this time he had two officers with him. The officers told Gandhi to move back to the third class car; he did not, so they decided that he should get off the train. They proceeded to throw him off the train once they got to the next train station (Bush, 32-33).
Gandhi promised his wife that he would be back from South Africa after one year; when one year passed, he called for his family in India. When they arrived his son's arm was in a sling. The captain of the ship they came on said that when he was playing with the captain he broke his arm. Now that they were in South Africa there was a real doctor not just a boat physician (Gandhi, 306)
When Gandhi came back from South Africa, World War I broke out. There was still one good thing about his return: everybody knew him for helping India get more free. This is when he turned to help make India independent. (Bush, 51) His goal was to help the three hundred fifty million people break free of Britain's grasp (Severance, 9); this was the time when he changed his life around (Bush, 51).
Gandhi had a meeting of three thousand people to introduce the act called the Satagraha. One part of the Satagraha was the plot against the Asiatic Registration Council. This law stated that all Indian people should register with the government when they emigrate. The first step to enforce the Satagraha was the salt march. A lot of the tax money came out of the salt that the Indians would buy. It was illegal to get salt from the sea on one's own, because if one did that the government would not get their money. Gandhi went to the sea one day and evaporated the sea water to get salt crystals. After that around six thousand of his followers did the same. Most of those people were beaten up by the British; some were even killed. In this chaos Gandhi was captured and sent to jail (King Encyclopedia 1-2).
When Gandhi got out of prison he started teaching the Satagraha again. Right after that he went back to jail. While he was in confinement, he started to fast in order to protest for the untouchables. The British did not want to deal with Gandhi's death because this would make the rioting even worse so the British Indian government passed a decree stating that we should make the whole caste system illegal. Amidst all the rioting and controversy the British gave the power to India, but it came with a price. It made two autonomous countries of Pakistan and India (King Encyclopedia 1-2).
The savior of the Indian way, the man of peace, was assassinated in New Delhi on January 30th 1948 while attending a prayer meeting. Gandhi's nonviolence act influenced Martin Luther King, Jr., on his nonviolence acts too. I have enjoyed writing about Gandhi and he has inspired me and I hope this influences the reader too.
