The word Mahatma means great soul.

This name was not given Gandhi at birth by his parents, but many
years later by the Indian people when they discovered they had a Mahatma in their midst.

Gandhi was born on October 2, 1869, in Porbandar, a small state in western India. He was named
Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi. The word Gandhi means grocer, and generations earlier that had been
the family occupation. But Gandhi's grandfather, father, and uncle had served as prime ministers to the
princes of Porbandar and other tiny Indian states, and though lower caste, the Gandhis were middle-class,
cultured, and deeply religious Hindus.

Gandhi remembered his father as truthful, brave, incorruptible, and short-tempered, but he remembered
his mother as a saint. She often fasted for long periods, and once, during the four months of the rainy
season, ate only on the rare days that the sun shone.

At the age of six Gandhi went to school in Porbandar and had difficulty learning to multiply. The
following year his family moved to Rajkot where he remained a mediocre student, so sensitive that he ran
home from school for fear the other boys might make fun of him.

When Gandhi was thirteen, he was married to Kasturbai, a girl of the same age. Child marriages,
arranged by the parents, were then common in India, and since Hindu weddings were elegant, expensive
affairs, the Gandhi family decided to marry off Gandhi, his older brother, and a cousin all at one time to
spare the cost of three separate celebrations.

At first the thirteen-year-old couple were almost too shy to speak to each other, but Gandhi soon became
bossy and jealous. Kasturbai could not even play with her friends without his permission and often he
would refuse it. But she was not easily cowed, and when she disobeyed him the two children would
quarrel and not talk for days. Yet while Gandhi was desperately trying to assert his authority as a husband
he remained a boy, so afraid of the dark that he had to sleep with a light on in his room though he was
ashamed to explain this to Kasturbai.

The young bridegroom was still in high school, where his scholarship had improved, and he won several
small prizes. Indian independence was the dream of every student, and a Moslem friend convinced
Gandhi that the British were able to rule India only because they ate meat and the Hindus did not. In meat
lay strength and in strength lay freedom.

Gandhi's family was sternly vegetarian, but the boy's patriotism vanquished his scruples. One day, in a
hidden place by a river, his friend gave him some cooked goat's meat. To Gandhi it tasted like leather and
he immediately became ill. That night he dreamed a live goat was bleating in his stomach, but he ate
meat another half-dozen times, until he decided it was not worth the sin of lying to his parents. After they
died, he thought, he would turn carnivorous and build up the strength to fight for freedom. Actually, he
never ate meat again, and freed India with a strength that was moral rather than physical.

But Gandhi was still a rebellious teenager, and once, when he needed money, stole a bit of gold from his
brother's jewelry. The crime haunted him so that he finally confessed to his father, expecting him to be
angry and violent. Instead the old man wept.

"Those pearl drops of love cleansed my heart," Gandhi later wrote, "and washed my sin away." It was his
first insight into the impressive psychological power of ahimsa, or nonviolence.
Gandhi was sixteen when his father died. Two years later the youth graduated from high school and
enrolled in a small Indian college. But he disliked it and returned home after one term.

A friend of the family then advised him to go to England where he could earn a law degree in three years
and equip himself for eventual succession to his father's post as prime minister. Though he would have
preferred to study medicine, the idea of going to England excited Gandhi. After he vowed he would not
touch liquor, meat, or women, his mother gave him her blessing and his brother gave him the money.

Leaving his wife and their infant son with his family in Rajkot, he went to Bombay. There he purchased
some English-style clothing and sailed for England on September 4, 1888, just one month short of his
nineteenth birthday.

Personality

With regard to caste, I would like to mention that while the Founding Fathers of our Constitution
gave reservations in the name of caste to socially downtrodden people -- with the good intention of
providing opportunities for their progress -- politicians have turned them into vested interests and have
thereby perpetuted casteism. Had reservations been given also to inter-caste married couples and their
children, we could have made a better effort to create a casteless society. Here we should note that
Gandhi in 1946 took a vow that he would bless only those Hindu marriages in which one member of the
couple, but not the other, had been born an "untouchable," or else inter- religious marriages. With this
vow -- which his followers at Sevagram have honored by permitting only such marriages to be celebrated
at the Ashram even to this day -- Gandhi wanted to help create a society free of caste and religious
divisions. It is not too late for us to take his clue and provide reservations for the inter-married couples
and their children. This would help to create a casteless society.

Mahatma Gandhi very much wanted to inculcate a sense of self-respect, self-confidence and self-reliance
to promote the power of decision-making among the people. He very much wanted that every individual
would acquire the capacity to resist the abuse of power. He said that although he did not want to be
reborn, yet if he had to be, "I should be born an untouchable so that I may… endeavor to free myself and
them from that miserable condition." Removal of untouchability, Khadhi and Hindu-Muslim unity were
to form the essential ingredients of Indian swaraj (independence). Already in 1920 Gandhi had
categorically rejected "any religious doctrine that does not appeal to reason and is in conflict with
morality." He abhorred blind following; his morality consisted "not in following the beaten track but in
finding the true path for ourselves and in fearlessly following it." He saw exploitation as the essence of
violence and so he insisted on the sharing not only of political power and social respect, but also of
economic opportunity; in a free India the poor must enjoy the same power as the rich, who must
understand that their desires above and beyond the bare necessities were to be accommodated only after
the essential needs of the poor were satisfied; a violent and bloody revolution would be a certainty one
day unless there was a voluntary abdication -- sharing for the common good -- of riches and the power
that riches gave.[

To downplay these important ideas of Gandhi's and to project him instead through public prayers and
through soft talk will not invite the attention of today's youth. Mahatma Gandhi was socially a universal
human and a revolutionary, and today he is beyond freedom of India, beyond religion, beyond the
traditions he inherited and the fads he cherished. We, the constructive workers, should take a great lesson
from his secular approach to life and promote social reforms to build a better individual and to cultivate
an awareness and interaction among individuals that will lead to mutual co-operation for a better society.
Gandhi's revolutionary approach has not been given a fair trial. Let us do it
Gandhi's Principles of Satyagraha
1. Love your enemy
I do not believe you need to love your enemy for satyagraha to succeed. However, you do need to act
kindly and courteously towards your opponent, and you probably need to care about your opponent.

Also, love would be a great way of naturally implementing the techniques of satyagraha (as long as your
love for truth and morality is stronger). So loving your enemy is a good technique. Lacking that, you
should try to understand your opponent well enough that you can be sympathatic to your opponent.

2. Always be truthful
The truth should be one of your strongest weapons. So if people find out you have not been truthful, your
satyagraha is lost. You will not be believed. You will not be trusted. You will not win the hearts of your
opponent or the spectators. And you cannot pretend to be working for an overarching goal of truth and
morality. Even if your duplicity is never exposed, you will lose your own heart.

For the same reasons, you should always be moral.

3. Never use violence

By a strict criterion of violence, this is not true. In Vietnam, the monks burned themselves to death. This
is violence on one's self. Gandhi made the British people feel badly about themselves. Does that count as
violence?

Of course, gratuitous violence and unnecessary harm to the opponent are completely inappropriate. They
undermine the basic principles of satyagraha. You win the hearts of spectators when you suffer and your
opponent does not.

4. Try to win your enemy over to your side

This should be common to any battle. But you don't just argue your point of view, you also act
virtuously, so as to make your opponent sympathetic to your efforts.
5. Don't be angry; suffer the anger of your opponent
Anger leads to the desire to hurt your opponent, which is against the goals of winning hearts. So you
don't want to respond to your opponents anger with your own anger. Actually suffering the anger of your
opponent draws attention to your cause, shows the strength of your commitment, builds sympathy from
the spectators, and weakens your opponent's heart.
6. Wean your opponents from error with patience and sympathy
You do not put your opponents in a position where they have to defend their wrong view. That would be
like saying you want to avoid a battle and then not giving your enemy a chance to retreat.
7. Establish the truth, not by infliction of suffering on your opponent, but by your own suffering.
Making your opponent suffer causes destruction, not awareness of the truth. Your own suffering signals
your commitment to what you think is right, and it makes people think about what is right.
8. It appears to work slowly. In reality, there is no force in the world that is so direct or so swift in
working.
The 10 years between Rosa Parks and the voting rights act probably went slowly for Martin Luther King.
However, 10 years now seems remarkably quick.
The Term Satyagraha
Neither Gandhi nor King liked the phrase "passive resistance." They felt their actions were not passive.
King apparently adopted (or created?) the term nonviolent protest, which of course assumes something to
protest against.

The name satyagraha has problems too. According to Gandhi, it literally means "insistence upon truth".
Truth is important, but just truth alone would not be satyagraha.

Gandhi combines satya with ahimsa, which I think is correct. Gandhi also translates ahimsa as meaning
love. But ahimsa literally means harmlessness. Desikachar says that ahimsa implies concern and good
will towards your enemy. I think the latter meanings better fit satyagraha.

So I have used Gandhi's term satyagraha, with the hopes that it has taken on a meaning of its own.

Ideas

Gandhi explained that the concept of Swadeshi did not involve any ill feeling towards foreigners or other
related narrow feelings. He wrote in 1923: “My definition of Swadeshi is well known. I must not serve
my distant neighbour at the expense of the nearest. It is never vindictive or punitive. It is in no sense
narrow, for I buy from every part of the world what is needed for my growth. I refuse to buy from
anybody anything however nice or beautiful, if it interferes with my growth or injures those whom nature
has made my first care. I buy useful healthy literature from every part of the world. I buy surgical
instruments form England, pins and pencils from Austria, and watches from Switzerland. But I will not
buy an inch of the finest cotton fabric from England or Japan, or any other part of the world, because it
has injured and increasingly injures millions of inhabitants of India. I hold it to be sinful for me to refuse
to buy the cloth spun and woven by the needy millions of India’s paupers and to buy foreign cloth
although it may be superior in quality to the Indian hand-spun.”

In 1931 he warned : “But even Swadeshi like any other good thing can be ridden to death if it is made a
fetish. That is a danger that must be guarded against. To reject foreign manufactures merely because they
are foreign and to go on wasting national time and money to promote manufactures in one’s country for
which it is not suited, would be criminal folly and a negation of the Swadeshi spirit. A true votary of
Swadeshi will never harbour ill-will towards the foreigner; he will not be moved by antagonism towards
anybody on earth. Swadeshism is not a cult of hatred. It is a doctrine of self-less service that has its roots
in the purest ahimsa, that is, love.”

Swadeshi should be used to support not the products of local mills but that of village industry. In 1926
Gandhi said clearly: “The test of Swadeshi is not the universality of the use of an article which goes
under the name of Swadeshi, but the universality of participation in the production or manufacture of
such an article. Thus considered mill-made cloth is Swadeshi only in a restricted sense. For in its
manufacture only an infinitesimal number of India’s millions can take part. But in the manufacture of
khaddar, millions can take part.”

He also emphasised the voluntary aspect of Swadeshi: “It is believed by some that Swadeshi could be
affected by an embargo on foreign imports after the attainment of Swaraj. But that Swadeshi will be no
Swadeshi. It will be a virtue practised under compulsion. True Swadeshi is the invulnerable bulwark of
the nation and it can only be said to be accomplished if it is practised as a national duty.”

Quality
 When Gandhi returned to India from South Africa, he saw that his own country men were living
lives in a degraded way under the British rule. He saw that the Indians got a step motherly treatment in
their own land. He also saw that there were some freedom fighters fighting against the British rule
individually and he did not approve of that

He met Gopal Krishna Gokhale who was trying to talk to the British government and was leading a
subdued freedom Movement. Gokhale was the political idol for Gandhi and guided Gandhi through his
efforts for freedom. It was Gandhi’s own decision to make some reforms in the people of India in order
to drive the British out. Also, Gandhi always displayed leadership qualities after he graduated in London.

When he was in South Africa, Gandhi suffered a similar treatment from the British and when he
came back home he saw his fellow countrymen going through the same strife. Also, he noticed that
within India there were several castes that were not cooperating with each other treating the low castes
very badly.

He decided to change these things and started voicing his opinion and view points to people.
Gandhi had great elocutionary skills and could mesmerize people with his speeches. He used this to his
advantage and soon formed a big group of followers. In his leadership he started several successful
movements like Satyagraha, Dandi March and finally the Freedom Movement which all brought the best
for the country. Gandhi finally was able to make the British government retreat from India and thus
releasing the country from their clutches in 1947 but with the repercussions of partition that led to the
formation of Pakistan.

Value

"Today 50 years after the assassination of Gandhi and more than eight decades after the
publication of Hind Swaraj many concerned Indians, from India's heterogeneous citizenry, are slowly and
intentionally calling for the acceptance of the concepts explained in his pamphlet as an alternative
development model. In particular, the moral values which Gandhi practically illustrated in his
community-oriented experiments in agriculture are persistently advanced as profound and credible
answers to the ever-intensifying crisis now confronting India.

As India prepares for the third millennium and celebrates 50 years of independence from the British raj,
its much neglected Gandhian economic thought and praxis demand an exhaustive re-examination. Swaraj
as Gandhi repeatedly clarified, however, is not only political. 'Real home-rule [swaraj],' as Gandhi
asserted 'is self-rule or self-control.' Therefore, Indians acting in the pursuit of true swaraj will have to
cultivate and nurture their spiritual selves in a self-disciplined manner. It is only with this Gandhian
understanding of swaraj that the real dangers of division and dependency -- arising from communal
forces, corrupt local and national leaders, international financial institutions, and multinational
corporations -- can be resolutely confronted. In fact, the main and practical contention of this work is that
the six ethical and moral principles -- swadeshi, aparigraha, bread labor, trusteeship, non-exploitation,
and equality-together with the concept of swaraj have contemporary relevance and need uncompromising
integration into Indian planning. As a point of departure, I have examined the implications of my
suggestion only in relation to the agricultural sector. The Gandhian vision which I have portrayed is a
means to rejuvenate the entire nation and all its other important sectors. Therefore, programs for social
change and planning exercises in agriculture, on macro- or micro-levels, must be grounded in these moral
values.
An awareness of Gandhi's philosophy in national planning and transformation of an agricultural society
has not been totally absent in India during the post-independence years. As I have demonstrated-
especially through exploration of current experiments and writings of Indian economists and planners-the
contrary holds true. In fact, it is the volunteer-based, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), for the
most part, which are assiduously working in a variety of areas to steer the people towards implementing,
albeit selective aspects, Gandhi's Constructive Programme on a micro-level basis. Therefore, in different
pockets of the vast nation people, particularly the poor and marginalized, are not only accepting
Gandhian methods in their lives and economic activities, but gradually converting government officials
and agencies to follow their lead. This, though an important and significant step, is clearly insufficient
when the dimensions of the crisis are considered.

The inadequacy of the response is located in serious and distressing trends towards massive
industrialization and mindless consumerism, in urban areas and towns, resulting in high unemployment
and diversion of scarce resources. Together with these tendencies there is the more harmful disregard of
moral and ethical principles. Here Gandhi's vision encounters its toughest challenge. Since its central
tenets are based on voluntary effort and individual/community reflection and action it may appear that
Gandhi's adherents cannot do much to remedy matters. This clearly is not so.

Today in some communities in developed countries there are susmined and solid agricultural programs
for use of organic methods; a decreasing dependence on governments for initiatives; decentralization as a
basis for local government; cooperatives for mutual sharing of all kinds of resources; and a deep
consciousness that the environment is a finite and fragile entity. It may well be that Gandhian ideas find a
fertile soil in societies which see the bane of affluence and taste the bitter fruits of inhuman and excessive
industrialization.