Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi was born in 1869 in India and died in 1948. Nathuram Godsey, a fanatic Hindu, murdered him. Gandhi himself was a Hindu and born in the second highest cast. In Hinduism people get born into a cast in which they stay their whole life and when they behaved good they get in a higher cast in their next life. If they behave badly they get in a lower cast. There are also the untouchables or people without a cast. People from other cast treat them bad and very often wouldn't even touch them. They live in the biggest poverty and have hardly any chances to live a good life.

In the time Gandhi was born India was a colony of the British Empire. The British ruled the country for several hundred years and many people lived in great poverty because the British took all the wealth. After school Gandhi went to London and studies there in a university. He became a lawyer. Short after he was back in India an Indian firm wanted him to go to South Africa where he worked for them. In South Africa the Indians weren't welcome by the white people and one day Gandhi got pushed out of the train when he refused to leave his seat for a white person. It was then that he decided never to be pushed down again and to fight for the rights of minorities. He started to lead the Indian workers in South Africa and fought for their rights. And he made another very important rule for himself which he used his whole life: never to use violence in his fights, even if others would use violence against him. And so he started to fight for the rights of Indian workers in South Africa and he had great success. And he never used violence.

He started a project where people from different religions lived together in peace and freedom. He never had secrets to the press and was a nice and friendly person through his whole life. When he came back to India crowds were already waiting for him at the port and people were celebrating his arrival. But that didn't make him happy. He wanted to live like most of the people in India, in the country and poor. He wanted to be one of them, one of the country he was born in but was away for so long. So he started travelling through the country by train in the third class wagons. There he saw a lot of India and a lot about how people live and work there. Very soon he became the leader of the Indian Campaign for Home-Rule. And the Indians loved him because he was so close to them. He lived in the country and lived an easy life of joy and satisfaction. And he started spinning. And he has done that for his whole life from then. He had the opinion that a lot of the poverty in India was a result of that many clothes were produced and then imported to India from Great Britain and that destroyed a lot of Indian industry and many people lost their work. And he encouraged the people to start spinning again if they don't have anything better to do because so they could make some money and they would produce something. And then one day as a symbolic event he asked his followers on a big meeting to throw all their British clothes on a big fire and encouraged them not to buy any more British clothes but to produce and buy their own Indian clothes. And after that many people started to boycott British things and many people in the British factories got unemployed but more people in India had something to do. That was only one step to India's independence from the British.

Another very important step to independence was that he asked the whole nation to strike for one day. And they did. Nothing worked on that day. No traffics, no mails were transported, no factories were working and, for the British a very important thing, the telegraph lines didn't work and the British in India were cut off their mother country. It was then that they first realized Gandhi's power in India. And there was another very important event on India's way to independence. The British had control of the salt that was taken out of the sea and the Indians had to pay taxes for that salt. And nobody can live without salt. Gandhi thought that the rule over the salt industry was one of the basics of the British to rule India. He started a march over 200 kilometers to the sea. At the start he had only a few hundred followers but when they reached the sea they were a group of many thousands of people. People from many villages ,which they crossed, decided to walk with them. When they arrived at the sea Gandhi took a handful of salt. That was a symbolic action and he asked everybody to do the same. After the police "cleaned" them all away from the beach they decided to walk into the salt factories and take salt from there. The British ordered soldiers to stand before the gate to the factories and not let anyone in. The protesters walked to them and tried to walk in, only five at a time. And the soldiers hit them all until they couldn't walk any further. Women picked them up and took them away. No one on the side of the protesters used violence.

Most of Gandhi's actions were a great success. The reason was that the British didn't know how to act against an enemy who doesn't use violence. And it was very important that the press all over the world talked about Gandhi and his actions. More and more people everywhere in the world agreed with him when they saw the British violence against the non-violent people. And they loved him because he was so close to the people in his country. To work together with the press and to have no secrets was one of the important things of his work. Gandhi went to jail very often in his life. He was arrested in South Africa and in India very often. He used the time in jail to think and plan other actions. And he used the time to think about how he could help the untouchables. He was a religious man and believed in casts but he didn't think that god wanted untouchables. He went for long walks through whole India to collect money for the untouchables and he fought for their rights his whole life. He also fought for the peaceful living together of different religions. When fights broke out between Hindus and Moslems he tried to talk to them and when that didn't help he started to fast, which he did a lot of times in his life. And once he nearly fasted to death when Hindus and Moslems fought each other. And then the fights stopped and the two religions started to live together in peace again. He also fasted when he heard of violence against the British or against soldiers or policemen. Violence made him were sad and he had more than once the feeling that all he had done was useless when people fought each other again.

When people came to him and said that it would be their right to kill someone if that person had killed their son or wife Gandhi used to reply: "An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind". During the Second World War Britain didn't have much power to keep India as a colony any more and they started to talk about independence. After the war, in 1947 India got finally independent and the British left the country. But Gandhi didn't feel like celebrating because religious fights broke out again. But with his talks to the people and finally with his fast he stopped the violence and people lived together again. But India was divided in India and Pakistan. Pakistan was the part where most people are Muslims and India was the part with mainly Hindus. Gandhi didn't want t to divide the country but he couldn't stop it. Short after his last fast where he stopped the religious violence again a fanatic Hindu shot him at his daily prayer.

Gandhi and his influence in the nonviolent movement

I think Mohandas Gandhi was one of the most significant persons in the 20th century. He was the one who proved that it is possible to fight very successfuly without violence. He fought his whole life with humanity, tolerance, ideas and without violence. He showed the way to a better world. And still today there are many people who love him and who use his philosophy to change the world. A very important example is the fight against wars. Usually people who fight against a war try to fight without violence. They march through cities and try to convince people not to go to the war or something like that.

Another very popular example is the fight against nuclear energy or nuclear weapons. Demonstrators sit on the road in front of a nuclear power station or block the way of trucks or trains, which carry nuclear waste. Or, very popular example, the French tests of nuclear weapons in the pacific. People opposed them and the press all over the world was talking about these tests. That was non-violent resistance. Marches all over the world and other non-violent actions. And another good example is "Greenpeace". They fight for the nature and their most important weapon is the public. They don't use violence but they use the press. The actions, they do are very spectacular and interesting for the whole world. Many people all over the world agree with what they are doing. An example for not using violence even if others use it against them was when they went very close to where the French wanted to test their nuclear weapons and the French soldiers entered their boat and destroyed lots of things and hit the Greenpeace activists. And all that was filmed by Greenpeace and these pictures were sent all over the world and came in the news everywhere. Also Martin Luther King didn't use violence in his fight for the rights of the black people in America.

An example, which all of us see and experience from time to time is the strike. Gandhi made the strike as a way of fighting popular and it is still used today very often. At the start of the 20th century the British Empire was the biggest empire in the world. India was it's biggest colony and was very important to Britain. Gandhi managed to get India independent of the British. The biggest Empire in the world lost a war of independence against a country like India which not even used violence and good weapons for it's fights. That was a sign for the world. And especially for the other countries ruled by the British. It was then that many of those countries saw their chance for independence. Gandhi showed them the way. And that was one of the main causes for the independence of many of those countries.

In the 1960's most colonies in Africa became independent and also Indochina became independent. I think that was also one of the things Gandhi caused or helped causing. Gandhi fought for the rights of minorities and people who were pushed down his whole life. He encouraged every one to stand up for their rights and to fight against cruelty. He showed the whole world how easy it is to fight for rights and how successful it can be if there are many people fighting for the same thing together. Many people in the whole world decided to start fighting for their rights when they realized how successful Gandhi was. That was the start of many fights for humanity and for rights of minorities. Good examples are the fights of the blacks in North America. Especially Martin Luther King fought under the influence of things Gandhi had said. Or the fights in South America under Ché Guevara or even the fights of Aborigines in Australia. But those are only a few examples.

Fights for rights happened and still happen all over the world again and again because there are always people who push others down. I think Gandhi played a big part in the fight for humanity and the rights of minorities. I think Gandhi was and is still a very significant person. He changed people's minds and opened lots of peoples minds. Still today when people see the movie that was made about his life and his fights they think about this person and how successful non-violence and rebellion can be. And that it is important to save the (human) life and not to destroy it.

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Mahatma Gandhi (who signs this letter as "Bapu") wrote this letter to Jawaharlal Nehru, future prime minister of India, shortly before Gandhi began his "Salt Satyagraha," a march to the sea coast to make salt, which was illegal under British Rule. The letter shows Gandhi's remarkable calm and resolve in the face of personal danger. Gandhi was arrested repeatedly for his acts of civil disobedience. Although not, strictly speaking, a Christian, Gandhi's belief in nonviolence was strongly influenced by Tolstoy's writings on Christianity, as well as Christ's teaching to "turn the other cheek."

The British Parliament passed the Indian Independence Act in July 1947, and it took effect the following month. Gandhi was assassinated by a Hindu fanatic on January 30, 1948, shortly after completing a hunger strike which was instrumental in bringing about a truce between fighting Hindus and Muslims.

MARCH 11, 1930

MY DEAR JAWAHARLAL,

It is nearing 10 p.m. now. The air is thick with the rumour that I shall be arrested during the night. I have not wired to you especially because the correspondents submit their messages for approval and everybody is working at top speed. There was nothing special to wire about.

Things are developing extraordinarily well. Offers of volunteers are pouring in. The column will proceed with the march even though I may be arrested. If I am not, you may expect wires from me, otherwise I am leaving instructions.

I do not know that I have anything in particular to say. I have written enough. I gave a final message this evening to a vast crowd that gathered for prayer on the sands.

May God keep you and give you strength to bear the burden.

With love to you all,

Bapu

From A Bunch of Old Letters, Jawaharlal Nehru, Asia Publishing House, Bombay, 1960.