Gandhi helped his nation India to gain independence from the British using non violence. With using non violence to gain independence he would protest and make marches. Gandhi started out with throwing away the government passes because only the Indians had to carry around everywhere while the British didn't have to. Gandhi found it wrong that they were the only one's who had to carry it around everywhere while they were suppose to be treated like the British. The British police man had beaten him and Gandhi didn't fight back he just kept putting the papers into the fire until he couldn't move anymore. Gandhi also made a boycott for the English products. The English would gather the cotton from India because it was easier and than go back to England to make the clothing and sell it to the Indians. Gandhi told everyone not to buy any of the clothes and taught them how to spin their own clothing. Than there was also the Salt March where him and a group of people walked 240 miles to the Indian Ocean to make their own salt.This was because they weren't able to make their own salt, they had to buy the salt from the British. The British decided to ignore it because it wasn't hurting them or anyone.
Non violence worked very well with Gandhi because no matter how much the British man would attack the Indians he had never used violence or thought about using violence against them. Gandhi never went along with the quote "An eye for an eye" he believed that if you go with this quote the violence would never finish. Than a group of Indian man who were protesting attacked a couple of police men and also burned down their a police station for assaulting a couple of Indian men. This disappointed Gandhi very much so to stop the Indians from using violence he started a fast until they would use non violence instead. This convinced them to stop with the violence and go with the non violence because they didn't want to Gandhi to die and still be a powerful leader.
I believe the only way the Indians gained their independence was because of Gandhi. He stood strong the whole time and was a very powerful leader which inspired others. He took everything the right way with non violence so it didn't make them look mad at all. It would make the British look bad because they were the ones who would use the violence against the Indians. If there was someone in India who would gain the independence for India did what Gandhi did than they might of gotten their independence. During 1447 the Indians would have fought for the British during the World War II. This would only have happened if they didn't get their independence.
This isn't the whole story. There was also a great deal of armed struggle against the British in India, and without that (and the weakening of the British in WWII), they probably would not have achieved independence.
ReplyDeleteSometimes, non-violence just doesn't work, like when fighting the Nazis. Gandhi told the British and the Jews to surrender their lives rather than fight back.
http://www.watchinghistory.com/2010/02/gandhi-and-non-violence.html