Three Days with Mahatma Gandhi
First person accounts surrounding historical events provide meaningful insights.
“Tell the American people that I want them to know the real truth. This struggle is not for India alone but for all humanity. Let them give their moral support to this cause.” – M.K. Gandhi
Introduction
The global empire of Great Britain ruled a quarter of the world’s land and nearly as much of its population by 1922. The oppression of the imperial government was felt worldwide. The colonies of North America were not the only territories that sought to be liberated from distant foreign rule. Indians sought to regain home rule for decades. The Indian Rebellion of 1857 sought to overthrow the British East India Company that ruled the continent.
Decades later Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (born 1869) became a new sort of freedom fighter. After completing his legal education in London, he eventually received a position in South Africa. Confronting waves of violent discrimination in South Africa, he developed the practical application of ahimsa (non-violence) in a resistance movement. With success at improving Indian worker rights, he returned to his homeland India in 1914. Now a spiritual leader in a non-violent political movement, he worked tirelessly to restore home rule and push the British out of India permanently.
The non-violent spiritual and political leader of the United States, Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., visited India in 1959, eleven years after M.K. Gandhi’s assassination, to pay respect to his accomplishments. Doctor King referred to Mahatma Gandhi as “the guiding light of our technique of nonviolent social change.”
Three Days with Mahatma Gandhi
M.L. Tandon, a Hindu Student at the University of Southern California offered the following first-person account after returning from a trip to India. Originally published in the June 1932 issue of the quarterly periodical “The Cultural World”.
Those who have followed the non-violent movement for independence in India may know that it is a method of combatting evil with good, of overpowering hatred and prejudice with love – an attempt to secede from a foreign government without the usual vicious warfare and exchange of bullets.
There are those who would say that such a plan is impossible, being too idealistic and visionary, but nevertheless this movement is the most powerful political force in India today. Not thousands but millions of Indian people who are involved directly or indirectly in this struggle are adhering rigidly, except for sporadic cases, to the principle of non-violence as set down by that 90 lb., unpretentious, Christ-like man, Mahatma Gandhi, the man who is revered and followed by a larger number of people than ever followed by any single man in his life-time at any age in any country.
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