Nonviolence and Mahatma Gandhi Essay

Submitted By morganelizsull
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Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi
A man of distinguished courage or ability, admired for his brave deeds and noble qualities. A man who faces various forms of troubles before attaining that something of value necessary to chase away the bad: the description of a modern day hero. When someone is characterized as a hero, they are described as, very selfless and valiant, and of distinguished gallantry. They are often a person who challenges people to follow in their footsteps, and are also models to our society. Mohandas Gandhi is one of those individuals that would be described in such a way. A person’s culture can very greatly affect their decisions later in life. On October 2, 1869, in Porbandar, a small state in western India8, Gandhi was born. Most people including Gandhi followed the Vaishnava denomination of Hinduism. His father, Chief Minister of Porbandar, and “his mothers religious devotion meant that his upbringing was infused with Jain pacifist teachings of mutual tolerance, non-injury to living beings and vegetarianism”( http://www.history.co.uk/biographies/mohandas-gandhi.html. Page1). He was born into a privileged class, so he was very fortunate to receive a comprehensive education, yet he was only a mediocre student at school. “The Gandhi family belonged to a division of the trading class, as can be easily understood from its surname Gandhi, which is a common one in India and it means grocer”(Coolidge5).

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Gandhi was the youngest child of his fathers, his mother being his fathers’ fourth wife. There were a few incidents that led him to take his heroic form. As custom in India,
May of 1883, through an arrangement of their parents, Gandhi was married to Kasturba Makhanji. In 1888, right after he entered into Samaldas College, she then became pregnant with a boy, which became the first of their four sons. He was soon after offered the opportunity to further his studies in London, overseas, and he accepted. There, he learned the philosophical study of religions and was successful on passing the bar, therefore returning home, only to leave again two years later to South Africa. From there he was asked to go to Natal for a case, and on that trip, officials told Gandhi that he needed to transfer to third class on the train, even though he had a first class ticket. So when Gandhi refused, the officer threw him off the train. Gandhi went through more injustices on that trip and found he wasn’t the only one suffering from the discrimination. After three years in South Africa, Gandhi set sail to bring his wife and sons back with him, when he returned to find an angry large mob that assaulted him with fists, rotten eggs, even bricks. The reason for this being that they thought he was returning to South Africa with two shiploads of Indian people to overrun South Africa.
Throughout his life Gandhi led many peaceful revolts. One of the most famous includes the salt march. The salt march was a result of Britain putting a tax on India’s salt. Thousands of Indies took part in this march from Ahmadabad to Dandi, a total of 241 miles. Once in Dandi, Gandhi would make his own salt. Britain’s response to the resistance was the imprisonment of 60,000 Indies. One of Gandhi’s greatest struggles was the result of the Amritsar massacre. Also known ad the Jallianwalla Bagh, the British Sullivan 3 attacked the Sikh religious shrine without warning, taking 379