Mahatma Gandhi - Mensch & Mythos Mahatma Gandhi - Mensch & Mythos

Who was he? Some call him Bapu, the father of India and independence. Others also call him Mahatma, the great soul. Honored as an apostle of violence. Already a legend in his lifetime. We thank thee for this food. My name is Gandhi, Mohandas K. Gandhi. 1893. Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi. Barrister at law. Faces the colour bar in South Africa. I should try if I could. South Africa, train station Pietermaritzburg. Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, a 24-year-old Indian lawyer, is thrown out of a first-class room reserved for whites. With this, God laid the foundation for my life in South Africa and sowed the seeds for the fight for self-respect. Gandhi will write in his memoirs years later and turn the event into a founding myth. The years in South Africa are crucial. Gandhi became Gandhi. He was nothing when he arrived. A small provincial lawyer, not particularly brilliant. His transformation was spectacular, but gradual. Gandhi was born in India. His family belongs to a higher caste. He studied in London before he became a lawyer in South Africa. India and South Africa were both part of the British Commonwealth. They are colonies in the world-encompassing empire of the British Empire, which means that the sun never sets there. 300,000 Indians live in South Africa. Some have tried their luck successfully and are rich merchants, which Gandhi now represents. But most of them work as coolies, exploited helpers in the docks, in the mines and in the fields. All of them are disadvantaged. Excluded from elections, they are not allowed to move freely. Colonialized. It is this inferior status that is deeply repulsive to the young lawyer Gandhi. And although he later speaks of a divine revelation against racism, he does not include the blacks in South Africa in his now beginning fight. Prejudices are also deeply rooted in Indians. They reject an equality with blacks. In 1894, Gandhi founded the Natal Indian Congress, with famous Indian intellectuals. Its goal is to obtain equal rights within the British Empire and to rise up in the colonial hierarchy. But not to overcome them. Little by little, he emerges as the true leader of the Indian community in South Africa. But how does he do that? Gandhi is young and is considered shy. But he has an important tool. In 1903, he founded a weekly magazine, which he himself financed, wrote and published. The Indian Opinion. It appears in English, Hindi, Tamil and Gujarati. In the mother tongues of all the oppressed and disadvantaged, for whose rights and dignity he wants to enter. Gandhi was aware that the Indian groups in South Africa were dispersed. And he had to bring them together. He needed a voice for them. And so the newspaper was an ideal platform for both. To spread his ideas and to create a community. Helping not a little in the victory was the worry of words. The modern telegraph system from 1870 onwards, it was a story of expansion and modernization. In the late 19th century, Gandhi began to play an active political role in South Africa. It was at the same time a time of media revolution. There are telegraphs, telephones and mass media in the form of newspapers. This communication revolution fit wonderfully into his strategy. Indian Opinion reflected a part of my life. Week by week, my soul flowed into the columns, writes Gandhi. Through the newspaper, he ties a tight band with his readers. When the time comes, he will know how to use it. 1906 is the time. The British announce a new registration register, in which all Indians are to register. Another humiliation. Gandhi becomes the head of the protest. He makes the Indians refuse the law, with the risk of imprisonment and death. But without ever using violence. Gandhi goes to prison for his conviction. Many of his comrades are also sentenced to prison. Our whole fight is based on this, says Gandhi, to expose ourselves to the challenges, and not to expose them to anyone else, whether Indian or European. The foundation for the violent resistance against foreign rule is laid, and Gandhi will embody it forever. How did he come to this philosophy? He refers to the American Henry David Thoreau and his idea of ​​civil disobedience, the Russian Lefteritz Toy, with whom he corresponds, and the Bhagavad Gita, the song of God, the great text of Hinduism. Gandhi takes an essential basis for his teaching from this. Never harm a living being, whether human or animal. He was ultra-modern. More, maybe post-modern, by combining the most important ideas of the West with ancient Hindu traditions in his person, to forge a new philosophy from it, to live and act in a new way. Gandhi rejects the term passive resistance. He creates a new term for his movement, Satyagraha. To act by the power of truth. Resisting Satyagrahis exposed themselves to violence, but never responded with violence. They are impressed by moral superiority in relation to their oppression. There is nothing passive about it. On the contrary, it was very active, because it required an indescribable strength from those who put it into practice. According to Gandhi, in the early years in South Africa, he was mainly influenced by the ideas of the English economist John Ruskin. Ruskin designs a counter-world to modern capitalism, a living coexistence based on cooperation, sharing and social justice. I decided to change my whole life to realize the ideals of these writings, Gandhi will say later. He founded two ashrams, monastery-like settlements in South Africa. First the Phoenix, and later the Tolstoy Farm, where he lives, surrounded by his followers. Everyone there has the same work to do in the house and on the field. The wage is the same for everyone, life is plentiful. Gandhi puts strict discipline through, and is the first to stick to it to the very end. He rejects the crusades of the Hindus, and thus denounces all physical relations to his wife, the mother of his five children, Kasturba. His body becomes a means of resistance. Gandhi understood his own body practice, and in particular his type of asceticism and his renunciation of sex and food, as a way to accumulate his spiritual efficacy or force. So that his body could become a medium for a kind of supercharged efficacy, which would then, as it were, radiate out into the public space and have a kind of self-promotion, but also a kind of contagious effect. The Indian masses could react to Gandhi's symbolism like to a sadhu, a saint who had given up all material possessions. But at the same time, they saw the warrior Krishna in Gandhi. And instead of physically attacking the weapons, Gandhi spoke of moral and spiritual fights. Gandhi talks about moral fights and spiritual fights. And Gandhi realized that he would not have to explain his message to the majority of Indians, who were Hindus. They would intuitively pick up on this message. We commenced the march in 1913. On November 6, 1913, Gandhi calls his followers to a peaceful march through Transvaal, a region that is forbidden to Asians and blacks. 2,000 men, women and children follow his call and protest against laws that restrict their rights. The repression is brutal. Gandhi is again locked up in prison. But he has won. In view of the extent of the movement, the British declare themselves ready to negotiate with the Indians. It is his first victory. Out of grief for the Satyagrahis killed during the campaign, Gandhi wears a simple white tunic. The lawyer in a three-piece suit has since disappeared forever. His fame transcends borders. From South Africa to India, Gandhi is now called Mahatma, the great holy soul. In 1915, Gandhi is ready to return to his homeland with his 300 million inhabitants and to put his life's work there. In the struggle against British rule, for the self-determination of the Indian people. Gandhi joins the Indian Congress Party and becomes its leader a few years later. He leaves the elite party South Africa behind and now represents hundreds of thousands of members. From the high, over the middle class, to the poor farmers, Gandhi now brings people together. In 1921, he initiates a boycott of British goods. Another Satyagraha against the brutality of colonial rule, which brings India to its few raw materials like cotton. Cotton is currently transported from India to factories in Great Britain, processed there into clothing and sold back to the Indians. An unjust system that puts Indian sovereignty out of power. To win it back, Gandhi introduces a tool, the Sharka, a spinning wheel. All Indians are required to spin their own yarn every day and work on their own garment, the Kadi. The spinning wheel becomes a powerful symbol of emancipation, both from the British rule and from the industrial consumer societies of the West. A project tailored to Indian society, which is based on satisfaction and the return to traditional rural self-sufficiency. And even if only a few of its followers actually put it into practice, the spinning wheel becomes the standard and the symbol of the future flag of independent India. Whether it's spinning, the spinning wheel, or wearing certain clothes, all these things are very easy to understand. They don't need a lot of explanation. They're things that are very effective moments, small sort of mise-en-scenes that work very well because they convey a complicated political reality in a simple and scenic way. That's one of the ways, I think, in which Gandhi is similar and dissimilar to the commercial practitioners of mass media. They also work with the reduction into very simple acoustic and optical signs. But Gandhi also called for a kind of ethical self-examination. I think that was one of the things that Gandhi really innovated. On September 22, 1921, a riot rages through the city of Madurai. The Mahatma is said to have announced that from this day on, he will only wear a simple white loincloth, the dhoti, and a scarf around his shoulders. Gandhi was a supreme creator of images. In order to understand the pain of a simple man that he wants to portray, Gandhi says, he must live his life. And the common man has nothing. He's poor, he's naked. And the removal of his loincloth is part of his strategy to sympathize with him, to sympathize and align himself with the common man. Gandhi is not a born speaker. He has no voice, and he knows that. And yet, wherever he appears, he gathers crowds of people. It is as if only his presence is enough to spread his message. He appears as an embodiment of the Hindu Darshan. His presence is the presence of the divine. The Indian society is very heterogeneous and much more sensitive to images than to writing. A society in which the rate of alphabets was low at the time. So they aligned themselves with images, not with texts. With loincloth, scarf and walking stick, his slim silhouette is recognizable to all. Gandhi's body becomes an icon, a symbol for the struggle of an entire people. The future British Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, rages against the half-naked Fakir who opposes the Empire. But in truth, the British are discouraged. Nothing can stop Gandhi. On March 12, 1930, Gandhi and about 70 of his juniors set foot on the sea from their Sabarmati ashram. 386 kilometers away, they meet hundreds of men, women and children on the beach of Dandi. In the dusk, Gandhi pours a small amount of sea water and a little salt. An insignificant gesture? No, a symbolic rejection of the colonial power. Only the British have the right to win salt in India. An indispensable asset that they have also imposed with high taxes. Salt, a symbol of colonial injustice. With a single act, Gandhi has brought the most important thing to the fore. It is no longer a question of negotiations for some rights, it is now about the total independence of India. Through the symbolism of the salt march, Gandhi achieves international breakthrough. With the help of the foreign press, he and his movement gain world peace. Gandhi invites journalists. There was this intuitive sympathy with this kind of anti-imperialist, anti-colonial movement. He tells them that they should feel part of the movement, not just as observers and reporters. Whether they wanted it or not, Gandhi managed to ensure that they were there. That is the genius of this man. After the salt march, Gandhi is arrested. His wife Kasturba and one of his famous comrades, the poet Sarojini Naidoo, continue. In May 1930, they lead a new protest against the British salt monopoly. At the salt mines of Dharasana, Naidoo renews the manifesto for the Satyagrahis. You will be beaten, but you will not defend yourself. United Press, May 21, 1930. The police attacked with sticks. The volunteers did not resist. I heard the horrible sound of beatings on unprotected skulls. The American journalist Webb Miller, who wrote this, is the only Western eyewitness. His shocking report changes public opinion worldwide. The brutal methods of the British are now used as a moral bankruptcy of the empire. The salt marchers do not resist when the police beat them. Gandhi has violently defeated the violence. The West also allows him to participate in public rallies. In January 1931, the Time magazine called him the Man of the Year. I should present myself exactly as I am today. And then came the little man, still scantily clad, but with an extremely wet blanket around his tiny frame. I'm sure he must have been frozen. We were in thick overcoats. The British have called in a second round of table conference to resolve the Indian crisis. Gandhi is the only representative of the Indian Congress Party. He demands absolute independence of his homeland. Nevertheless, he will be received like a star. Clothes and consequences will be exciting. Especially his loyal follower, Madeleine Slade. The Mahatma is accompanied by Miss Slade, who has renounced the prerogatives to which she gave birth to him. She is the daughter of Admiral Slade, to become the most devoted collaborator of the master. Of course. Madeleine Slade was a curious appearance. More so than Gandhi, the half-naked fakir himself. At the side of the daughter of a British Vice-Admiral with a white sari and a shaved head. That was incredible. For Gandhi, she was very supportive. She gave his mission and his message additional political and moral authority. She embodied a kind of living, defeated Great Britain. Unbelievable. Gandhi's visit to London is the high school of public service. He refuses to live in the expensive neighborhoods of London. He chooses a part of the working class in the East End. And although the conservative British press criticizes him for his rebellious behavior to destabilize the empire, some Londoners close their hearts to him. Charlie Chaplin himself would like to meet him. And when he goes to Northern England to the textile factories, which were heavily hit by the Indian boycott of British goods, which Gandhi was responsible for, the workers welcome him like a hero. And a Gandhi message for English children. You are going to tell the other children that I love you all as my own children. That's all I want to say. Gandhi successfully stands up as a representative of all oppressed, whether they are Indians or British. And he wins the fight for public opinion on the home soil of his opponent. The round table called in by the British, however, means a failure for Gandhi. The question of Indian independence does not reach the agenda at all. In addition, he is confronted with contradiction in his own camp. His opponent is Bimrao Ramji Ambedkar. He represents the most underprivileged caste of India, the Untouchables. Gandhi also always understood himself as a representative of the Untouchables, the Harijans, the children of God, as he called them. He welcomes them in his ashram and is relentless about the fact that they are also allowed to use temples and public wells. And yet he holds on to the Indian caste system by seeing the foundation of Indian society. Ambedkar, on the other hand, demands the absolute abolition of this caste system as outdated and unfair. This break between the two men will also divide society. And so the poorest of the Indians, who were majority of the lower caste, sadly rejected Gandhi categorically. Their father of the nation, their spiritual leader and leader of the fight for social justice, was Ambedkar and not Gandhi. And that is still the case today. Gandhi does not achieve anything in London. Does he therefore postpone his return to India? A handful of admirers convince him to stay in Europe. He starts an improvised tour. One man had already believed in Gandhi for so long that Gandhi wanted to visit him in Geneva. The man is Romain Rolland, pacifist and author, bearer of the Nobel Prize for Literature. In Switzerland, in the Ruhr area. Gandhi and he have never met before, but corresponded for years. Romain Rolland had worked to spread Gandhi's message in France. In an essay from 1924, he compared him to an Indian Christ, a redeeming figure for the world. Like many others, Rolland was caught in the contradiction between the rejection of violence and the hope of a revolution. So between 1920 and 1930 he tried to find a synthesis between the proletarian revolution and Gandhi's exemplary violence. He hoped that Gandhi's example could serve as an inspiration for the European working class and would encourage them to rise up against fascism, which was already in power in Italy and threatened to take over in Germany. Gandhi is now a universal, iconic figure and holds his principles to be universal. An illusion? After their meeting, even Romain Rolland no longer believes in it. Gandhi wanted to shake up a democracy like Great Britain by removing its mistakes. But the totalitarian states in Europe, which are shattered by economic crisis and political struggles, have other moral prerequisites. They advocate unlimited, raw violence. In view of this, violence-free resistance seems powerless. Romain Rolland said to Gandhi, I can choose violence for myself, but can I challenge a whole generation to sacrifice themselves in the name of violence? Gandhi was no longer the source of political hope for Rolland. Before Gandhi took the steamer back to India, he made one last visit to Rome. The pope refused to give him an audience. In order not to be invited for nothing, he accepted an invitation from Duce Benito Mussolini. Mussolini had been in power since 1925 as a fascist dictator over Italy. These pictures are witnesses to a clash that cannot be more contradictory. The lawyer of violence follows a march of the blacks. It is the question of whether Gandhi fell victim to the seductive charm of his own myth in 1931. He thought he had the press well under control. He would be the master of public relations, draw the attention of the press to himself, and would lead them to spread his message. But the fact is, when you see the film that was shot for Mussolini, that Gandhi did not have any effect on this visit. It was a moment of humiliation. Years later, Gandhi will act similarly again. In a letter of sad fame, he urges Hitler to give up violence. He fell into the same trap as many Europeans at the time. First in Italy, later in Germany. Because they believed in the social branch of the fascist leaders. Of course you have to criticize England, also France. But they were not fascist. There is a red line there. Did Gandhi misunderstand Europe? In the danger of rising from everywhere, his message remains unheard. And his image faded. The weekly shows show a triumphant return to India. But the reality is more complex. Gandhi is again arrested by the British. His image fades. Criticized and pushed to the edge, he decides in 1934 to leave the Congress Party. So Gandhi was really at the end of his, if you will, political iconization, much weaker than ever before. Gandhi sits in his ashram in Sebagram in peace. Like on the Tolstoy farm in South Africa, he lives a disciplined ascetic life, surrounded by his followers. He is still consulted, but from now on he plays a background role in politics. The new rising star of the Indian Congress Party is the later Prime Minister of independent India, Jawaharlal Nehru. He pilgrimages several times to Sebagram to consult with Gandhi and receive his blessings. Even now, Gandhi, the future father of the nation, remains a legitimate authority for India and beyond. Howard University, September 9, 1935. Dear Mr. Gandhi, I am the chairman of a delegation of American blacks who will be a guest in the movement of Christian Indian students. I intend to visit you in your ashram. I have been reading your writings for years, and there are so many things I would like to discuss with you. With friendly greetings, Howard Thurman. Howard Thurman was one of the leading religious intellectuals of the 20th century. I would like to refer to him as one of the spiritual architects of the modern civil rights movement. Normally we date their beginning in the late 40s, early 50s, with Montgomery and King. But the people fought for their rights long before that. Confronted with institutionalized racism and racial segregation, black Americans were very early fascinated by Gandhi's experiment. Already in the early 20s, Mahatma regularly exchanged letters with the pioneers of the black civil and human rights movement, such as W.E.B. Dubois. Satyagraha, the violent resistance of the oppressed, goes hand in hand with the political and spiritual aspirations of the civil rights activists. Often in connection with the Protestant church, as in the case of Reverend Howard Thurman, a professor of theology and a Baptist preacher. The meeting with Gandhi and his own reflection on violence was a validation or a confirmation of what he already felt and what he had thought about deeply. This whole idea of moral persuasion and the idea which was in the black community for a long time, of Christian next love. You've got to love everyone. I mean the songs would be about that. Love. Even your oppressors. Damn. How do you help underprivileged people to come to a place where their love for their oppressors does not bury their self-love and their dignity for themselves? This is what Thurman was working on. So this is part of his idea that he took with him to Gandhi. October 6, 1935 My dear friend, I am pleased to meet you. M. K. Gandhi With Howard Thurman and his wife Sue, Gandhi deals with the topic of basic life. And here, I think, is the turning point in Gandhi's thinking. When he says that the unmistakable message of violence will or could be brought into the world by the Afro-Americans. 20 years later, in 1955, a young pastor takes over the staff. Martin Luther King, Jr. Deep in the racist south, he calls a new Satyagraha movement to life. This is a non-violent tradition from Jesus of Nazareth and the operational technique from Mahatma Gandhi. On the contrary, both Gandhi and Martin Luther King knew very well that it was a challenge to power. India's link with South Africa, in respect of the liberation struggle, that goes back to the days of this great man, Mahatma Gandhi. With Nelson Mandela, the violent resistance will return to South Africa, where Gandhi had started it for the Indians. Mandela adapts the strategy for his fight against apartheid. Every new resistance movement thus consolidates the icon of Gandhi, approaches the myth of David against Goliath, of the little Indian man who defeats the great British ruler. On August 15, 1947, India becomes independent. After decades of discussion, the British, weakened by World War II, finally agree to their withdrawal. The rule of the British Empire is over. The Republic of India is proclaimed. Jawaharlal Nehru, the next Prime Minister, announces it to the world. The Mahatma, on the other hand, the Bapu, the father of the nation, mourns. He goes back to fasting. This is not the independence he wanted. The fight for sovereignty was overshadowed by the fight between the two largest groups of Indians, the Hindus, who represented two-thirds of the population, and the Muslims. Gandhi had done everything to reconcile them as Indians. He had met with Muslim leaders, negotiated with them, committed life-threatening hunger strikes to stop the violence. In vain. The independence comes with a division of the subcontinent into Hindu India and Muslim Pakistan. A bloody division. 14 million people are expelled from both sides of the new border. More than one million are murdered. Hindu nationalists, who want an ethnically pure India, refuse to forgive Gandhi for fighting for a common, open country for all. For them, the icon has become an obstacle that must be removed. On January 30, 1948, the Mahatma is dead. Shot on the brightest day by a Hindu meditator. His murder completes his legend. Gandhi finally becomes a martyr of independence and violence, and a symbol of unity and solidarity. His ashes are brought into the corners of the country and scattered in all the rivers of India. As if Gandhi were finally one with his homeland.