Mahatma Gandhi'nin Hayatı

A white shawl he knitted, a sandal on his foot, a stick in his hand, a 390-kilometer walk towards the Oman Sea, and tens of thousands of people who believed in him behind him. As a result of these, Gandhi, the man chosen by Time magazine for the year. Mahatma Gandhi, an activist who brought India into independence with the peaceful methods he developed, and became an icon of freedom and human rights around the world. His real name is Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi. Mahatma is a title given to him after the activities he did for humanity. Gandhi is known as the pioneer of the Satyagraha philosophy. This philosophy teaches people to fight against injustice by acting without violence, based on love and respect. There are civil disobedience methods such as protest methods, walking, not cooperating, not obeying the rules, boycotting, and strikes. Gandhi also used these methods to fight social and economic inequalities and saved India from being a British colony. Gandhi was born in a middle-class family in India in 1869. His mother was a very religious Hindu. His father was the manager of one of the states under British rule. His father wanted his son to be a manager like him, so he put pressure on him to study law. He was an ordinary student in his childhood. When he was 13 years old, he married Kasturba Gandhi, whom his family recommended. From this marriage, Gandhi had 4 children. He first started university in India. However, he decided not to continue and returned to his family. Later, with the financial support of his brother, who was a lawyer, he was sent to England to study law. His mother and wife never wanted him to go. He also swore that he would not eat meat in England, not use alcohol, and not cheat his wife. Being a vegetarian opened unexpected doors in England. He became an idealist environment that would contribute to the world view of the London vegetarian community he attended. His friends here were very different people who opposed capitalist and industrial order, defended the superiority of morality to metal, encouraged simple living to their lives, and advocated solving problems with cooperation, not by fighting. There is one point to note that Gandhi did not become a vegetarian just because his mother wanted him to. There were intellectual studies on this issue. He decided that it was right and adopted vegetarianism. Because Gandhi did not accept all kinds of doctrines that were not suitable for his mind and morality. He also mentions in his autobiography that he gained his organizational ability in this community. When he returns to India, he learns that his mother has passed away and that this situation is hidden from him. Being a good lawyer, on the one hand, cannot show any success in his career for 2 years. After the failures he has experienced, his job opportunities are very limited for him. When he learned that a company was looking for an Indian lawyer in South Africa, an English colony, he accepted the offer even though he did not want to leave the country and embarked on the South African adventure that would make Gandhi, Gandhi. Gandhi, who will stay in South Africa for exactly 21 years, will grow up against the discrimination he experienced here and emerge as a leader. When Gandhi arrives in South Africa, he finds himself in a world where non-whites are second-class citizens. Painful experiences are experienced. For example, he is thrown off the train because he does not give his place to a white person. He is not taken to hotels because he is not white. He is not allowed to be a lawyer in court with his yellow. The lifts are only open to the use of whites. Indians cannot have property and go out at night with special permission. These events form the turning points of his life, in which he decides to fight racism and injustice. He is very angry with what he has experienced. However, he realizes that running after three will not work and starts to fight prejudice and discrimination, to fight hatred with goodness. He tries to inform the Indians about their rights for a year he spends here. When his one-year contract with the company comes to an end, while he is about to return to India, he receives the news of the preparation of a bill that will give the Indians the right to vote. Upon this, he decides to stay in South Africa and fight. He establishes the Natal Indian Congress in 1894. Unfortunately, the law goes into effect. Indians lose their right to vote. However, during this struggle, Gandhi manages to organize the Indians living in South Africa under one roof. He draws attention internationally. He shows everyone that Britain is not equal to all its citizens, and that some are more equal. He is also extremely opposed to apartheid. He says that we should never give up on expressing oppression out loud. If we do not say what is right, how can we change the mistakes in the world? In 1897, he goes to India to attend lobby activities on his case and to bring his wife and children to South Africa. When he returns, an angry community tries to lynch Gandhi. Gandhi does not complain about those who do this to him. He is aware that it may be dangerous to raise voices against injustice. However, he decides that this will never stop him. It does not matter to them that they want to make the wrong move in the attack. So far, Gandhi still sees himself as an Indian with a British identity. In fact, in the Boer War between England and European settlers in 1899, he establishes a team of 1,100 Indian volunteers to support England. In the same way, by gathering volunteers again, he supports the war that the British started to suppress the black Zulu tribe. In this way, he tries to prove to England that the Indians are citizens who should be seen as equal. However, although the British came out of the war with victory, there was no improvement in the case of the Indians. In 1906, Gandhi launched the first civil disobedience campaign after a law that greatly restricted the rights of the Indians. Whatever the results of the Indians, he invites them not to bow down to the laws that crush them and to uphold equality. The name of this movement is also called Satyagraha, which means to be committed to the truth. Satyagraha is a brand new technique that aims to solve problems by burning himself, sacrificing himself, and accepting suffering without applying violence. It is based on non-cooperation and disobedience. For example, Gandhi, especially by traveling without permission, challenges the laws and therefore goes to jail. The passive resistance of the Indians in this way lasts 7 years. Hundreds of people go to jail because of their disobedience, remain unemployed and are shot to death. In this way, the cruelty of the administration in South Africa is talked about more in the world. And finally, the South African administration has to agree with Gandhi on the intense pressure from England. At this time, Gandhi's business was doing well, he supported people with the money he earned, he wrote with Tolstoy, he was interested in labor, he worked on sacred texts, and he also established two commune farms. In 1914, just before the First World War began, he left South Africa. He first stayed in London for a few months and then went to India. As a strong and well-known man, he set foot in India. His small actions turned into great actions, such as the turning of the snowball. He rejected the offers to be thrown into politics. According to him, politicians embrace the truth as a veil of mystery and instead of permanent and deep issues, they resort to the trick of giving priority to temporary and unimportant issues. In Ahmedabad, he establishes an open hermitage for all castes. He spends the first 3 years in India fasting, meditating and staying away from many pleasures. From this process, he comes out with the title of Mahatma, that is, the Supreme Spirit. Although Gandhi criticized and opposed some of the policies of the empire, he is still a loyal servant of England. In fact, he even volunteers for the British army in the First World War. In 1919, Gandhi reappears on stage to implement the Rovlecht Act, which gave the British the chance to execute without trial, and invites the country to passive resistance, which proves its success in South Africa. The incident that broke Gandhi's attachment to England is the Amritsar massacre. The British, who raided the British in America, the Aborigines in Tasmania, the Bangladeshis in Bengal and the Germans in Dresden, are mostly civilized and humane, and they add a new one to their massacres. British soldiers massacred 400 Indian protestors in Amritsar. Gandhi, who returned all the medals he had previously received from the British, is forced to join the army to fight in the British army in the First World War of the Indians. Gandhi becomes the only leader of the Independent Indian Movement. He puts the name of the movement Sivaraj. Sivaraj can be briefly defined as the liberation of India from foreign domination and the gain of independence. Thanks to Gandhi, the Indian Parliament, consisting of Indian elites, becomes a platform where all religious communities fight independence side by side. Gandhi calls on Indian rulers to stop working for England, to leave their duties to the soldiers, to protest against the people and not to pay taxes to the British. He opposes the use of British products. He calls on the people to leave British clothes and return to traditional Indian clothes. After that time, the crack used in the touching process becomes the symbol of the freedom movement. In India, people who wanted to regain their freedom and independence were like a bomb about to explode out of anger. And violent incidents were taking place all over the country. Gandhi's philosophy of violence was not fully understood at the time. In a few villages, Gandhi decided to stop the movement by saying that we are not ready. In 1922, he was arrested and sentenced to 6 years in prison. However, when the appendicitis surgery was performed, he was released in 1924, i.e. 2 years later. When he left, the people were divided into Hindus and Muslims, and the National Indian Congress was grouped under different leaders. The groups that had barely come together under Gandhi's unifying leadership were immediately dispersed in his absence. He tries to reconcile the Muslim and Hindu people by holding hunger strikes. He takes over the party again, but within a year, he fails to cope with his twisted internal policies. From then on, people have an impression that Gandhi's era is over. In 1927, Gandhi reappears after the establishment of a reform organization that does not contain Indians. And he gives the British an ultimatum. If the British do not give half-independence to India within 6 months, they threaten to fight for full independence with their tactics of civil disobedience. In 1930, Gandhi organized a second civil disobedience campaign against the British to protest the Salt Act law, which prohibits the production and sale of salt to the Indians and especially heavy taxes on low-income people. On his own white shawl, sandalwood on his feet, and a stick in his hand, he goes for a 390-kilometer walk to the Oman Sea. His goal is to break the law by producing a symbolic amount of salt there and to challenge the sunless administration. After a 24-day walk, when he reaches the target with people, he takes a piece of salt in his hand and says, I am shaking the foundations of the empire with this salt. Similar protests begin to spread across the country. Because this is not the struggle of one man. It is the struggle of millions. 60,000 Indians, including Gandhi, are imprisoned. But the message has been given and millions of people continue this disobedience. Large crowds continue to collect salt without permission from anyone. Most of the people continue to be imprisoned. But there was something the British forgot. There was not enough room for everyone in their prisons. The effect of this movement is so great that Time magazine chooses him as the man of the year. There was no army of people behind this man of the year. He never retreated to the elephant-like tower. He was always among and among the people. So he was not only the man of the year, but also the man of the people. Gandhi reached an agreement with the British when he was released from prison in 1931. In order to put an end to the salt resistance, he wanted the British to give up the law. The British gave up. After the agreement, he went to England and attended a meeting where kings and high-ranking administrators represented the Indian Congress. As usual, he came in his uniform and attended the meeting in his home-touching cotton dress. This represents the independent Indian people, who live in poverty in the vast majority, and at the same time can produce and do their own production. However, he could not get any results from this meeting. The Indian governor of England, who was afraid that Gandhi would create another provocation, imprisoned Gandhi, who returned from London. The struggle for freedom, equality and peace can be extremely long and tiring. Gandhi was in prison many times while fighting for his ideals. In fact, his wife and closest friend witnessed his death behind barbed wire. Gandhi was always ready to confront his opponents and go to prison for what they believed. He was trying to put up a loud voice against a system that he believed to be wrong. And he was using violent methods to change this system. He was beaten for years, attacked, imprisoned many times and was sentenced to 8 times. After leaving prison, he realized that the National Indian Congress did not believe in the principle of violence. Since it was an effective method against the British, he was convinced that they were using violence. He left the leadership and membership of the Congress in 1934. He settled in Kırsal and started working to rebuild the country from bottom to top. After England entered World War II, he found himself in war in India, an English territory. On the one hand, the British administration was trying to strengthen the Muslim minority against the Indian majority while hindering India with its empty promises of independence. Realizing the situation, Gandhi started the movement of leaving India in 1942. Gandhi called the Indians to be ungrateful to death with the slogan of do or die. In the coming days, thousands of people died in the protests that the British would suppress hard. Winston Churchill said, I did not become the prime minister of the king to defeat the British Empire. After his statement, all the leaders of the National Indian Congress are arrested. India stands up and riots grow. As a result of the British suppressing the uprisings hard, India-England relations are now deteriorating in an uncontrollable way. At the end of the 19-month imprisonment, the administration, afraid that Gandhi's health would deteriorate and he would die in prison, released Gandhi. After Churchill and his party lost the elections in 1945, a new page was opened in India-England relations. In 1947, the new government held trilateral meetings with the Indian Muslim Union and the National Indian Congress. The Indian Muslim Union was established in 1906 to protect Muslim rights and was generally close to the British government. In 1913, he defended India's independence by changing his view. In the 1945 talks on independence, the National Indian Congress wanted independence by protecting India's territorial integrity, while the Indian Muslim Union defended that Muslims were a separate country. Gandhi, who defended the protection of territorial integrity, plays an active role in bargaining, and the leader of the Indian Muslim Union, Muhammad Ali Jinnah, who is also his friend, tries to convince them that this is a British game and that they are stronger together. He even offers the country's administration to him. However, even if Jinnah does not accept, other separatist leaders in the society withdrew their offer to continue the fight. Gandhi refused to compromise on the integrity of the country. However, against the growing violence, the National Indian Congress was convinced to accept the division. After the British left the region, he thought the environment would soften. Unfortunately, the violence grew even more before the division took place. Gandhi tried to bring the two communities together by touring these regions. However, as it did not work, Gandhi's moderate attitudes towards Muslims angered the Bahanas Hindus. Millions of people who tried to stay on the east side of the country, which would be divided into two by the British border, were killed. Much more was recorded as being affected by the Tehrir and being homeless. Gandhi was defending a worthy India where all religions could exist together. On August 15, 1947, before the declaration of independence, he started a death fast, condemning those who provoked conflict between religious groups and welcoming people. Thanks to the fast, the riots in Calcutta were over, and social peace was ensured in Delhi. Gandhi's policies were directed to two countries, Ahimsa and Satyagraha. In the country, there were Hindus who raised the slogan of Gandhi to die by rebelling against Gandhi's violence. After a while, Hindu fanatics attempted to assassinate Gandhi. This was not the first assassination attempt, it would not be the last. Gandhi was killed by a fanatic Hindu named Nathuram Godse, who defended that India was a Hindu country on January 30, 1948, by being shot in the chest three times. The killer, who aimed to destroy the effect by killing Gandhi, had actually prepared a perfect end to Gandhi's tradition of sacrificing himself. Gandhi was like a time bomb that did not explode. A rival that does not move, does not move, does not raise his hand. We had no legal way to get him out of the game. That's exactly why he was killed. After his death, violence in India was suddenly stopped. It was as if someone had pressed a secret button. After Gandhi's death, the murders that ravaged the country were over, and suddenly Gandhi's dream of peace and unity began to come true. After Gandhi's body was cremated in accordance with Hinduism, the ashes were distributed all over the country and water was provided there. Due to the fact that violence and violence are handled from a different point of view, On October 2, Gandhi's birthday, the United Nations declared International Violence Day. It is extremely tragicomic that an organization that violates violence in the world, remains silent to oppression when it comes to work, and presses the button when it does not come to work, announces the day of violence. Gandhi gave us an advice that could be valid even a century later. These are the things that will destroy us. Knowledgeable but uncharacteristic people, unprincipled politics, a world of work without morality, science that has underpinned human love, and a religious understanding without freedom. Did we turn on the microphone? However, during this struggle, Gandhi...