Jai Narayan vyas university

Jodhpur
Faculty of law

SESSION = 2019-20
SUBJECT = POLITICAL SCIENCE[MAJOR]
TOPIC = GANDHI’S VIEWS ON CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE

SUBMITTED BY SUBMITTED TO
SUDARSHAN CHOUDHARY DR. P.S.BHATI SIR
BA LLB 3RD SEM
 ACKNOWLDGMENT
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CIVIL DISOBIDIENCE MOVEMENT
1945
 INTRODUCTION
LIFE OF MAHTMA GANDHI
When and Where Was Gandhi Born?

Indian nationalist leader Mahatma Gandhi (born Mohandas Karamchand

Gandhi) was born on October 2, 1869, in Porbandar, Kathiawar, India, which
was then part of the British Empire.

Wife and Family

Mahatma Gandhi’s father, Karamchand Gandhi, served as a chief minister in

Porbandar and other states in western India. His mother, Putlibai, was a deeply
religious woman who fasted regularly.

At the age of 13, Mahatma Gandhi wed Kasturba Makanji, a merchant’s

daughter, in an arranged marriage. In 1885, he endured the passing of his
father and shortly after that the death of his young baby. In 1888, Gandhi’s wife
gave birth to the first of four surviving sons. A second son was born in India
1893; Kasturba would give birth to two more sons while living in South Africa,
one in 1897 and one in 1900.

Early Life and Education

Young Gandhi was a shy, unremarkable student who was so timid that he slept
with the lights on even as a teenager. In the ensuing years, the teenager rebelled
by smoking, eating meat and stealing change from household servants.

Although Gandhi was interested in becoming a doctor, his father had hoped he
would also become a government minister, so his family steered him to enter the
legal profession. In 1888, 18-year-old Gandhi sailed for London, England, to
study law. The young Indian struggled with the transition to Western culture.

Upon returning to India in 1891, Gandhi learned that his mother had died just
weeks earlier. He struggled to gain his footing as a lawyer. In his first
courtroom case, a nervous Gandhi blanked when the time came to cross-
examine a witness. He immediately fled the courtroom after reimbursing his
client for his legal fees.
Gandhi in South Africa

After struggling to find work as a lawyer in India, Gandhi obtained a one-year

contract to perform legal services in South Africa. In April 1893, he sailed for
Durban in the South African state of Natal.

When Gandhi arrived in South Africa, he was quickly appalled by the

discrimination and racial segregation faced by Indian immigrants at the hands
of white British and Boer authorities. Upon his first appearance in a Durban
courtroom, Gandhi was asked to remove his turban. He refused and left the
court instead. The Natal Advertiser mocked him in print as “an unwelcome
visitor.”

A seminal moment in Gandhi’s life occurred days later on June 7, 1893, during
a train trip to Pretoria, South Africa, when a white man objected to his presence
in the first-class railway compartment, although he had a ticket. Refusing to
move to the back of the train, Gandhi was forcibly removed and thrown off the
train at a station in Pietermaritzburg. His act of civil disobedience awoke in
him a determination to devote himself to fighting the “deep disease of color
prejudice.” He vowed that night to “try, if possible, to root out the disease and
suffer hardships in the process.” From that night forward, the small,
unassuming man would grow into a giant force for civil rights. Gandhi formed
the Natal Indian Congress in 1894 to fight discrimination.

At the end of his year-long contract, Gandhi prepared to return to India until he
learned, at his farewell party, of a bill before the Natal Legislative Assembly
that would deprive Indians of the right to vote. Fellow immigrants convinced
Gandhi to stay and lead the fight against the legislation. Although Gandhi could
not prevent the law’s passage, he drew international attention to the injustice.

After a brief trip to India in late 1896 and early 1897, Gandhi returned to South
Africa with his wife and children. Gandhi ran a thriving legal practice, and at
the outbreak of the Boer War, he raised an all-Indian ambulance corps of 1,100
volunteers to support the British cause, arguing that if Indians expected to have
full rights of citizenship in the British Empire, they also needed to shoulder their
responsibilities as well.
GANDHIJI VIEWS ON CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE

In 1906, Gandhi organized his first mass civil-disobedience campaign, which he

called “Satyagraha” (“truth and firmness”), in reaction to the South African
Transvaal government’s new restrictions on the rights of Indians, including the
refusal to recognize Hindu marriages.

After years of protests, the government imprisoned hundreds of Indians in 1913,

including Gandhi. Under pressure, the South African government accepted a
compromise negotiated by Gandhi and General Jan Christian Smuts that
included recognition of Hindu marriages and the abolition of a poll tax for
Indians. When Gandhi sailed from South Africa in 1914 to return home, Smuts
wrote, “The saint has left our shores, I sincerely hope forever.” At the outbreak
of World War I, Gandhi spent several months in London.

In 1919, with India still under the firm control of the British, Gandhi had a
political reawakening when the newly enacted Rowlatt Act authorized British
authorities to imprison people suspected of sedition without trial. In response,
Gandhi called for a Satyagraha campaign of peaceful protests and strikes.
Violence broke out instead, which culminated on April 13, 1919, in the
Massacre of Amritsar, when troops led by British Brigadier General Reginald
Dyer fired machine guns into a crowd of unarmed demonstrators and killed
nearly 400 people. No longer able to pledge allegiance to the British
government, Gandhi returned the medals he earned for his military service in
South Africa and opposed Britain’s mandatory military draft of Indians to serve
in World War I.

Gandhi became a leading figure in the Indian home-rule movement. Calling for
mass boycotts, he urged government officials to stop working for the Crown,
students to stop attending government schools, soldiers to leave their posts and
citizens to stop paying taxes and purchasing British goods. Rather than buy
British-manufactured clothes, he began to use a portable spinning wheel to
produce his own cloth, and the spinning wheel soon became a symbol of Indian
independence and self-reliance. Gandhi assumed the leadership of the Indian
National Congress and advocated a policy of non-violence and non-cooperation
to achieve home rule.

After British authorities arrested Gandhi in 1922, he pleaded guilty to three

counts of sedition. Although sentenced to a six-year imprisonment, Gandhi was
released in February 1924 after appendicitis surgery. He discovered upon his
release that relations between India’s Hindus and Muslims had devolved during
 his time in jail, and when violence between the two religious groups flared
again, Gandhi began a three-week fast in the autumn of 1924 to urge unity. He
remained away from active politics during much of the latter 1920s.

Gandhi was jailed many times. At one trial he said, “In my humble opinion,
non-cooperation with evil is as much a duty as is cooperation with good.” When
he was released, he continued leading non-violent protests.

When India finally gained independence, the problem became how Hindus and
Muslims would share power. Distrust spilled over into violence. Gandhi spoke
out for peace and forgiveness. He opposed dividing the country into Hindu and
Muslim nations, believing in one unified India. In May 1947, British, Hindu,
and Muslim political leaders, but not Gandhi, reached an agreement for
independence that created a Hindu-dominated India and a Muslim Pakistan. As
Independence Day (August 15, 1947) approached, an explosion of Hindu and
Muslim looting, rape, and murder erupted throughout the land. Millions of
Hindus and Muslims fled their homes, crossing the borders into India or
Pakistan.

Gandhi announced that he would fast until “a reunion of hearts of all

communities” had been achieved. An old man, he weakened rapidly, but he did
not break his fast until Hindu and Muslim leaders came to him pledging peace.
Days later, an assassin shot and killed Gandhi. The assassin was a Hindu who
believed Gandhi had sold out to the Muslims.

Gandhi and others like Martin Luther King Jr. confronted injustice with non-
violent methods. “It is the acid test of non-violence,” Gandhi once said, “that in
a non-violent conflict there is no rancor left behind and, in the end, the enemies
are converted into friends.”

CAUSES OF CIVIL DISOBIDIENCE

There were three main causes of the civil disobedience movement:

1. Formation of the Simon Commision

2. Demand for Dominion Status
3. Protests against the arrest of social revolutionaries
 1 Formation of the Simon Commission

In November 1927 the British government in the UK constituted the Indian

Statutory Commission, popularly known as the Simon Commission after the
name of its Chairman to recommend further Constitutional reforms in India.
However, no Indian was nominated as a member of the commission that
resulted in outrage against the All-White commission in India since this action
of the British government, which excluded Indians from the Simon Commission,
implied that Indians were not fit to decide the next course of constitutional
reforms. Consequently, there were huge demonstrations and strikes in different
cities of India wherever the commission visited.

2. Demand for Dominion Status

In the Calcutta session of Indian National Congress (INC) of December 1928, a

demand for dominion status (Swaraj) was raised and a period of one year was
given to the British Indian government to accept the Congress demands failing
which nothing short of complete Independence from foreign rule would become
the primary objective of the Congress and a Civil Disobedience movement
under the leadership of Mahatma Gandhi would be launched to realise this
objective.

3. Protests against the arrest of social revolutionaries

On 8th April 1929, Bhagat Singh and Batukeshwar Dutt of Hindustan

Socialist Republican Army (HSRA) threw harmless bombs in the Central
Legislative Assembly and were arrested. In jail, the members of the HSRA went
on a prolonged hunger strike demanding better treatment for political
prisoners, and the death of one of them, Jatin Das, on the 64th day of the
hunger strike led to some of the biggest demonstrations the country had ever
witnessed.
 However, very soon it became clear to the nationalist leaders that the British
government was not sincere in meeting the demand for Dominion Status and
therefore the INC met at an emergency session at Lahore in December 1929
under the Presidentship of Jawaharlal Nehru and declared Complete
Independence or ‘Purna Swaraj’ as the Congress goal and also authorized
Mahatma Gandhi to launch a comprehensive programme of civil disobedience
at a time and place of his choosing.

Significance and Impact of the Civil Disobedience Movement

Even though the Civil Disobedience Movement did not succeed in attaining its
main objective of independence from British Rule or even manage to obtain the
concession of Dominion Status from the government, it had a significant impact
for the following reasons:

1. The number of participants was much more in the Civil Disobedience

Movement as compared to the Non-Cooperation Movement. More than three
times the number of Satyagrahis went to jail.
2. Foreign import of cloth and cigarettes fell by half. Government income from
land revenue and liquor excise also took a hit.
3. The movement saw the participation of poor and illiterate people on a large
scale who also unhesitatingly went to jail for the just cause.
4. Women and students participated in the movement on a large scale and it was a
liberating experience for Indian women who entered the public space in such
large numbers for the first time.
5. Muslims participated actively in the North-West Frontier Province and Bengal.
The Muslim weaving community in Bihar, Delhi, and Lucknow was also
effectively mobilized.
Most importantly, as mentioned above, it was for the first time that the
government negotiated with Mahatma Gandhi and the Congress as an equal
which had not happened earlier in the freedom struggle.
SALIENT FEATURE OF THE CIVIL DISOBIDIENCE MOVEMENT

1.The civil disobedience was launched in 1930 under the guidelines of Gandhiji.

2.Actually civil disobedience movement was launched to fill the work that non
cooperation wont did.

3.Peoples fought against government for getting their liberty..

4.boycott of school,colleges,foreign cloth, offices. Liquor shops closed.

5.peoples stop paying taxes.

Government Response and End of the Civil Disobedience Movement

The civil disobedience movement reached its peak by the end first half of 1930.
The government’s attitude was marked by ambivalence. Since the movement
remained largely non-violent, the government fell into the trap of “damned if
you do, damned if you don’t”. Either way, it led to the erosion of the hegemony
of the British government. After a lot of vacillation, the government finally
ordered Mahatma Gandhi’s arrest on May 4, 1930, when he announced his
resolve to lead the raids on Dharasana Salt Works.

In a conciliatory gesture, the Viceroy Lord Irwin in July 1930 suggested a

Round Table Conference and reiterated the goal of Dominion Status. This
marked the beginning of the end of the Civil Disobedience Movement. However,
the actual movement ended in two stages as we shall se