Gandhi was not always the spiritual hero of Indian independence that we know him as. Once upon a time, he was a struggling youngster in the midst of a chaotic world, trying to find his rightful place in it. He was born in 1869 and married his wife and life-long companion at the tender age of 13, before puberty or adulthood had yet to embrace him. His first son was born when he was 18, the same year that he sailed to London in order to study law. While in England, he adopted the local culture as his own, yet ultimately found it empty. He had hoped to establish the foundations of a career as a lawyer, but after several years of study, he returned home the day after passing the bar. Back in India, he took his first lawsuit, but could not bring himself to speak in front of the court due to his nearly crippling shyness and gave the case to a colleague. The disappointment he felt was overwhelming, and he jumped at the chance to leave India once again. When he was 24-years-old, he traveled to South Africa to work for an Indian law firm. Again, he tried to embrace the local culture and act within it—South Africa and India were both English colonies—and again, it didn’t feel right.
Within his the first week, he had what would turn out to be a life changing experience—one that pushed him unceremoniously off a train and into the service of justice. Gandhi had been assigned to a lawsuit that required him to be in Pretoria, the capital of the Transvaal province in South Africa. He bought a first class train ticket from his temporary home in Durban (a days travel south) and rode the first leg of the journey in his compartment in peace. In the remote town of Maritzburg, a white man boarded, saw Gandhi in first class, and brought the railway conductor to his train car, demanding that he remove himself and sit in the baggage car. Gandhi protested and stayed; he had a ticket that rightfully afforded him the first class seat. As a violent result, the police were fetched and he was forcibly removed, left to sit and shiver in the cold outdoor train station throughout the rest of the night. All of this was done because of the color of his skin; Indians and blacks were not equal citizens to whites.
The injustice Gandhi felt at this moment was a major catalyst for his progression into a spiritual leader fighting for Indian rights and independence. It forced him to look beyond his own personal needs and confront the terrible suffering of his impoverished and exploited countrymen and countrywomen. He began to develop his theory of satyagraha, which translates to “holding firmly to truth.” This would become his creed.
In practice, satyagraha is a method for resolving conflict, whether it be personal, communal, political, or other. Typically, conflict between opposing parties can be ‘resolved’ only by the acknowledged dominance of one contender over the other. If there is a winner, there must likewise be a loser. Even compromise rests on this conclusion, since compromises are similarly just attempts to get as much as one can at the other’s expense. Satyagraha challenges this assumption. Satyagraha is not aimed at addressing grievances, but at resolving the underlying sources of conflict, enmity, and distrust between conflicting parties. Its goal is to show one’s adversary the common values both share, and the reality that both have more to gain in harmony than in discord. “I have been convinced” Gandhi once said to a gathered crowd, “that if you approached people with trust and affection, you would have ten-fold trust and thousand-fold affection returned to you.” Satyagraha does not exclude the opponent from the solution, but rather brings them in as a participant in the search for the ultimate truth—the one that exalts both sides.
This is the foundation for all of Gandhi’s work in nonviolent resistance. Whether satyagraha took the form of large scale mass protests against the British imperialists or small scale disagreements between a husband and wife, both are examples of opportunities for finding mutual love and understanding. This is the same example followed by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in his campaign for equality in the United States, the same as Nelson Mandela in his quest to end apartheid in South Africa. It is possible to love one’s enemy, even as you condemn their actions against you. Eventually they will find empathy in your experience, for it is impossible to watch others endure suffering without feeling a connection to their humanity. The mirror neurons in our brains are evolutionarily wired to do this—to empathize with our fellow humans. This is what Gandhi taught, once writing that “if you want something really important to be done you must not merely satisfy the reason, you must move the heart also.”
It was around this time (the turn of the 20th century) that Gandhi stopped conforming to English culture and instead adopted non -materialism and celibacy. “In renunciation, it is not the comforts, luxuries and pleasures that are hard to give up. Many could forgo heavy meals, a full wardrobe, a fine house, et cetera; it is the ego that they cannot forgo. The self that is wrapped, suffocated, in material things—which include social position, popularity, and power—is the only self they know and they will not abandon it for an illusory new self.” Gandhi chose this new self, and in place of these material things, he substituted important relationships. In place of his highly-paid position as a lawyer, he instead cultivated his freely-given service to others.
After 20 years in South Africa, Gandhi returned to India in 1915, and his pledge of nonviolent resistance to injustice started a new chapter. By now, he was a man of 45, and ready for the challenges ahead. He began organizing poor farmers and laborers to protest heavy taxes and discrimination, preaching his methods of nonviolence and satyagraha despite pockets of violence springing up all over the country.
One of his biggest problems in liberating India from British rule was the religious division between the Hindus and the Muslims; neither wanted to see the other in power if the English were to abdicate. This was a tremendous problem and one that Gandhi meditated on for years. His solution, and what became the biggest symbolic movement towards Indian independence, was the now infamous Salt March. Salt was heavily taxed by the British, and Gandhi reasoned that boycotting the tax on a stable good like salt was the best way to bring all Indians together. Whether you were Hindu, Muslim, Christian, Jain, or Jewish, you used salt. Salt was a dietary staple for both rich and poor Indians, and much like the Boston Tea Party that ignited the American Revolution (which was in response to a similarly imposed English tax on tea in the American colonies), the Salt March was Gandhi’s way of folding all of his countrymen together into one coalition and sparking the desire for revolution within them. He led tens of thousands of his followers on a 24-day, 240-mile march to the seaside town of Dandi, giving spiritually uplifting speeches at villages all along the way. Upon arrival, he lifted a handful of salt from the sea over his head and exclaimed: “With this, I am shaking the foundations of the British Empire!”
Gandhi craved a psychological metamorphosis for his people, one that would give them inner freedom first and then hopefully outer freedom as well. Once the nation acquired individual dignity, he believed, they would insist on better living conditions and nobody would be able to hold them in bondage. While the result of the Salt March was 60,000 arrests, including Gandhi himself, (he spent a total of 2089 days in Indian jails—almost six years—and 249 days in South African prisons), the ultimate result was promising. The Salt March inspired his people with hope for a better future, one they could collectively attain. British imperial rule was put on the clock, eroding faster and faster with every passing season, until India eventually won their long-sought and well-earned independence in 1947.
By this point in his life, Gandhi owned only a few bowls and spoons, his sandals, a watch, a book of songs, and his glasses. He had given up everything else, including himself, to the causes of his people. First, Mahatma Gandhi changed himself. Then, he changed the world.