Chat in Mahonda

Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi was the most prominent leader of the Indian Independence Movement against the British Raj, for which he practiced nonviolent civil disobedience, as well as pacifist, politician, thinker and Indian Hindu lawyer. He received from Rabindranath Tagore the honorary name of Mahatma, and in India he was also called Bāpu. From 1919 he belonged openly to the front of the Indian nationalist movement. He established novel methods of social struggle such as the hunger strike and in his programs rejected the armed struggle and made a preaching of the Ahimsa as a means to resist British rule. He defended and promoted broadly the total fidelity to the dictates of conscience, even reaching civil disobedience if necessary.

In addition, he fought for the return to the old Hindu traditions. He corresponded with León Tolstoy, who influenced his concept of nonviolent resistance. He was the inspiration for the march of the salt, a demonstration across the country against the taxes to which this product was subject. Imprisoned on several occasions, he soon became a national hero. In 1931 he participated in the London Conference, where he claimed the independence of India. He bowed in favor of the right of the Congress party and had conflicts with his disciple Nehru, who represented the left. In 1942 London sent Richard Stafford Cripps as an intermediary to negotiate with the nationalists, but as no satisfactory solution was found, they radicalized their positions.

Gandhi and his wife Kasturba were deprived of their liberty and placed under house arrest in the Aga Khan Palace, where she died in 1944, while he was making twenty-one days of fasting. His moral influence on the development of the talks that prepared India's independence was considerable, but the separation with Pakistan discouraged him deeply. Once independence was achieved, Gandhi sought to reform Indian society, beginning by integrating the lower castes, and by developing the rural areas. He disapproved of the religious conflicts that followed the independence of India, defending the Muslims in the Indian territory, being assassinated by Nathuram Godse, a fanatical Hindu integrationist, on January 30,1948 at the age of 78 years. His ashes were thrown into the Ganges River. On political economy, he thought that capital should not be considered more important than labor, nor that labor should be considered superior to capital, judging both dangerous ideas.

That, rather, a healthy balance between these factors should be sought, since both were considered equally valuable for material development and justice. He was a great defender of vegetarianism and rejected any form of mistreatment of living beings.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahatma_Gandhi