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Essay on 1947 Partition of India
The Fight for Freedom in India One of the most inspiring and influential men of the twentieth century, Mohandas Gandhi, is a prime example of Thoreau s theory of civil disobedience. Not only did Gandhi almost single-handedly free India and its five hundred million people from their long subjection to the British Empire, but also he did so without raising an army, without firing a gun or taking a hostage, and without ever holding a political office. How could one slight, soft-spoken man accomplish such a remarkable feat? Let us examine the answer, which lies in the overpowering force of his character and his ability to lead others in civil disobedience.
Gandhi knew that he could never defeat British colonial power in armed confrontation and at the same time he had no interest in waging a logistical war that would outlast British forces, wearing them down to the point of relinquishing power. It was not in Gandhi s nature to contemplate military resistance in any form. His interests and talents lay in the area of personal diplomacy and he instinctively sought to oppose the British on humane, moral, and even spiritual grounds. He believed that an entrenched political and economical system could only be revolutionized by spiritual ideas. Thus, he borrowed ideas on passive resistance from the Bible, Thoreau s Civil Disobedience , and Tolstoy s The Kingdom of God is Within You (Collins & Lapierre).
Over a period of years Gandhi used those ideas to develop and implement his own style of civil disobedience, what he called satyagraha , a nobly principled, highly disciplined, courageously ethical strategy of non-violent passive resistance (Kirsey). Gandhi demonstrated non-violent passive resistance to further India s cause in numerous ways. Clothing was mainly manufactured in Britain and then imported to India, destroying Indian industry and countless jobs......
