(3 of 7)
The Mahatma (Great Soul), as he came to be called, insisted he was a religious leader, not a politician. "If I seem to take part in politics," he said, "it is only because politics today encircle us like the coils of a snake from which one cannot get out no matter how one tries. I wish to wrestle with the snake. ... I am trying to introduce religion into politics."
Applied to India, that meant to Gandhi that people could not be pure in thought, word and deed unless they were their own masters. So he began to work for Indian independence. He found India's "struggle" for independence in the hands of a few well-educated Indians. The Indian National Congress,* was a polite debating society, pledged to win dominion status for India by "legitimate" means. Gandhi converted it into a mass movement. Indian peasants did not worry about independence until Gandhi told them to.
British repressive measures after World War I convinced Gandhi that the British would never willingly give India dominion status. So he organized satyagraha. This first campaign came near to unseating the British Raj. "Gandhi's was the most colossal experiment in world history, and it came within an inch of succeeding," admitted the British governor of Bombay.
Himalayan Miscalculation. But passive resistance always erupted into violence. When he saw the bloodshed that followed his call for resistance, Gandhi was overwhelmed with remorse. He called off his campaign in 1922, admitted himself guilty of a "Himalayan miscalculation." His followers were not yet self-disciplined enough to be trusted with satyagraha. To become a "fitter instrument" to lead, Gandhi imposed on himself a five-day fast.
The pattern repeated itself in later years. The ways of passive action—the sari-clad women lying on railway tracks, the distilling of illicit salt from the sea, the boycotting of British shops, the strikes, the banner-waving processions—would lead to shots in the streets, to burning and looting. Gandhi always punished himself for his followers' transgressions by imposing a fast on himself.
With each fast, each boycott, and each imprisonment (by a British Raj which feared to leave him free, feared even more that he would die on their hands and enrage all India), Gandhi came closer to his goal of a free India. With the same weapons he got in some blows at his favorite social evils—untouchability, liquor, landlord extortions, child marriages, the low status of women.
But as he wrestled, India and Indian politics changed along the road. The Indian National Congress, which claimed to represent Indians of every religious community, finally had to admit that Mohamed Ali Jinnah spoke for the Moslems. Left-wing groups left the Congress, Communists led by Puran Chandra Joshi threatened the placid order of the agricultural, home-industrial India which Gandhi strove for. The Congress leadership (since 1941 Gandhi has ruled only from the sidelines) passed more & more to a group of well-to-do conservatives bossed by Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel.