Kyle Bright
Ms. Morales
English I-H
4 November 2012
Mahatma Gandhi Personal Power
Imagine that it’s March 12, 1930 in India. Eighty activists just set out on a 240 mile journey to the ocean to protest a tax on salt. In the coming weeks, thousands will join to form a two mile long line of marchers. Eventually, they will reach the ocean and illegally boil the water to make salt, receiving international attention in the process (Benner).
It will make the British realize that they can’t govern India long term, and so it will indirectly set in motion events that led to Indian Independence. What I am referring to, of course, is the famous Salt March, led by Mahatma Gandhi. It is one of his more famous acts of organizing people in a peaceful way, due to the size of the protest and how it helped set the Indian independence movement in motion. To me personal power isn’t just being able to influence and organize people. In order to have personal power, one would also have to have their legacy and influence last for a long time and continue to change how people do things long after they’re gone. This shows you have power that lasts. Another thing that someone has to have to have personal power is they have to have used their personal power to achieve something. Someone can’t just be powerful without using it to get anything done in their life. Mahatma Gandhi has this personal power because he had influence over large groups of people, his legacy and influence lasted long after he was dead, and also because he accomplished many things in his lifetime that showed he was personally powerful.
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How To Win Friends and Influence people How to Win Friends & Influence People, by Dale Carnegie This book was written in 1936 by Dale Carnegie. Some of the terms and vocabulary used are dated but the advice and information can still be used today. It deals with communication with others and the need for all parties to be able to perceive the objective from the others' viewpoint. The ...
Gandhi’s legacy and influence over others long after he was dead is one thing that clearly gives him personal power. He died in 1948, but many peaceful protestors in the time since then have said that Gandhi was what inspired them to conduct their protests in the same way. One of those protestors was the famous Martin Luther King Jr. in the American civil rights movement. He wanted to be able to protest against the injustices in the south, but because he was deeply religious he didn’t want to have to hate or kill or lie about his enemies to get his point across. He started to look at what Gandhi had done in India, and this showed him a way to fight for the rights of blacks in the south without violent acts. He organized peaceful marches and other types of resistance to the segregation and suppression of blacks in the American south. Eventually, these types of resistance led to the American Civil Rights Act of 1964, which ended the segregation in the south. But don’t just take it from me that King was influenced by Gandhi. When he was asked about a pilgrimage to India that he went on to look at what Gandhi had done and meet his family, King said, “Our whole civil rights movement-the March on Washington-was a reflection and effort on our part to imitate Gandhi’s salt march to the sea. Our teachings, the methods that we used all came from the life and the spirit of Mohandas Gandhi” (qtd. In Gabriel).
King, however, wasn’t the only leader influenced by Gandhi. Nelson Mandela used some of his ideas coincidentally in his struggle to end apartheid in South Africa, coincidentally where Gandhi once organized protests (Nelson).
According to Mandela:
“I followed the Gandhian strategy for as long as I could, but then there came a point in our struggle when the brute force of the oppressor could no longer be countered through passive resistance alone. We founded Unkhonto we Sizwe and added a military dimension to our struggle. Even then, we chose sabotage because it did not involve the loss of life, and it offered the best hope for future race relations” (qtd. in Nelson).
The Essay on Ghandi Salt March
In 1930 in order to help free India from British control, Mahatma Gandhi proposed a non-violent march protesting the British Salt Tax, continuing Gandhi’s pleas for civil disobedience. The Salt Tax essentially made it illegal to sell or produce salt, allowing a complete British monopoly. Since salt is necessary in everyone’s daily diet, everyone in India was affected. The Salt Tax made ...
To me, this shows how great Gandhi’s influence was. Even in situations where the groups aren’t completely opposed to violence, the groups remain more peaceful and didn’t want to kill others in the same way that Gandhi didn’t want to kill others. This shows that Gandhi’s personal power was so great he still saved lives in South Africa forty years after he was dead.
Another aspect that shows power that Gandhi had is how he was able to organize large groups of people into a unified group. One example of this is the salt march that was talked about in the introduction. After starting out with eighty men, (He didn’t want to bring women because he thought police would be less violent with woman, and he wanted a violent reaction to make them look bad) he spoke at every village they passed. Thousands marched with him and when he got to the ocean he illegally picked up and used salt. Then, remarkably, because of his leadership, thousands of Indians around the country joined in and illegally made salt in different ways like taking it from the ocean. This was one peaceful protest against the oppressive British rule and their dumb taxes on things like salt (Benner).
However, Gandhi also organized people at other times as well. When he was living in South Africa, the government passed something known as the Black Act, which meant that Indians had to get fingerprinted and carry registration at all times. Gandhi organized protests that included miners striking and Indians not carrying the required registration, and many of the protesters were beaten and arrested, including Gandhi. Eventually, his ability to organize people paid off, the act was repealed after seven years (Rosenberg 2).
Getting something like this repealed by using no force and just his ability to organize people to reach a common goal shows an immense amount of personal power.
The final characteristic that shows Gandhi had personal power is his accomplishments. In his lifetime, he used that aforementioned ability to organize people to achieve Indian independence from Britain. After the very effective salt march, in which he ended up negotiating the release of all peaceful protesters and a scale back of the salt laws, he had retired from politics because people started to worship him too much and he didn’t think they should. However, in 1939, he came back into politics after the British government stated that India would support them in the war. The British hadn’t even talked to any of the Indian leaders and this really angered the Indian people. Gandhi helped organize protests and eventually Britain ruled that they would give India independence after World War two (Rosenberg 4).
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However, Gandhi didn’t agree with the decision, as he wanted independence sooner. He started something called Quit India, and was arrested. In a couple years’ time, following an arrest of Gandhi, India was very close to independence and finally achieved it in 1947. This was largely due to the work of Gandhi’s protests, and is his greatest accomplishment.
Unfortunately, a region that was formerly part of India with a majority Muslim population actually became a separate country. There was a lot of fighting between the Muslims and Hindus, and Gandhi also managed to help stop this conflict. He fasted until there was a clear plan for peace, and neither side wanted him to die, so they quickly came to an agreement on how to stop the fighting. In this way, he at least temporarily achieved peace between primarily Muslim Pakistan and primarily Hindu India (Rosenberg 4).
That means that Gandhi didn’t just help a country get independence, he also managed to stop a potential war between the two newly formed countries. There are great accomplishments that showcase how much personal power Gandhi had.
Mahatma Gandhi had personal power because of his ability to influence large groups of people, his accomplishments, and also his legacy that continued to save lives for at least forty years. Personal power can be both good and bad, but Gandhi always used his power for good. Whether it was helping India gain independence or getting the Black Laws repealed in South Africa, he accomplished many things that positively affected others. Protesters were also still copying his peaceful protest methods for years, and this helped save lives and probably prevent wars. If everyone who was personally powerful used it in the way Gandhi did, a lot of the problems in the world probably wouldn’t exist. We wouldn’t have people abuse their personal power like Hitler did or any of the famous dictators or murderers in our history. Because of this, we should all try to use whatever influence we have in a similar way that Gandhi did for his entire life; trying to help others.
The Essay on Gandhi India Satyagraha People
Mohandas Karam chand Gandhi was one of the leading spiritual, political, moral, and cultural leaders of the 1900's. He helped free India from British control by using a unique method of nonviolent resistance. Gandhi is honored by the people of India, as the father of their nation. He was slight in build, but had great physical and moral strength. He was assassinated, by an Indian, who resented his ...
Works Cited
Rosenberg, Jennifer. “Gandhi – Biography of Mahatma Gandhi.” About.com 20th Century
History. About.com, n.d. Web. 31 Oct. 2012. <http://history1900s.about.com/od/people/a/gandhi.htm>.
Benner, Alana. “The Gandhi Salt March.” Gandhi Salt March: 1930. David W. Koeller, 12 Sept.
2003. Web. 31 Oct. 2012. <http://thenagain.info/webchron/India/SaltMarch.html>.
Gabriel, Philo. “The Influence of Mahatma Gandhi on Martin Luther King and the Civil Rights
Movement.” Yahoo! Contributor Network. Yahoo! Inc, 7 Jan. 2011. Web. 31 Oct. 2012. <http://voices.yahoo.com/the-influence-mahatma-gandhi-martin-luther-king-7478078.html?cat=37>.
“Nelson Mandela.” Nelson Mandela. SA-Venues.com, n.d. Web. 31 Oct. 2012. <http://www.sa-
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