Mahatma Gandhi

Mahatma Gandhi (Mohandas Gandhi) was born on October 2, 1869, in India into a wealthy family. His family sent him to London to obtain a legal education. After his studies, Gandhi returned to India, but opportunities to apply his knowledge emerged in South Africa, where many people of Indian origin lived and worked at that time.

In South Africa, Gandhi became a successful lawyer, but clearly saw the flagrant discrimination between representatives of the "colonial race" and the rest of the population, including Africans and Indians. He personally encountered racial discrimination, despite being a wealthy man.

Gandhi was an opponent of armed struggle and as an alternative developed his own method, based on the aspiration to influence the minds and consciences of opponents or adversaries.

Gandhi defended his convictions by personal example. During the Anglo-Boer War, he did not take up arms but saved lives as a military medic. He exchanged European clothing for Indian attire and gave away jewelry and gifts to those in need. The authorities of the British Empire were seriously puzzled — the eccentric lawyer, who kept finding more and more supporters, turned out to be an opponent against whom they had no methods. The ascetic Gandhi could not be bought, and the man who rejected violence could not be brought to trial. His persistence slowly but surely changed the situation, forcing the colonial authorities to make ever more concessions.

During his South African period, Gandhi became acquainted with the works of Leo Tolstoy and entered into correspondence with him. This had a great influence on him. Gandhi later repeatedly emphasized that he considered Leo Tolstoy his teacher and spiritual mentor.

During his stay in South Africa, Gandhi was repeatedly imprisoned for his actions. It was there that Gandhi demonstrated the effectiveness of the principle of nonviolent resistance.

Gandhi's moral authority among Indians grew rapidly. In 1915, when he returned from South Africa to his homeland, the writer Rabindranath Tagore, Nobel Prize laureate, was the first to call Gandhi "Mahatma" ("great soul").

In 1915, Gandhi returned to his homeland. There he grew close to the Indian National Congress (INC) party and soon assumed the position of one of the key leaders of India's national liberation movement — he became the moral inspirer and ideological leader of the INC.

The socialist revolution in Russia sparked the beginning of a mass anti-imperialist movement. This helped Gandhi realize that in the struggle against colonizers for any social and political concessions, it was necessary to rely on broad segments of society, and that only the support of the masses would allow the national liberation movement to achieve the country's independence. At the same time, Gandhi remained within the framework of his philosophy and preached the resolution of social conflicts through peaceful legal means. Under Gandhi's leadership, the INC from 1919 to 1947 transformed into a serious social movement, becoming a mass and influential national anti-imperialist organization.

In the 1920s–1940s, Gandhi launched a campaign of religious reconciliation among Hindus, Muslims, and Christians in India in the name of a united and free India. It was largely thanks to Gandhi's influence and persistence that a broad, active, and specifically nationwide anti-colonial front was formed and strengthened in the country. In his philosophy and methods, Gandhi relied on a deep knowledge of Indian culture, traditions, worldviews, and the behavior of Indians, which made them consonant with popular religious, moral, and social ideals, legends, and imagery.

Britain provoked conflicts in India in every possible way, primarily on an inter-religious basis. In the words of Winston Churchill, "the enmity between Hindus and Muslims served as a bulwark of British rule in India."

Lord George Curzon, who served as Viceroy of India at the beginning of the 20th century (this was the title of the highest representative of the British Crown in its Indian possessions).

From 1919 to 1924, as Foreign Secretary of Great Britain, he became one of the ideologists and organizers of the intervention against Soviet Russia. He actively opposed the policies of Soviet Russia in Persia (Iran), Afghanistan, and India.

Under Curzon, a partition was carried out between the Hindu and Muslim regions of India into West Bengal with a Hindu population and East Bengal with a Muslim population. This was one of the measures to weaken the independence movement. In the future, this would become the cause of the division of India into Pakistan and India.

Mahatma Gandhi was opposed to the partition of India into Muslim and Hindu parts, believing that a large country could accommodate representatives of both religions. On January 30, 1948, he was shot dead during his evening prayer in the courtyard of his home. The assassin belonged to a Hindu nationalist group. The partition of India into Hindu India and Muslim Pakistan after India gained independence in 1947 would lead to numerous casualties and conflicts in the future. Many historians believe that it was the British, as part of their cynical "divide and rule" policy, who laid the foundation for the long-term conflict between neighboring countries.

At midnight on August 14–15, 1947, the former British possessions in South Asia were divided into two independent dominions: the Indian Union and Pakistan. The process of gaining sovereignty was marred by a large-scale territorial conflict that arose between the two young states.