Gov 1255: Politics of IndiaLecture 2: The Historical Legacy

Procession in Bangalore for Mahatma Gandhi's Quit India Movement, a call for independence of India from British rule, 1942

Prof Prerna Singh

The Mughal Empire

The Indus Valley Civilization 3300-1900 BC

The Taj Mahal Shah Jahan Mumtaz Mahal

Mughal Architecture

Rebellion of 1857

Rani Laxmi Bai

Mangal Pandey

Queen Victoria, Empress of India

Post card depicting the Sikh Regiment liberating France in World War I

Gandhi’s Significance in World History

“Generations to come will scarce believe that such a one as this ever in flesh and blood walked upon this earth”

Albert Einstein

Gandhi’s Significance in World History

“Generations to come will scarce believe that such a one as this ever in flesh and blood walked upon this earth”

Albert Einstein

Gandhi’s Significance in World History

• UNIQUE

• New spiritual techniques into politics:

Passive resistance, Mass Civil Disobedience, Courting Arrests, Prayer Meetings, Fasts

• Political success of spiritual techniques

Gandhi & Thoreau

Gandhi on Thoreau’s Essay on Civil Disobedience:

“It expresses the essence of my political philosophy, not only as India’s struggle related to the British but as to my views of the relations between citizens and government…I took the name of my movement from Thoreau’s essay”.

Gandhi’s Significance in World History

“What we have under Gandhi’s leadership is a revolution…but a revolution different from any other that history has knowledge. Gandhi is a citadel of modern power”.

John Haynes Holmes, Pastor of the Community Church of NY City, Sermon in the lyric theater of New York City in 1921 on “Who is the greatest man in the world today”.

“To know Gandhi is tantamount to knowing Christ”

Gandhi’s Significance in World History

“Since being in India, I am more convinced than ever before that the method of nonviolent resistance is the most potent weapon available to oppressed people in their struggle for justice and human dignity. In a real sense, Mahatma Gandhi embodied in his life certain universal principles that are inherent in the moral structure of the universe, and these principles are as inescapable as the law of gravitation”.

Martin Luther King in a radio address during his final evening in India, 1959.

Gandhi’s Significance in History of India

• Most powerful political intervention against the British is small, non-violent intervention into colonial economy

Gandhi spinning cloth on a charkha

Gandhi’s Salt March 1930

“Not one of the marchers even raised an arm to fend off the blows. They went down like ten-pins. From where I stood I heard the sickening whacks of the clubs on unprotected skulls. Those struck down fell sprawling, unconscious or writhing in pain with fractured skulls or broken shoulders. In two or three minutes the ground was quilted with bodies. Great patches of blood widened on their white clothes. The survivors without breaking ranks silently and doggedly marched on until struck down”American Correspondent Webb Miller

Gandhi’s Significance in History of India

• Most powerful political intervention against the British is small, non-violent intervention into colonial economy

• Political Symbolism: Connection of body to body politic

Gandhi’s Significance in History of India

• Most powerful political intervention against the British is small, non-violent intervention into colonial economy

• Political Symbolism: Connection of body to body politic

• Mass Participation

Tensions around Gandhi

• Religion

• Caste

Most fatal tension…from closest associate

Next lecture…• India’s darkest hour in its most moment of triumph

• The Causes and Consequences of Partition of India

Dead in Communal Riots