Mahatma-Gandhi

Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi was born in 1869 in the small princely state of Porbander where his father was the Diwan (prime minister) to the ruler. Mohandas was a rather shy and timid child. At the age of thirteen he was married to Kasturba. When he was 19, he went to England to study law. In 1893, when he was only 24, Mohandas went to South Africa in connection with a legal case. What shocked him there was the way the Africans and Indians were treated by the white settlers. Gandhi decided to stay on in South Africa and for the next 22 years he devoted himself to improving the humiliating conditions under which Indians and Africans lived there. He showed the people a new way of fighting injustice without violence, for what one believed to be right. This, he called 'Satyagraha.'
Upon his return to India in 1915, Gandhiji went on a tour of the country to see, for himself, the conditions of the people. The poverty and ill-treatment of the people under British rule, shocked and appalled him. He decided that unity of purpose against foreign rule would be the most powerful weapon against the British. He called on the people of India to participate in the non-cooperation movement to demand self-rule which eventually culminated in the Quit India Movement of 1942. The British finally decided to leave. Whilst the entire nation broke out into Independence celebrations in August 1947, the one man most responsible for it Gandhiji, was away in Calcutta comforting victims of communal riots. He vowed to devote himself to eradicating communalism. However within a few months, on 30 January 1948, Gandhiji was shot dead while he was on his way to attend evening prayers in Delhi. On his death Jawaharlal Nehru said, "The light has gone out of our lives, and the best prayer we can offer is to give ourselves to truth and carry on the noble work for which he lived and for which he died. He lives in the hearts of millions and will live for immemorial ages."
Bapu, as Mahatma Gandhi endeared himself to the nation, is no more. But the light that he had shown during his lifetime will continue to guide this afflicted humanity, suffering from divisiveness and distrust which inevitably leads to bitterness and perpetration of violence. Like Buddha and Jesus Christ, he provided us with what Dr Radhakrishnan called a "moral axis". He bequeathed to the world a philosophy capable of being applied, adapted and assimilated to every situation. His philosophy is very simple - a commitment to allay suffering and resist anything that leads to suffering, resisting it even to death. His message of non-violence, truth and justice, sounds prophetic in the present day situation as well. The song "Gandhiyor parama ezhai sanyasi rendered separately. (as a supplementary presentation) is a composition of Bharathiar and is rendered by Smt. K.B.Sundarambal.