Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi
PROFILE
Famous as
For His Philosophy of Truth and Non-violence
Born on
02 October 1869
Born in
Porbandar, Gujarat, India
Died on
30 January 1948
Nationality
India
Works & Achievements
Key Role in Indian Freedom Struggle, Philosophy of Truth and Non-violence
Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, popularly known as Mahatma Gandhi was a major political and spiritual leader of India who led the country in the non-cooperation movement in 1922 and Salt march in 1930 and later in Quit India movement in 1942 during its struggle for independence. Known as Beloved Baapu in India, Mahatma Gandhi adopted the policy of mass disobedience and non-violent resistance as weapons against the British Rule in India and followed a principle of Ahimsa (total Non-Violence). He endured several hardships, was arrested and occasionally beaten in his journey and struggle to Justice and Freedom. However, his struggle does not restrict to India itself, as the leader played a key role in the Civil Rights movement in South Africa and secured them the right to justice and equality. His birthday 2 October is commemorated as Gandhi Jayanti, a national holiday and as the International Non-Violence day across the world.
Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi was born in Porbandar, a town in Gujarat in western India on 2
October 1869. His father Karamchand Gandhi was the Diwan of Porbandar state of British India. His mother Putlibai was Karamchand’s fourth wife. Having born in a Hindu family Gandhi strictly followed vegetarianism and fasting as means of self-purification. At the age of 13 he was married to one year older Kasturbai (known as kasturba or Ba), in an arranged child marriage. In 1885, Kasturbai gave birth to their first child who survived only few days. Later the couple had four sons. All along his schooling days Gandhi was an average student and passed his matriculation exam from Samaldas College, Gujarat with some difficulty. On 4September 1888, he traveled to England to study law at the university College London and to train as a barrister, as his family wanted him to be a barrister.
Civil Rights Movement in South Africa
In South Africa, he had a firsthand experienced of racial discrimination and prejudice directed at Indians and the injustice imposed on them. Gandhi himself experienced the humiliation and disgrace while in South Africa. Initially he was thrown off a train for refusing to travel in a third class coach while holding a first class ticket. Other similar events including being barred from many hotels in South Africa moved him and encouraged him to work for Indian people there. As a result he extended his original period of stay to protest a bill passed by the South African government to deny them the right to vote.
In 1906, the Transvaal government launched a new act forcing registration of Indian population. Enraged by the act, a mass protest meeting was held in Johannesburg on 11 September in which Gandhi called on Indian people to resist the new act through non-violent and peaceful means. His methodology of Satyagraha (devotion to truth) was adopted by thousands of his followers and during the seven-year long struggle; thousands of Indians were jailed (including Gandhi), beaten and punished for striking and refusing to register. Though the government successfully repressed the protest through its harsh methods, the impact of this protest forced the government to initiate for a compromise with Gandhi. Gandhi’s idea of non-violence and truth developed during this period.
Indian Independence struggle and Gandhi
(1916-1945)
Gandhi’s Satyagraha started from Champaran and kheda, where the condition of farmers was worsened by landlords (mostly British) by imposing taxes and leaving them in an abject poverty. The peasants were forced to grow cash crops instead of food crops necessary for their survival, and this led to a situation of famine there.
To end that devastating famine and poverty Gandhi organized detailed survey and study, based upon which he began leading the cleaning of the villages, building of schools and hospitals, encouraging villagers to condemn and combat many social evils including pardah and untouchability. Gandhi organized protests and strikes against the landlords that resulted in to the cancellation of the revenue hikes and collection of taxes until the famine ended.
Non-cooperation Movement
Gandhi employed non-cooperation, non-violence and peaceful resistance as the most effective weapons against the British rule. It was the Jallianwala Bagh massacre and the violence that followed, after which Gandhi felt an immediate need of a self-controlled government and total control over all Indian government institutions. The concept of Swaraj or complete individual, spiritual and political freedom evolved after this. Gandhi urged the people to boycott foreign made goods, cloths, to resign from government employment and to forsake British titles and honors. He encouraged people to wear khadi clothes instead of foreign made clothes. Gandhi himself wore a traditional Indian dhoti and shawl, made with yarn he himself spun on a Charkha.
The campaign was a big success nationwide and people from all sectors, including women of India participated in it. The movement ended in Feb 1922, when a violent clash in broke in Chauri chaura, Uttar Pradesh. Gandhi was arrested in March, tried for sedition and was sentenced to 6 years imprisonment. During his years in prison the Indian National Congress began to split into two parts, one led by Chitta Ranjan Das and Motilal Nehru and the other led by Chakravarty Rajgopalachari. Cooperation among Hindu and Muslims also weaken during this period. All efforts made by Gandhi to bridge the differences had little impact on them.
Hindu & Muslim
Gandhi was much less successful with Hindu / Muslim relations, which continued to deteriorate through the end of the decade. Jinnah, the Muslim Leader, and eventually Pakistan’s first Prime Minister, was in many ways Gandhi’s greatest intellectual adversary. Muslims had ruled over Indian for many centuries in its past, and there was much fear of reprisal by a Hindu majority state. To some extent, Gandhi’s potent use of Hindu history and imagery actually helped the Muslim separatist cause.
In 1934 Gandhi inaugurated the All India Village Industries Association. He also resigned his Congress position, at which time Jawaharlal Nehru became Congress’ Leader (and later India’s first Prime Minister). Also that year three attempts were made on Gandhi’s life, something he just shrugged off.
There were provincial elections in 1937, which gave much power to the States, and also gave Congress a strong platform. The Act of 1935 which made this possible was generally accepted to be the forerunner of Independence. But elections also served to deepen the rift between Hindu and Muslim.
Salt March & Demand for Swaraj
The British government appointed a new constitutional reform under Sir John Simon which did not include any Indian and the result was a boycott of the commission by all Indian political leaders. In December 1928 Gandhi demanded the British government to grant India a dominion status and warned them to face a new non- cooperation campaign with a complete freedom as its goal, if their demands were not met. On 31st December 1929 Indian flag was unfurled in Lahore and next year, 26 January was celebrated as the Independence Day by the National Congress Party which was commemorated by almost every Indian organization. In 1930, Gandhi launched a new Satyagraha protesting the tax on salt. He marched from Ahmadabad to Dandi, Gujarat to make salt himself. Thousands of Indian people joined him in this 400km march which was marked as his most successful campaign against the British hold.
In March 1931 the Irwin-Gandhi pact was signed according to which the British government agreed to free political prisoners if Gandhi denounced the civil disobedience movement. In 1932, the government granted untouchables separate electorates under the new constitution. Gandhi started a new campaign to improve the lives of untouchables, whom he called Harijan, the children of God. Equality and justice for Untouchables became his prime goal and it was a result of Gandhi’s constant effort that in September 1932 the government agreed to adopt a more unbiased and fair arrangement via negotiation.
Freedom and Partition of India
During World War II in 1939, Gandhi opposed the inclusion of India in the war stating that India cannot be a part of the war being fought for the democratic freedom, while freedom was denied to India itself. Gandhi and other Congressmen intensified their movement for a complete freedom demanding the British to ‘Quit India’. It was the most vigorous movement in the history of Indian Independence struggle in which thousands of freedom fighters were killed, imprisoned and injured and violent clashes broke in every part of India. The demand this time was a complete freedom and immediate exit of the British from India. Though Gandhi appealed to maintain discipline, he made it clear that even violent act wouldn’t stop their movement this time, as it was a time to Do or Die.
Gandhi and the committee of congress were arrested on 9 August 1942, and Gandhi was held in Aga Khan Palace for 2 years. During that period his wife Kasturba Gandhi died after 18 months of prison on 22 February 1944. At the end of the world war, Gandhi called off his struggle. Time had come to see an Independent India. Gandhi had always dreamed of India as a place where Hindu and Muslims lived in harmony and thus he was opposed to any plan that partitioned India into two different countries. A majority of Muslims living in India were in favor of the partition, including Muhammad Ali Jinnah. The partition plan was approved by the Congress leadership as they knew it was the only way to avoid a looming Hindu Muslim civil war. Against the wish of Gandhi, British India broke into two parts, an Independent India and Pakistan.
Assassination of Mahatma Gandhi
Gandhi was assassinated on 30 January 1948 on the grounds of Birla house, New Delhi. The assassin, Nathuram Godse, who had links to the extremist Hindu group Hindu Mahasabha shot him dead because he was against Gandhi’s sympathy for Pakistan. Godse and his co-conspirator Narayan Apte were tried and executed on 15 November 1949. Gandhi’s memorial on rajghat, New Delhi bears his last words He Ram!
Theoretical review
Leadership Styles:
Autocratic Leadership
Autocratic leadership is an extreme form of transactional leadership, where leader has absolute power over his or her employees or team. Employees and team members have little opportunity for making suggestions, even if these would be in the team or organization’s interest.
Charismatic Leadership
A charismatic leadership style can appear similar to a transformational leadership style, in that the leader injects huge doses of enthusiasm into his or her team, and is very energetic in driving others forward. However, a charismatic leader tends to believe more in him- or herself than in their team. This can create a risk that a project, or even an entire organization, might collapse if the leader were to leave: In the eyes of their followers, success is tied up with the presence of the charismatic leader. As such, charismatic leadership carries great responsibility, and needs long-term commitment from the leader.
Democratic Leadership or Participative Leadership
Although a democratic leader will make the final decision, he or she invites other members of the team to contribute to the decision-making process. This not only increases job satisfaction by involving employees or team members in what’s going on, but it also helps to develop people’s skills. Employees and team members feel in control of their own destiny, such as the promotion they desire, and so are motivated to work hard by more than just a financial reward.
Laissez-faire Leadership
This French phrase means “leave it be” and is used to describe a leader who leaves his or her colleagues to get on with their work. It can be effective if the leader monitors what is being achieved and communicates this back to his or her team regularly. Most often, laissez-faire leadership works for teams in which the individuals are very experienced and skilled self-starters.
Unfortunately, it can also refer to situations where managers are not exerting sufficient control.
People-Oriented Leadership or Relations-Oriented Leadership
The style of leadership is the opposite of task-oriented leadership: the leader is totally focused on organizing, supporting and developing the people in the leader’s team. A participative style, it tends to lead to good teamwork and creative collaboration.
In practice, most leaders use both task-oriented and people-oriented styles of leadership.
Servant Leadership
This term, coined by Robert Greenleaf in the 1970s, describes a leader who is often not formally recognized as such. When someone, at any level within an organization, leads simply by virtue of meeting the needs of his or her team, he or she is described as a “servant leader”.
In many ways, servant leadership is a form of democratic leadership, as the whole team tends to be involved in decision-making.
Supporters of the servant leadership model suggest it is an important way ahead in a world where values are increasingly important, in which servant leaders achieve power on the basis of their values and ideals. Others believe that in competitive leadership situations, people practicing servant leadership will often find themselves left behind by leaders using other leadership styles.
Task-Oriented Leadership
A highly task-oriented leader focuses only on getting the job done, and can be quite autocratic.
He or she will actively define the work and the roles required, put structures in place, plan, organize and monitor. However, as task-oriented leaders spare little thought for the well-being of their teams, this approach can suffer many of the flaws of autocratic leadership, with difficulties in motivating and retaining staff.
Transactional Leadership
This style of leadership starts with the idea that team members agree to obey their leader totally when they take on a job: the “transaction” is (usually) that the organization pays the team members in return for their effort and compliance. You have a right to “punish” the team members if their work doesn’t meet the pre-determined standard.
Transactional leadership is really just a way of managing rather a true leadership style as the focus is on short-term tasks. It has serious limitations for knowledge-based or creative work, but remains a common style in many organizations.
Transformational Leadership
A person with this leadership style is a true leader who inspires his or her team constantly with a shared vision of the future. Transformational leaders are highly visible, and spend a lot of time communicating. They don’t necessarily lead from the front, as they tend to delegate responsibility amongst their team. While their enthusiasm is often infectious, they generally need to be supported by “details people”.
In many organizations, both transactional and transformational leadership are needed. The transactional leaders ensure that routine work is done reliably, while the transformational leaders look after initiatives that add value.
While the Transformation Leadership approach is often highly effective, there is no one “right” way to lead or manage that suits all situations. To choose the most effective approach for you, you must consider:
• The skill levels and experience of your team
• The work involved (routine or new and creative)
• The organizational environment (stable or radically changing, conservative or adventurous)
• You own preferred or natural style.
A good leader will find him- or herself switching instinctively between styles according to the people and work they are dealing with. This is often referred to as “situational leadership”. For example, the manager of a small factory trains new machine operatives using a bureaucratic style to ensure operatives know the procedures that achieve the right standards of product quality and workplace safety. The same manager may adopt a more participative style of leadership when working on production line improvement with his or her team of supervisors.
ANALYSIS
Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi popularly known as Mahatma Gandhi is a greatest figures of political and spiritual leader of India, Mohandas Mahatma Gandhi was born in Gujarat on October 2nd, 1869, and was assassinated January 30th, 1948.
Mahatma Gandhi is a successful Leader of the century, by his own standards. He was charismatic, but he was also deliberate and analytical. Gandhi was very much a product of his times, yet one of his greatest sources of inspiration. He was a politician, a writer, an intellectual and an orator. Without doubt he was a very complex man, but a man who believed in simple things.
Mahatma Gandhi declared that "Action is my domain", so it is necessary to study the details of his life to begin to form a clear picture of his Leadership. The start point is also the end – he was called both "Mahatma", meaning great soul, and "Bapu", meaning Father. He was both of those things, not only to his native India, but also to millions of people around the world.
Gandhi was naturally charismatic. Yes, he had a "feel" for his Follower’s needs which was uncannily correct. But he did develop formal tools and methods to become a better Leader over time.
Base on Mahatma Gandhi’s article, he is a transformational leader. In action, he is always concern with performance of the follower and also developing followers to their fullest potential. From his dedication to a life of action, everything he did enabled his Followers to follow and to act. "Do what I do, not what I say" was his greatest enabler. It was also his greatest energizer.
Some characteristics of Mahatma Gandhi:
Charismatic leader
Gandhi was naturally charismatic. He had a "feel" for his Follower’s needs which was uncannily correct. But he did develop formal tools and methods to become a better Leader over time.
Empower leader
Mahatma Gandhi’s life was a combination of discipline and freedom, for himself and for his Followers. His greatest successes came from empowering people with the methods and the desire for "Satyagraha". When those individuals faced attack or prison, they were both terribly alone, yet totally connected to their fellow protesters. They were free to pursue their goals, yet they had a contract with Gandhi and with each other. He needed to serve them, just as they served him, the cause, and each other (see my definition of "empowerment in Leadership Truths).
Have Influence
Mahatma Gandhi has effect on the world was and still is immense. On the positive side, he helped create the world’s largest democracy. He also gave to the world a way of thinking about and acting upon value systems that profoundly. Gandhi directly influenced the American Civil Rights movement, and thus the broader Human Rights concerns and activities of today.
Energize
Gandhi had a knack of choosing causes which would have maximum impact, and which would have the maximum chance of touching everyone. Many members of Congress were skeptical of overly focusing on the Salt tax issue, as it had been a long-standing source of discontent. It could be seen as a minor issue in the grand scheme of the fight for Independence. Yet, the Salt March caught the imagination of the Nation, the global media and the world.
Not only could Gandhi energize on a large scale, but he could also touch individuals. A classic example is the response of the Judge who hoped Gandhi would be dealt with leniently, despite the Judge having to serve a mandatory sentence on him.
Envision
His vision of the future was a combination of the spiritual, the moral and the practical, and it was through his consistent application of his vision that he led.
He clearly felt that the apparent Indian lack of self-respect enabled the British to rule India, so he felt that Indians should take prime responsibility for their own situation. Thus, as consistently noted, Gandhi wanted not only the political independence of India, but the spiritual renewal (and independence) of all of India’s people.
His vision of the future of India was firmly rooted in the glorious, spiritual past of the Gitas, yet with significant influence from Christian and other values. In expressing his vision, Gandhi touched the hearts of millions, and to this day holds a moral beacon for millions more.
Practically, he chose causes that were of great importance to his potential followers, and brought alive his vision of what success would look like. Examples are his work to bring fair treatment to people in South Africa, the repealing the Salt Tax and Indian Independence itself. In every case he did not just use philosophical statements or flowery visions, but he laid out concrete objectives which people could buy into and then act upon.
Enable
In formal organizational terms, Gandhi employed few unique methods. Yet, he clearly knew how to get people in the right place, to do the right thing. For example in arranging ambulance corps, to setting up formal "protest" organizations, to raising funds or even recruiting troops to fight in the War, he was no stranger to structure.
However, his greater enablers were in his own actions. He literally lived the life that he wanted other people to live. He demonstrated exactly how to behave, whether in normal day to day life, or in high-profile political protest. From the philosophy and structure of the "Constructive Program", his use of a spinning wheel was both a symbol of revolution, and a method of demonstrating how to build the "perfect" Indian Society.
CONCLUTION
Mahatma Gandhi is a greatest figure of political and spiritual leader of India. Mahatma Gandhi is a successful Leader of the century, by his own standards. His entire life story is about action, to bring about positive change. He both succeeded and failed in what he sought to do, but he always moved forward and he never gave up the quest for improvement, both social and spiritual, and both for individuals and for the Nation as a whole. In some changes he succeeded, and in some he failed. And, the success came years after the action. For example, the Salt tax was only fully repealed at Independence. But, in every case his actions were targeted against a specific change he was trying to bring about.
His greatest successes came from empowering people with the methods and the desire for "Satyagraha".
Mahatma Gandhi is still rank as one of the most effective and most positive Leaders of this or any other century.
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