Was Mahatma Gandhi Responsible For India's Independence

On August 15th 1947, after almost a century of work and toil in fighting British imperial control, India was finally declared an independent nation. The magnitude of the event itself is testimony to the numerous factors that laid the foundation for India’s independence. This essay seeks to form a rational conclusion on whether Mahatma Gandhi, a prominent leader of the Indian Independence Movement, was the principal reason for the country’s independence, by exploring the factors that led to India’s liberation. Firstly, Gandhi was unarguably an effective spiritual and political leader who stood unfalteringly by his personal conscience. Towards the end of the 19th century, while in South Africa, then operating under the Apartheid, Gandhi was

In 1921, under Gandhi’s orchestration, the Indian National Congress began employing the method of civil disobedience, or Satyagraha, a form of nonviolent noncooperation. In adopting this tactic, Indians received honorary titles, children were removed from British-operated government schools, and people refused to pay taxes or purchase British goods, debilitating Britain’s influence over India. By granting support to the Ottoman Caliphate, Gandhi formed a unity between Hindus and Muslims, increasing opposition to British imperialism. Furthermore, despite his privileged background, Gandhi maintained a simplistic lifestyle, living in residential communities and dressing in traditional shawls, as symbols of pride for precolonial Indian culture. In order to demonstrate economic independence, Gandhi, who himself spun the charkha daily for one hour, urged his followers to reject foreignly manufactured purchases, and adopt to weaving their own clothing and buying only Indian goods, referred to as Swadeshi. These gestures allowed him to appeal to the masses and establish India’s fight towards liberation as not a political struggle of the elite, but as a movement involving peasants and civilians. On March 12th in 1930, Gandhi set off on the Salt March from Ahmadabad with a

The pressure on Britain was both internal and external - after World War II, many countries, particularly the United States, whose philosophy was rooted in freedom and democracy, and the USSR, at the time both newly established superpowers, opposed colonialism. Moreover, British political landscape was evolving with events including World War II and the Cold War, and majority public outlook within Britain advocated India’s independence. As Bertrand Russell expressed, ‘people began to feel that if British rule could be preserved only by such methods (referring to violence), then it was not worth preserving.’ This unpopularity of British imperialism, along with the British’s failed attempt at establishing India as a federation of states with the Government of India Act of 1935, which was refused due to suspicion amongst nationalists that the proposal’s ultimate agenda was not eventual independence, rather mere reform, led the British to accept that the most rational decision was to grant India its independence. Overall, upon evaluating the factors that contributed to India’s independence, I firmly believe that although Gandhi was pivotal inspiring the change and accelerating the process, the abdication of British imperial control in India stemmed primarily