taxes. Once again the agitations in 1918 ended
with violent reprisals by the British, and Gandhi
called off the agitation before he was jailed by the
British for six years for sedition. He served two
years of this sentence and was released for health
reasons in 1924.
Gandhi did not play a central role in the inde-
pendence movement in the early 1920s. However,
he stepped forward again in 1928. The Brit-
ish government had appointed a constitutional
reform commission with not a single Indian on
it. Gandhi presented a resolution at the Calcutta
Congress in 1928 asking the British government
for dominion status in one year. With no response
by the British in the year 1929, Gandhi launched
a new nonviolent resistance campaign, this time
against the tax on salt.
Gandhi’s famous campaign against the salt tax
included his 250-mile Dandi March from Ahmed-
abad to the seaside village of Dandi, where he sym-
bolically made his own salt. This campaign gained
huge attention and participation from the Indian
populace; 60,000 people were imprisoned during
the salt tax protest. The government in response
signed the Gandhi-Irwin pact of 1931, agreeing to
free all political prisoners in return for suspension
of the agitation. Additionally, Gandhi was invited
to the Round Table Conference in London, as the
only representative of the Indian National Con-
gress. The conference failed to yield gains for the
movement; it was followed by further repression
by the new head of government in India.
In 1932 Gandhi began a campaign to improve
the lot of India’s untouchables (now called Dalits;
see UNTOUCHABILITY), whom he renamed harijans,
“children of God.” In 1933 he fasted for 21 days
to protest the Indian government’s treatment of
Indians, the first in a series of important political
fasts. In 1934 three attempts were made by the
British on Gandhi’s life.
In 1934 Gandhi, discouraged at the lack of
commitment of those in the Indian National
Congress to his program of nonviolence as a way
of life for the new India, resigned as party leader
and left the congress. Jawaharlal Nehru became
the new leader. Gandhi disagreed with Nehru but
at the same time saw him as preferable to other
potential leaders of the movement. At this point
Gandhi threw himself totally into efforts to edu-
cate rural India, fight against untouchability, and
promote the manufacture of homespun clothing
and other village-level cottage industries. For five
years he lived very humbly in Sevagram, a village
in central India. Gandhi was jailed by the British
from 1942 to 1944 for this agitation.
Gandhi believed in cooperation between the
Hindu and Muslim communities in India and
maintained many friendships across religious
lines. He was adamantly opposed to any parti-
tion. Eventually, however, the Indian National
Congress acceded to a partition agreement that in
1947 created two states out of British India: India
and Pakistan.
Gandhi personally was able to quell terrible
riots between Muslims and Hindus on the eastern
border between India and the new Pakistan, but
when he returned to New Delhi to try to calm the
communities there on January 30, 1948, he was
assassinated by Nathuram Godse, a Hindu radical
who opposed Gandhi’s embrace of Muslims. The
long journey of the champion of nonviolence was
ended with a gunshot. Gandhi’s last words were
said to be a call to his chosen deity, “Ram.” In
the process of partition, millions had to flee their
homes, and perhaps a million or more people
were slaughtered in communal riots.
Gandhi, critical of all organized religion, also
saw the value in every tradition. He once said that
he was a Hindu, a Christian, a Muslim, and a Jew.
More than religious, though, Gandhi was deeply
spiritual and saw the search for truth and nonvio-
lence in every aspect of life as the secrets to God.
Gandhi was given the name Mahatma, or, “great
soul,” by India. He is considered the father of the
modern Indian nation. More than that he was a
giant on the world stage.
India was one of the few countries freed from
colonial domination that relied primarily on theK 160 Gandhi, Mohandas Karamchand