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“In a gentle way, you can shake the world”- Mahatma Gandhi. Social movements usually are one of the basic social forms where a variety of organized and coordinated people work together to support a goal, typically a modification within the society’s values or structure, or to induce social modification. Social movements come in different sizes, however, they're essentially collective and have a group of different people who fight for their rights. In India, there were lots of social movements that happened when England ruled over India. Most of the social movements were conducted by Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi. People usually called him Mahatma Gandhi. He was born in Porbandar, India on October 2nd, 1869. He was married in his early age when he was just 13 years old, He did his higher studies in London (law) became a lawyer, and moved his law practice from London to South Africa. He was not an activist or a reformer, he believed in nonviolence and peace but when he heard about his own country he started a nonviolence moment from South Africa and people joined hands and later on, this movement became a great social movement that was given a name “satyagraha”. The word satyagraha means truth and nonviolence. It was a great social moment in which lots of people joined to free the country from the whites and to remove the racism among caste, color, and sex. Indians are scolded based on their color by the white people, they are treated unfairly and treated as a slave in their own country. They were treated very unfairly, racism became the biggest problem at that time. This essay will describe how Mahatma Gandhi achieved success with the help of the general public and got their rights by using nonviolence and peace got the proper education to the children and equal voting rights to everyone and no more racism based on color and sex. The movement was started in 1896 in South Africa by Mahatma Gandhi, it spread very fast and soon it became a huge movement among the people. Everyone joined and united to fight for their rights because no one wanted to live a life like a slave under the whites, everyone wanted their right back and freedom from slavery.
To begin with, Mahatma Gandhi was not the single man who led this big social movement, there were lots of big leaders and the general public joined and fought against the South African Transvaal government to get back their rights. Satyagraha was launched when the tranvassal government embarrassed the Indian people. The public started to follow Mahatma Gandhi step by step and follow the path of nonviolence and peace. On August 22, 1906, there was a notice given by the government to all the Indians, Arabs, and Muslims who lived in South Africa at that time that they had to scan their fingerprints and make a birth certificate for identification purposes and do the registration. Gandhi refused to do the fingerprints as he felt like the new legislation treated Indians wrong, just as criminals. After that people united and agreed with Gandhi and refused the fingerprint and registration and together they formed a new act called the “black act”. Indians were abused by the South Africans and they felt like they were in a prison as they treated them very badly. “the remedy of achieving swaraj through satyagraha was conceived in 1906 and its essential ingredients are remarkably clear: the conviction that through a political movement, each individual might achieve liberation from fear with a new sense of self-esteem and personal strength, autonomy what is today called ‘empowerment’” (Dalton, 2012, p.14). Gandhi already hated the passive resistance and he started to follow the path of ahinsa which means love, prosperity, and nonviolence. The Indian general public who lived in South Africa all stood with Gandhi and were ready to follow the same path and become the strength and motivation of Gandhi. The main motive of the satyagraha movement in South Africa is that he knew that later on, it would help in the republic of India too. People blindly trusted Gandhi as he was doing good for his people because before Gandhi nobody showed any objections to the government but he was the one who stood up for the rights and equality of everyone.
Moreover, the satyagraha movement came to India in 1917 and held its first campaign in Champaran. The main ideas of this movement were taken from the Hind Swaraj which was written by Mahatma Gandhi in his native language. He wrote this book when he returned from London to South Africa. The hind swaraj means self-rule in India (independence). the reason for writing this book was to get the rights back in South Africa and he was impressed by seeing the bravery of the Indians who live in South Africa. Later on, Gandhi used all those techniques against the white people, nonviolence, and peace to get the rights back from whites. Gandhi never knew about the Champaran until he came to know that the white government forced Bihar farmers to grow indigo on their lands. Gandhi and his lawyers went from village to village to listen to farmers' problems and get complaints and sufferings which they had to face from the white people at that time. The period of 1917 was very harsh and hard for the farmers as they were living a miserable life under a lot of pressure. Gandhi had to face a lot of problems and fines for the civil disobedience movement. People were coming down on strikes outside the jails and courts. The struggle for their rights was still going on, people became a chain and decided to continue to strike and civil disobedience movement with or without Gandhi. People started to boycott things, they started to adopt locally-made products rather than British products so they had to face a great loss. Most of the general public went on a hunger strike and fought for their equal rights and freedom from the British rulers. Later on, the fights and strikes for their rights and freedom continued hence, the British government agreed and allowed farmers to grow anything on their crops.
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