Advent of Gandhi
- The third and final phase of the Nationalist movement (1917-1947) is known as the Gandhian era.
- During this period Mahatma Gandhi became the undisputed leader of the National movement.
- His principles of non- violence and Satyagraha were employed against the British government.
- Gandhi made the nationalist movement a mass movement.
- Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi was born at Porbandar in Gujarat on 2 October 1869.
- He studied law in England.
- He returned to India in 1891.
- In April 1893 he went to South Africa and involved himself in the struggle against apartheid (Racial discrimination against the Blacks) for twenty years.
- Finally, he came to India in 1915.
- Thereafter, he fully involved himself in the Indian national movement.
- Mahatma Gandhi began his experiments with Satyagraha against the oppressive European indigo planters at Champaran in Bihar in 1917.
- In the next year he launched another Satyagraha at Cheda in Gujarat in support of the peasants who were not able to pay the land tax due to failure of crops.
- During this struggle, Sardar Vallabhai Patel emerged as one of the trusted followers of Gandhi.
- In 1918, Gandhi undertook a fast unto death for the cause of Ahmedabad Mill Workers and finally the mill owners conceded the just demands of the workers.
- On the whole, the local movements at Champaran, Kheda and Ahmedabad bought Mahatma Gandhi closer to the life of the people and their problems at the grass roots level.
- Consequently, he became the leader of the masses.