E-Book - Mahatma Gandhi

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & Times'the movement might have to be abandoned... It may be necessary to go evenfurther. The time may come for me to offer Satyagraha against ourselves... Ihave just heard that some English gentlemen have been injured. Some mayeven have died from such injuries. If so, it would be a great blot on Satyagraha.For me, Englishmen too are our brethren.'From Bombay, Gandhi went to his ashram at Sabarmati, where on April 14 headdressed a huge multitude. Ahmedabad citizens too had committed acts ofviolence of which Gandhi was ashamed; 'a rapier rim through my body couldhardly have pained me more'. Scathingly he denounced them: We have burntdown buildings, forcibly captured weapons, extorted money, stopped trains,cut off telegraph wires, killed innocent People and plundered shops and privatehouses.' As penance, he announced that he had undertaken a seventy-two-hourfast, asked the people to fast twenty-four.Immediately after the Sabarmati meeting, Gandhi left for adiad, a town in theKheda district, twenty-nine miles from Ahmedabad, where he had recruited forthe war. There he covered that violence had spread to small towns as well.Depressed, Gandhi told the people of Nadiad that the entire Satyagrahacampaign was 'a Himalayan miscalculation' on his part. On April 18 he called offthe movement.Many scoffed; the Mahatma, they taunted, had made 'a Himalayanmiscalculation'. But Gandhi never regretted a confession of error. 'I have alwaysheld', he wrote in his autobiography, 'that it is only when one sees one's ownmistakes with a convex lens and does just the reverse in the case of others,that one is able to arrive at a just relative estimate of the two'. What politicianwould say that?His miscalculation, Gandhi explained, was in overlooking the fact that a personmust be trained in civil obedience before civil disobedience against some lawscould succeed. 'I am sorry,' Gandhi said in cancelling the Satyagraha campaign,'that when I embarked upon a mass movement I underrated the forces of eviland I must now pause and consider how best to meet the situation.' Nobodywww.mkgandhi.org Page 203