MAHATMA GANDHI -DYING FOR FREEDOM || DOCUMENTARY.

He is known as the father of India, but throughout his life, muhandas Karamchand Gandhi evoked mixed feelings. He was viewed alternatively as a fanatic or an eccentric, a reactionary, revolutionary, st or Messiah, or as a man who must be killed. He championed a philosophy of nonviolence, only to dive the hand of an assassin. He led a peaceful resistance movement to free India from British rule, yet independent India was born at an hour of brutal carnage Amid sectarian killings on an unprecedented scale, Gandhi risked his life to preach nonviolence until his dying day.

MAHATMA GANDHI -DYING FOR FREEDOM || DOCUMENTARY. 

 On January 30th 1948 he was killed by a Hindu nationalist with three shots fired to the chest. In 1931 Gundy was interviewed by an American journalist. Are you prepared to return to jail again? I am always debate to return to daily. Would you be prepared to dodge in the cause in this independence? Nikki demands question. The late brother of Gandhi's assassin was jailed for almost two decades. At the time of our interview, he was eighty-five years old and recalled every detail of the plotse. But there are not far. I'm going to say I'm going to say was the one who assassinated Gandhiji Then none has Mahatma Gandhi. They. here was like 1900 48. I do not repent for. having participated in the act. We felt that 10 persons would go to the yellow but let this person not be you. in the Indian capital Delhi there are several sites dedicated to the memory of the man to whom the poet to Gore gave the name Mahatma great soul. There's Samadhi the site where Gandhi's body was cremated on a funeral pyre of sandalwood in accordance with Hindu funeral custom The National Gandhi Museum and Birla House converted into a memorial museum after Gandhi was assassinated on its grounds. Everyday crowds of visitors flocked there from all over the country. Bengal and Kerala Utah Pradesh and Manipur. Many Indians rich or poor still see it as their duty to make the pilgrimage and pay homage. The atmosphere feels more like a temple than a museum. One room has a series of dioramas depicting key scenes from Gandhi's life. Visitors remove their shoes to approach the spot where the Mahatma fell to the assassin's bullets. Frescos photographs, Gandhi's meager personal belongings is notebooks walking stick letters. Even his blood stained clothes. Everything related to the life of the father of the nation has been preserved. So if we have a preference, When Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi was born in 1869 India was firmly under Britain's Imperial Yoke. Like his father, he seemed destined to serve the ruling powers. His family belonged to the Banyarcast. Hardworking merchants from Western Gujarat state Gandhi's marriage at the age of 13 was arranged. He and his wife, Castroau,

 Would have four children. When he was 16 his father fell gravely ill. Gundy's biographers describe him as a devoted son who sat at his father's bedside. Gandhi felt that he had a duty to nurse his father at the time he was dying, and hopefully he wanted to actually be with him at the hour of his death But on that particular day when his father became critically ill, he felt more attracted to his wife and he was actually in the act of making love to her at the moment when his father died And it's a lot of historians who've looked at Gandhi's life feel that this was really something that colored his whole attitude to to his sexuality and led eventually to his deciding to renounce all sexual relationship with his wife. After passing his bar exams in London, Gandhi returned to India to practice law, but soon went on to take up a short term position in South Africa. He ended up staying for 20 years. Initially in his early years, Gandhi in South Africa had lived the life of a of a rich lawyer. He'd had a quite an affluent lifestyle. He hadn't really changed become this very esthetic person addressing in hand spun clothes and so on. He was wearing Western style suits. He was living well. But then on a train journey to Pretoria, a white passenger objected to Gandhi's presence in a first-class carriage. And though he had a first-class ticket, he was thrown off the train. He resolved his stay and fight for Indian equality in South Africa. When he returned to India in 1915 Gundy was a changed man. The barrister had become a political activist, trading his English suit and time for a Dotty, the traditional dress of the Indian poor. He set out to familiarize himself with the social problems in his homeland, traveling by train across the country, always in 3rd class. The movement for Indian independence was gaining momentum. Gandhi addressed crowds in every town and village he visited.

 He spoke of human dignity, justice and independence. across the country, nationalists organized bonfire protests to burn textiles imported from England. Gandhi launched his charcoal or spinning wheel movement. He declared that the patriotic duty of every Indian to spend 200 yards of cotton thread a day and to boycott textiles produced in the mills of Manchester and Liverpool. It did become a symbol of a commitment to the nationalist cause to every morning to sit down and to get out your spinning wheel and to spin your cotton thread. And they became very skillful at it. You know, they would spend hours every day doing this, and Gandhi saw this as something which was almost. a spiritual task of spinning for the good of the nation. in 1930 Gandhi led the three week salt March, walking 358 kilometers to the village of Dandy on the Arabian Sea, where he defined the British Sol Monopoly by lifting and auctioning off salt. Gandhi and his followers were arrested that it was a victory for the man who Churchill contemptuously called the half Macon Fukir. coverage of the March captured the world's attention. I got the angro sauce. Gandhi had an innate sense of symbolism and mass communication. This seems like a contradiction. Paradoxical for a man who came across as an esthetic as someone who renounced worldly things in search of spiritual salvation But he was a great politician and a great communicator.

 May I sit and continue politics and Hong Kong communicator? Gandhi's weapons were civil disobedience and nonviolent resistance. The British counted with trancheans. Colonial repression was often brutal. Prisons were full. Gandhi was jailed seven times for a total of four years. His protege, Jawaharlal Nehru, eight times serving nine years. from the beginning to the end. The struggle for independence was led by the Indian National Congress Party. He was its guiding light. Nero, it's cheap organizer. The two men shared a deep bond, even if they didn't always see eye to eye. Gandhi from a traditional merchant family, now an esthetic clothed in a dotty. Narrow the anglicized Brahmin. Well dressed and elegant with ideas rooted in socialism. Somebody like their who embraced socialism in the 1920s. Gandhi was prepared to tolerate that because he believed that that narrow will always basically be loyal to him so that he he he gave narrow a sort of certain amount of rope you could say you know to go his own way but Gandhi would always be holding it and able to draw him in whenever he felt you know he was going to to to too great an extreme and and and he was you know that he was he was in his interest to keep in with Gandhi but he also had a genuine affection for Gandhi and there is own father had died in the 1931 and in in many respects you can see Gandhi is sort of is taking over that position father figure for narrow and so that they do have a very close relationship despite the differences. the two men were very different not least in their views on religion now. was a self professed atheist something rare in a country where refusing to express religious belief is a taboo Gandhi was deeply religious. He began each meeting with prayers. life in India is permeated by the values of Hinduism which assigns a person's cast on the basis of birth. But Hinduism has been traditionally regarded as a tolerant religion not given to proselytizing. 

Islam had expanded under the reign of the Mughal Emperors in northern India to become the country's second largest religion. in British India, Muslims accounted for a quarter of the population. after the country's partition in 1947 that number dropped to 12%. hinders and Muslims had long enjoyed a peaceful coexistence until political representation was attached to religious identity. The Muslim league emerged as a political force in the 1930s with the aim of protecting the interests of Indian Muslims. but a new goal emerged. The creation after Britain's withdrawal from India of a Muslim nation, Pakistan or land of the pure the party was led by Mohammed Ali Jinnah, who'd known Gandhi for years. Both Gandhi and Jeanette came from Gujarat. They were Gujarati speaking people. They were both lawyers who've been educated in London, received their legal training there. So in a way, there was had a lot in common but unfortunately they came into very sharp conflict fight early on after Gandhi returned to India. in 1944 Gandhi went to meet Jinnah at his private residence in Bombay over the course of almost three weeks dandy timelessly tried to dissuade Jinnah from his plan for a Muslim Pakistan. He assured him that Muslims would have an honorable place in a secular and Democratic India He even offered him the post of Prime Minister in independent India's first government. Gina and Gina couldn't stand the affection and attention he was shown by Gandhi because like many Muslims, he viewed it as a patronizing attempt by hinders to assimilate Muslims. Gandhi saw himself as a universalist. He didn't want to be seen as Hindu, but as Indian. everything about his style, his dress was typically hindered. Sammy is eliminating his embrace of renunciatory disciplines and linking of esthetic practice with political aspirations. All that created the impression of a quintessential Hindu. the summit capsule of British India. in 1946 the villas of the Muslim league and Indian Congress Party met here to discuss ways to implement Gandhi's vision of a united independent India. who's not for diplomacy, failed in the face of Jinnah's intransigence. after three weeks the talks broke down. in Gina's campaign centered on a single topic. Congress was a Hindu party with a Hindu leader. If Hindus won the first elections after independence, Muslims would face assimilation and oppression to survive. They needed their own state, Pakistan. So in in 1946 he decides to take the matter to the streets. Jenna had been a strictly constitutional competition for being loyal to the Britain. She hadn't ever been involved in civil disobedience campaigns. 

He never adopted a sort of tactics that Gandhi had adopted in 1946 in August 1946 he decides to take the issue to the street. He's going to show the power of Muslims in India and he has a direct action there. Jenna's call for a direct action day on August 16th 1946 in support of the demand for Pakistan sparked an eruption of harrowing violence in Calcutta 5. thousand people were measured and 20,000 wounded. Most of the victims were hindered. That led to retaliatory attacks by Hindus against Muslims elsewhere. Reprisal killings spread across northern India entire families were slaughtered. Some of Hindus now claim their religion was too passive and lacked martial ardor. Then the Hindu value of tolerance was an inexcusable weakness which had for centuries allowed first the Mughal and then the British Empires to enslave the Hindu majority. They felt the time had come for Hindus to assert themselves and were Hindu men to reclaim their prowess. He did not endorse me. They wanted to reform Hinduism and boost Hindu's moral and physical strength in every town and village where the movement had a local chapter. Activists convened mornings and evenings for ideological training and physical drills to prepare to fight Muslims who were once again the enemy through more. He saw any demo. in China Well, internationalists massacred Muslims, Muslim league extremists, butchered Hindus. Gandhi was horrifying. He began a fast in Calcutta, which he vowed to continue until the violence stopped. He refused to relinquish his vision of an India where the two communities could live in friendship and peace. And Gandhi was watching all this. He was doing his best. He went to East Bengal. He walked around the villages, which where the Muslims and massacred the Hindu landlords. And he talked to the Muslims. He really put his life on the line. He went without any protection. Just a few of his followers walking on foot. And he managed to persuade the Muslims there that there was not not right to do this. Have you walked? People would throw glasses on the way they would throw excreta in his part. And his answer to that was to even remove the very simple sandals which he used to wear in order to walk and start walking barefoot. This had a tremendous moral impact. And the parallel that we like to draw is between in the Christian tradition, the crucifixion of Christ that is suffering for humanity, tormenting the flesh in order to make the moral appeal. And then. there is other retaliation by by Muslims. in East Bengal, whether the majority, they turn on Hindus and attack the massacre and then Hindus and Bihar turn on on Snoops and and again they do the same in in UP and then in the Punjab we see the Muslims retaliating by attacking the Sikhs and killing a lot of Sikhs in March 1947. So the whole thing is blowing up in in a way that's becoming really completely uncontrollable in March 1947 Lord Louis Mountbatten arrived in Delhi as the last vice were of India he'd been tasked by the British Prime Minister to negotiate an exit deal with Indian leaders. Mountbatten appeared bent on hastening the end of Imperial rule and soon came to favor the option of partition. Gandhi did take the game and again leave India to a noisy but don't partition it. We will sort it out once you are gone then we will see how to do it. But the British said we will go only after you decide who should get what. And that is how partition became absolutely inevitable. So Gandhiji went to the extent of saying that parties. could only take place on his dead body and then of course the Congress leaders decided that they would accept the demand for partition. They felt that Jinnah was able to stir up so much trouble for them that if they didn't concede that demand for a separate nation state of Pakistan then he would he would cause terrible disruption within within India after independence and perhaps compromise the integrity of the Indian nation state and perhaps collapse.

 So Cyril Radcliffe was appointed chairman of the Boundary Commission in charge of equitably carving a Muslim majority state from British India He was assisted by two Hindus and two Muslims because he himself knew nothing of India. That was why he'd been chosen to guarantee objectivity and fairness. Most of India's Muslims lived in the north. The plan called for the creation of one state with two territories E and West Pakistan located 2000 kilometers apart. But Hindu and Muslim communities in Bengal and Punjab were inextricably mixed, drawing borders was an exercise in absurdity. On August 15th 1947 the partition between India and Pakistan was made official As the clock had approached midnight, Darwal Nehru, the first Prime Minister of Independent India, addressed the nation One years ago we made a threat with destiny. and now the time comes when we shall redeem our pledge that the stroke of the midnight hour when the world sleeps, India will awake to lighten freedom. But the very morning after independence celebrations, Hindus and Pakistan and Muslims in India began to flee their homes. Muslims headed for Pakistan, while Hindus set up for India. Enormous convoys of people moving in opposite directions. The greatest mass migration in history. Ten 1,000,000 people were displaced. Many were attacked by robbers and armed militants along the way. A million people lost their lives. No one took responsibility for the tragedy. But Hindu nationalists accused Gandhi of allowing Muslims to steal part of the Hindu nation. Well, then to the Delhi headquarters of the right wing Hindu Masaba organization. There we spoke to its then president, who maintained that his was the only group that sought to defend India's integrity. I'll kill the Vasava was the only organization in India. which educated with the full courage and expressions that we shall never tolerate division of India We want United India and India so that the internationalists claim that this was a very section of India and it was something that the Congress had betrayed the Indian people and agreeing to In fact, it was very much a part of their own program to have a separate state. And it's always served their interests subsequently to have a separate Pakistan state which is always in antagonism to India and always around a representation really of of India's other its opponent. a few months after independence, the new states wage their first war over Kashmir, a province with a Muslim majority but a Hindu Maharaja. The two sides agreed to a ceasefire along what's known as the line of control. It divided the region in 2 with one side administered by India and the other by Pakistan. After three officially declared wars between India and Pakistan, 2 have been over Kashmir and it remains a flashpoint to this day. on September the 9th 1947 Gandhi moved into the daily home of his friend the industrialist and Congress Party supporter Ganshiyam does Birla in January of the following year Gandhi began another indefinite fast saying he would only eat if he saw a plan to stop the continuing violence. Hindus who had fled persecution in Pakistan with dumbfounded by Gandhi's empathy for Muslims, which was inherent in the second indirect goal of his fasting. It's a good that a far God de la May Gandhi's hunger strike was also aimed at forcing the Indian government to release Pakistan share of assets from the Treasury of British India. Don't put any key tax cut in favor of Pakistan and said that I shall go out under strike. I shall die and the 55 crores should be given. Then only I shall leave my first at that moment. So youths like me decided you will not. die of hunger strike. 

You will die of bullets now. Internationalists found it scandalous that Gandhi would fast to ensure India respected the financial clauses of the partition agreement and transfer 550,000,000 rupees to a country that had launched armed cross border raids on Kashmir. So on the 20th of January there was an attempt as far as I remember several objectives where present and declare meeting They were not Taram Gulshan. Narayan Abdith Vishnu Karkare Madan Lal Pava and Copa Gore said that for myself. The attack of January 20th was botched. Gopal Gauthay was unable to reach the window from which he planned to fire his gun. He hadn't thought of bringing a ladder. So I tried from the window. I could not reach my hand also. It was so high even. inside. So that was for half a minute or so. So I just came out. So Allah has to ignite a gun cutting slap near the boundary wall. He did it. when he was caught by the police further. actions did not take place. So we all ran away from the place. The group led back to Puna to plan a renewed attack. Their accomplice who had set off the homemade bomb was arrested. Under interrogation, he revealed the names of his co-conspirators. Even now there is debate in India as to why police failed to apprehend the men for 10 days. Mahatma Gandhi used to sit in the manner, as you can see in this picture. This was taken on 29 January on the Eve office passing away. He would address. People would be sitting here. Some would be very angry with him that they would think. I mean, I don't know. There was a thinking amongst them. The Bapu did not do enough to prevent the partition. on the 30th of January, the prime himself. I went for a pistol automatic pistol and went to the breakdown. Evening that 5 O clock or 5 may be five minutes late. The column indicates the exact spot where Gandhi fell was filled by the assassins bullet. The assassin may in waiting for the Mahatma in this corner. As the Mahatma reached his spot to go there, he stepped forward. He took three steps, bowed before Mahatma Gandhi and he shot him. Point blank. 3 bullets. And if you see the photograph, of Mahatma Gandhi with the bullets, it's almost, you know, it looks like a garnet. It's almost in a semi circle. That. sats in Garland and Mahatma Gandhi with bullets. And I think that. one moment, Mahatma Gandhi rose from the ashes from the Earth and he became larger in life. In a radio broadcast, narrow announced the news of Gandhi's death. The light has gone out of our knives, and there is darkness everywhere. Nehru they see Lantar Dictionary banned the movements he held responsible for Gandhi's assassination The Hindu Masaba and the Hindu volunteer organization, the RSS 20,000 RSS militants were jailed for Bahamas, Gandhi supporters targeted the Brahmins of Maharashtra, the cast to which the assassin got see belonged, and which was closely associated with the Hindu Masaba and the RSS Attizes Plain to Massabayohithsis. The trial of Gandhi's assassins was held at the Red Fort, a highly symbolic location. He was there that Nehru had made his first speech to independent India. And to this day, the Prime Minister addresses crowds from the red foot on Independence Day. India is a democracy. The defendants had the right to a fair trial. Support only for war. The trial of the Red Fort offered Natoram Godse the perfect platform to air his views He refused legal defense and though he had lawyers, he pleaded his own case I didn't he stated that he had owed it to his Hindu faith and the Bhagavad Gita, which justified violence He said he had been compelled to take action for the nation of Hindus, which Gandhi had betrayed. He needed to rid the nation of this man who persisted in weakening India's stars Visa V Pakistan. He described the assassination as a salutary act undertaken in the Public Interest, not the rash deed of a lunatic, but rather a deed motivated by political realism, which had been well thought out and planned, elected. 10th of February, 1949. The judgment was there. Narayan Abdi, we are hacked.

 I don't know. Papa, you shouldn't care. And myself, their sentenced to life. The middle resurgence of fundamentalism in India, nationalist groups like the Hindu Masaba are enjoying a revival at its daily headquarters. There is a statue of its late leader, Vinayak Damodar Saberker, a contemporary of Gandhi's and a nationalist, but one with a very different ideology. Sabaka spawned the idea of Hindutva or Hindus, a concept that inseparably thinks the Hindu and Indian identity in search said the higher murdered Gandhi. Take me for arrest. There is no question. Natharam Godsey belonged to Hindu Masaba. No doubt in the. Hindu Masaba was not belong to Gandhi butter. This is the decision of high court. Hindu Masaba has no part in the murder of Gandhi. There was a very close link between the leader of the Hindu Masaba and the assassin. The main assassin and the main organizer of the conspiracy of the Mahabharata and that would have good say had been a close associate of Savarkar for at least a decade before the assassination. And this man saw that Kurd was directly involved, not just ideologically or inspiring, but directly involved in the conspiracy to murder Mahatma Gandhi. Sadhvikar in a group such with the conspirators. He was also arrested and tried but denied all charges and was acquitted. Going to be mem Gaddy himself said after the first assassination attempt. The animal may be the assailant is right. Maybe I am a nuisance in independent Indian. or not one of the teachers. This is the classical Greek tragedy in its purest form where victim and assassin have a secret understanding Gandhi felt deep despair. His method and his cause had failed. The mid don't that baffled despite his efforts, violence between Hindus and Muslims continued And despite his efforts, India was fractured in two. What use was he alive now? Gundy had envisioned an independent India that was self sufficient and predominantly agrarian. Naras approach was more grounded in economic reality. He aimed to combat economic stagnation and dire poverty with state centered planning and industrialization that relied on domestic industry after. independence, narrow went all out for modernization of India, economic modernization in developing large scale industries, building large dams which described as the new temples to India which would replace, you know, the older temples. It is difficult to know how Gandhi would have responded to this had he been alive after 1948 and it's likely that Gandhi and there it would have come into some conflict over this because Neera didn't really put very much into trying to maintain the Guardian Pro Economic program. to this day Gandhi disciples gather on Fridays to spin cotton at his cremation site. The same hand wheel the same motions as back then when cotton was spun to create the basis for economic independence. today it's more original and a lesson in economic theory. Scully's principle of self sufficiency did prevail until the early 1990s. Measures like high tariff walls and exchange rate management protected domestic industry from foreign competition. Us over the past few decades, the country has really opened up to the forces of globalization. A growing middle class shops at new malls. Are these the temples of India today If Gandhi returned to India today, he would be aghast to see how far the country, particularly the middle class, is in a succumbed to western consumerism. He preached the importance of self sufficiency than each village. The defense of the week and a form of ecstaticism, according to such dictates as don't consume more than unique respect nature. There was a. clear environmental subtext to gunned his message The collusion don't miss out to God.

 On March the 12th 2000 and 510 months after returning to power, India's Congress Party marked the seventy-fifth anniversary of the Salt March. Hundreds of people walked in the Mahatma's footsteps following the same three hundred and fifty-eight kilometer route for twenty-six days. March has done traditional white cardi clothing made of homespun cotton and the iconic Gandhi camp. The great-grandson of Tabar Harlan Neru Raul Gandhi was 35 at the time of the procession and had only recently entered politics. He would go on to become party president He joined the marches as they reached the coast in Gujarat. 75 years to the day that Mahatma Gandhi shook the British Empire to its core by harvesting a handful of salt. Whether on thirty-five millimeter film or under. digital video, the cameras captured the same scene. Globalization has swept aside many Afghanis principles, but the Mahatma's fundamental message has endured a message that speaks of the power of peace, forgiveness and freedom, and can transcend even the hatred that killed him.

MAHATMA GANDHI -DYING FOR FREEDOM || DOCUMENTARY.