Remembering Gandhi

We know Gandhi at the peak of his political power but most are not aware of how he got there. Nowadays the assumption is that the people of India were mesmerized by his philosophy of love and peace and deprived other, more effective leaders the opportunity to helm the freedom struggle. But in fact there were many eminent and courageous leaders in India before he entered the fray...the reason he still rose rapidly is two-fold: (1) he took the attack to the British with more force and impact than anyone else before, (2) he centred the struggle on atrocities  of the Raj on the common men and women of India  (and not about the ego satisfaction of being treated as equals by the British)...for the first time, political success was interpreted as service to the weakest members of society. Here is a small anecdote from Guha's "Rebels against the Raj" to illustrate.

Further context to the excerpt below, Gandhi returned to India in 1915, when Annie Besant was at the peak of her political powers (she was the first woman president of the INC in 1917) and the leader of the Home Rule movement, the most prominent struggle against the British at the time. In 1916, she founded the now renowned Banares Hindu University (BHU) and invited, among others, Gandhi, to speak (excerpt starts here):

"He was expected to talk about his work with the diasporic community in South Africa, but he chose to focus on issues closer at hand instead. Indeed, Gandhi made this the occasion to announce himself as the coming man in Indian politics. He did so by attacking the patrons of the university, who had come suitably overdressed for the occasion. Was it necessary, asked Gandhi of the assembled Maharajas, 'that in order to show the truest loyalty to our King- Emperor, it is necessary for us to ransack our jewellery-boxes and to appear bedecked from head to toe? There can be no spirit of self-government about us,' he carried on, 'if we take away or allow others to take away from the peasants almost the whole of the results of their labour."

After targeting the Princes Gandhi targeted colonial officials, of whom a fair sprinkling were also present. As he chastised them for being so indifferent to the plight of ordinary Indians, Mrs. Besant, who was also sitting on the stage, said *"Stop! Stop! Stop!"* The students, on the other hand, asked Gandhi to continue. So he did. But when he characterized British officials as 'tyrannical and overbearing', Mrs Besant intervened once more. The chairman, the Maharaja of Darbhanga, now asked Gandhi to stop, once and for all."

--End of excerpt--

A few months later, in the wake of a nation wide campaign against the Rowlett act that galvanized the country, Gandhi had replaced her and Tilak as the leader of the Indian freedom struggle.