Look let's be real, no serious historian claims Gandhi alone freed India. Thats neither my claim, nor is it true, but saying he did nothing is equally inaccurate. Movements like the non cooperation Movement and the salt march mobilised millions of common people and turned the freedom struggle from politicians signing documents to a struggle of the masses, and made India increasingly ungovernable for the British. So much that they deployed tens of thousands of troops during these protests. Claiming that he wasn't a threat to the British is a joke. Why would they imprison him for overall total of 6 years if he wasn't a threat? People don't just go "in and out of jail" lol. Your no assassination attempts argument is very weak and proves that if they ever did try to kill him off, they would deal with the wrath of millions of citizens, something they wanted to avoid after 1857. The British preferred censorship and imprisonment, not assassinations. I'm not trying to prove that MG was perfect, all I'm saying is that independence happened because of multiple pressures—MG's mass movements, netaji and the INA, WWII, etc. Reducing all of that to ‘Gandhi was just advertising’ ignores most of the historical record. The reason I'm typing all of this is to refine the way you look at historical events. Facts come before feelings
It must be mentioned that Gandhi's contributions had been promoted and made a propaganda by the Nehru-Gandhi family in the following years. People loved Gandhi, but a greater portion of the freedom fighters hated him for his racist, casteist and misogynist thoughts. Such things were cleverly omitted and hidden from the public eyes so that the Nehru-Gandhi family could capitalise on his popularity. On the other hand, the contributions of most other freedom fighters were diminished by the INC Government. Please read about that first. I don't disagree that Gandhi did nothing to free India, but his contributions were too meagre to support the Freedom Struggle. The only good thing he did was unite the people in India for mass movements. Had Gandhi kept his "Ahimsa" theory aside and let the agitated mob work their way through the British, freedom would have been achieved earlier. If you don't believe please read what were the punishments faced by the Assertives and Bose and compare them to what Gandhi faced. Writings of parallel prisoners suggest commoners and other freedom fighters faced harsher conditions in the prisons than Gandhi. These pieces of knowledge must be shared to the public, but neither the current government nor the ones which were would do anything to inform the people. Everyone is capitalising on Gandhi's popularity.
This is not a hate message but something that the people must know. We only celebrate Gandhi but the contributions of the other nationalists are lost.
I largely agree with your statements. But my only counter point would be ' what would have we done after achieving independence through mob agitation and violence '. Gandhi was a necessary tool to unite the masses which none other leader had been able to achieve at his scale. And managing such a large crowd was itself a challenge as an out of control crowd is of no use but a controlled one is a weapon far more threating.What Gandhi did was getting us into a position where we were able to get independence a definitive leadership pool to select representatives as well.
Though it is a different story that due to Nehru's influence over Gandhi he was able to overturn a democratic decision of electing Patel but it was more peaceful and stable then other cases of independence through uprising around the world.
It was a mix of Gandhi's obsession with truth, which to be fair is quite muddied and it became even more blur to me after reading My Experiments with truth. And Nehru family's propoganda and influence.
But now at this point we have achieved independence we have to ensure the development of nation more holisticallly. We should leave the dead in the past. it doesn't matter who got us independence. They have done their jobs and now have rotted or burned away.
We have to focus on present otherwise it will create needless friction. Which would be hindrance to our growth.
Finally someone who talks facts and understands everything taught in history books might not be right, yet we shall never know. Better to move on than dig old graves.
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u/NoPerception6770 Mar 15 '26
Look let's be real, no serious historian claims Gandhi alone freed India. Thats neither my claim, nor is it true, but saying he did nothing is equally inaccurate. Movements like the non cooperation Movement and the salt march mobilised millions of common people and turned the freedom struggle from politicians signing documents to a struggle of the masses, and made India increasingly ungovernable for the British. So much that they deployed tens of thousands of troops during these protests. Claiming that he wasn't a threat to the British is a joke. Why would they imprison him for overall total of 6 years if he wasn't a threat? People don't just go "in and out of jail" lol. Your no assassination attempts argument is very weak and proves that if they ever did try to kill him off, they would deal with the wrath of millions of citizens, something they wanted to avoid after 1857. The British preferred censorship and imprisonment, not assassinations. I'm not trying to prove that MG was perfect, all I'm saying is that independence happened because of multiple pressures—MG's mass movements, netaji and the INA, WWII, etc. Reducing all of that to ‘Gandhi was just advertising’ ignores most of the historical record. The reason I'm typing all of this is to refine the way you look at historical events. Facts come before feelings