Man of The Millennium: mahatma gandhi

Essay by roadrunner516High School, 11th gradeA+, March 2004

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Man of The Millennium

Gandhi was the liberator of hundreds of million people in Asia and Africa from the yoke of imperialism. This is an outstanding achievement. However, the unique means of non-violence employed by Gandhi to achieve liberation from the British Empire, the mightiest empire the world has ever seen, makes him exceptional and "The Man of the Millennium."

In his life Gandhi proved that non-violence and love can overcome bombs and bullets. In order to do so he achieved complete mastery of himself. He was a prosperous lawyer who renounced his wealth and other worldly possessions and lived a frugal life of poverty. His life was reminiscent of the Buddha and Jesus Christ. However, in contrast to the Buddha and Jesus Christ who remained aloof from worldly affairs, Gandhi immersed himself in the sordid world of politics and emerged untainted.

Owing to his poor health, Gandhi was released from prison in 1925.

Over the following years, he worked hard to preserve Hindu-Muslim relations, and in 1924 he observed, from his prison cell, a 21-day fast when Hindu-Muslim riots broke out at Kohat, a military barracks on the Northwest Frontier. This was to be of his many major public fasts, and in 1932 he was to commence the so-called Epic Fast unto death, since he thought of "separate electorates" for the oppressed class of what were then called untouchables (or Harijans in Gandhi's vocabulary, and dalits in today's language) as a retrograde measure meant to produce permanent divisions within Hindu society. Gandhi earned the hostility of Ambedkar, the leader of the untouchables, but few doubted that Gandhi was genuinely interested in removing the serious disabilities from which they suffered, just as no one doubt that Gandhi never accepted the argument that Hindus and Muslims constituted two separate elements...