Gandhi: The Final Years
On Mahatma Gandhi’s death anniversary, All Indians Matter launches a six-part series that takes you on a journey through the last years of his life. Those years were a saga by themselves, in many ways the most dramatic of his extraordinary journey and also perhaps the most significant for a nation about to be born. His end was India’s beginning. That’s why these years are so important. This series was born from a realisation that Gandhi is more relevant today than ever before. His life and message are still powerful and have the potential to provide solutions to India’s gravest challenges: sectarian division, a crumbling rural economy, inequality, caste... Gandhi told Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan, the freedom fighter known as ‘Frontier Gandhi’, once: “A satyagrahi knows no failure.” That is why perhaps the greatest satyagrahi of all is still trying, even beyond the grave, to tell us something, to perhaps start anew. For this series, we are in conversation with Tushar Gandhi, great grandson of the Mahatma, a chronicler of the Mahatma’s life and a peace activist. Follow Bingepods on Instagram for more updates. Show credits: Produced by: Akhil Rajani Sound Engineer: Stanley Chacko, Aditya Anand
Episodes
As Jinnah declared Direct Action Day, India feared a tsunami of violence. Mahatma Gandhi struggled to hold together the unwinding threads of unity that he had so painstakingly woven. At the concluding session of the Muslim League Council, Jinnah declared: “Today we bid goodbye to Constitutional methods… We have forged a pistol and are in a position to use it.” Nowhere was the communal carnage worse than in Noakhali. Once again, Gan...
Mahatma Gandhi’s last years were the most tumultuous of his life. They marked his greatest triumphs, his greatest losses and the crumbling of his dream. India achieved Independence in 1947, but at the cost of Partition and enormous suffering.
Gandhi’s final years show us why India took the path that it did. They are a study in how one of the most effective mass leaders the world has seen turned into a lonely pilgrim. This series,...
On January 30, 1948, Nathuram Godse elbowed his way through the crowd, joined his hands as if in supplication and then fired three bullets from a Beretta pistol. Gandhi collapsed in a pool of blood that seeped into the earth. He began chanting “Ram! Ram! Ram…”. The chanting faded as his life ebbed away.
A saga came to an end. But did it?
Isn’t Gandhi more relevant today than ever? Isn’t his life so powerful that even those who s...
After Bengal, Bihar and Punjab, it was Delhi’s time to burn. Independence had been achieved, but the streets were deserted. Riots had erupted and corpses lined many streets. As the refugees poured into the city, their anger at having lost everything was incandescent. Lord Mountbatten observed: “If we go down in Delhi, we are finished.”
Once again, the political leadership looked to Gandhi. Once again, they asked for a miracle. An...
As the communal landscape worsened, the political situation was in utter disarray. Mahatma Gandhi found that his former proteges and political wards had little time or use for his advice. He found himself increasingly isolated despite the crowds that always surrounded him. “One calls himself my beta, the other calls himself my chela. Par meri koi nahi sunta,” he lamented. There couldn’t be a more telling line.
Political jostling r...
It was in Bihar that Mahatma Gandhi had made his first mark, politically speaking, after returning from South Africa in 2015. It was where the Champaran Satyagraha gave him an unbreakable grassroots connection with the poorest Indians. In 1946, alongside the bloodletting in Bengal, there was a pogrom in Bihar. If in Bengal it was the Hindus who were targeted, in Bihar it was the Muslims. The time was ripe, this time for Hindu extr...
On Mahatma Gandhi’s death anniversary, All Indians Matter launches a six-part series that takes you on a journey through the last years of his life. Those years were a saga by themselves, in many ways the most dramatic of his extraordinary journey and also perhaps the most significant for a nation about to be born. His end was India’s beginning. That’s why these years are so important.
This series was born from a realisation that ...
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