Mahatma Gandhi
Mahatma Gandhi
Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi; 2 October 1869 – 30 January 1948) was the preeminent leader of the Indian independence movement in British-ruled India. Employing nonviolent civil disobedience, Gandhi led India to independence and inspired movements for civil rights and freedom across the world. The honorific Mahatma—applied to him first in 1914 in South Africa,—is now used worldwide. He is also called Bapuin India. In common parlance in India he is often called Gandhiji. He is unofficially called the Father of the Nation...
NationalityIndian
ProfessionCivil Rights Leader
Date of Birth2 October 1869
CityPortbandar, India
CountryIndia
Christianity in India is inextricably mixed up for the last hundred and fifty years with the British rule.
My heart rebels against any foreigner imposing on my country the peace which is here called Pax-Britannica.
It would be a sad day for India if it has to inherit the English scale and the English tastes so utterly unsuitable to the Indian environment.
We Hindus and Mohamedans would have to blame our folly rather than the English, if we allowed them to put us asunder.
The canker has so eaten into the society that in many cases the only meaning of education is a knowledge of English.
Of all the superstitions that affect India, none is so great as that a knowledge of the English language is necessary for imbibing ideas of liberty and developing accuracy to thought.
This belief in the necessity of English training has enslaved us. It has unfitted us for true national service.
Ram Mohan Roy would have been a greater reformer and Lokmanya Tilak a greater scholar if they had not to start with the handicap of having to think in English and transmit their thoughts chiefly in English.
A smattering of English is worse than useless; it is an unnecessary tax on our women.
To get rid of the infatuation for English is one of the essentials of Swaraj.
Through the deliverance of India, I seek to deliver the so-called weaker races of the earth from the crushing heels of Western exploitation in which England is the greatest partner.
Personally I crave not for 'independence', which I do not understand, but I long for freedom from the English yoke.
If any Englishman dedicated his life to securing the freedom of India, resisting tyranny and serving the land, I should welcome that Englishman as an Indian.
My plea is for banishing the English language as a cultural usurper, as we successfully banished the political rule of the English usurper.