ABSTRACT
Mahatma Gandhi’s contribution to Indian politics has been immense. The Indian National Congress had been in existence for thirty years when he returned to India finally from South Africa in 1915. The Congress had aroused and organized national consciousness to a certain extent; but the awakening was confined largely to the English-educated middle classes and had not penetrated the masses. He carried it to the masses and made it a mass movement. Mahatma Gandhi’s movement operated both horizontally and vertically. He took up causes which were not entirely political but which touched very intimately the life of large masses of people. His successful Satyāgrah in Champaran on behalf of the cultivators and labourers, who had suffered for a century or more under an iniquitous system of forced growing of indigo for the benefit of planters, at once extended the sphere of Congress activity to the proportions of a mass movement. His equally successful Satyāgrah in Khaira for a revision of revenue assessment which was considered unjust had a similar appeal to the masses of the District. Congress politics was no longer confined to demanding a larger share in the higher public services of the country or seats on the Executive Councils of Governors. It identified itself with the sufferings of the toiling masses and, what was more, succeeded in securing relief for them. Since these early movements of 1917 and 1918 there have been others of a similar kind, and in all of them the objective has been the securing of benefit not for a small class or group but for masses at large. Fight for relief has not been directed only against the British interests or the British Government. It has unhesitatingly attacked Indian interests and prejudices with equal vigour. Thus the unsatisfactory conditions under which Indian labourers have to work in factories have not escaped his vigilant eyes and one of the earliest things he did was to help workers of Ahmedabad to secure better conditions. The miserable lot of the depressed classes has necessitated a relentless drive against the vicious and wicked custom of Untouchability among the Hindus, and Mahatma Gandhi has carried it on even at the risk of his life. The Congress organization has also spread and expanded, covering the entire length and breadth of this vast country, and has got to-day millions of men and women on its rolls. But the influence of the Congress extends far wider than its mere numbers would indicate. The depth of that influence has been tried and tested as people have passed through the fiery ordeal of suffering and sacrifice at its call.
