There's no doubt that Mahatma Gandhi was at the forefront of non-violent protest and obtained much success in that regard for his fellow Indians.
However, is it accurate to contend that it was his movement that "brought down the British Empire" ?
It may have contributed to the British government's decision to depart from India and thereby give the Indians and future Pakistanis the opportunity to work towards independence, but the British left of their own accord. Nobody brought them down in the process.
In fact, IMO, one had to question as to whether or not that was the right time or circumstance to leave India and "Pakistan" to their own devices in their pursuit of independence, because the personal price that they paid in terms of lives lost was enormous.
At that time in India there was great animosity between the Hindu and Muslim populations. The only force that kept them apart from "laying into each other" was the relatively small British military presence.
The one man who had a very good idea as to what the inevitable bloody result would be, when the British pulled out from India, was the current Governor General and Viceroy of India, Field Marshall Wavell. He had spent enough time in India, on the ground, to have a fairly good idea as to what the score was between the main rival factions.
When the Labour Prime Minister, Attlee, wanted Wavell to oversee the transition to independence in India, Wavell said he could not, in all conscience, prescribe to an action that would very likely result in the deaths of many on the Indian subcontinent.
As a result of that Attlee replaced him with Mountbatten who had no qualms about lowering the British flag in India and leaving the country to its independent fate.
As Wavell predicted, not long after the British had withdrawn, Muslim set upon Hindu and Hindu upon Muslim. A conservative estimate was that over 2 million people died during that troubled time.
I, personally, knew someone, who served in the police services in India at the time, who saw how, for example, a fully packed train load of passengers would be stopped on a bridge spanning a river gorge and that train would be strafed with automatic fire as the bodies fell into the gorge below.
That was the sort of personal price that India and the eventual Pakistan paid for their "independence".
Possibly not quite in keeping with what the non-violent and gentle Mahatma had in mind for his country .... |
