By the autumn of 1920, Gandhi was the dominant figure on the political stage, commanding an influence never attained by any political leader in India or perhaps in any other country. He refashioned the 35-year-old Indian National Congress into an effective political instrument of Indian nationalism. From a three-day Christmas-week picnic of the upper middle class in one of the principal cities of India, it became a mass organization with its roots in small towns and villages. Gandhi's message was simple; it was not British guns but imperfections of Indians themselves that kept their country in bondage (Menon 45). His program of nonviolent noncooperation or Passive Resistance with the British government included boycott not only of British manufacturers but of institutions operated or aided by the British in India: legislatures, courts, offices, schools. This program electrified the country, broke the spell of fear of foreign rule, and led to arrests of thousands of satyagrahis, who defied laws and cheerfully lined up for prison. In February 1922 the movement seemed to be on the crest of a rising wave, but, alarmed by a violent outbreak in Chauri Chaura, a remote village in eastern India, Gandhi decided to call off mass civil disobedience. This was a blow to many of his followers, who feared that his self-imposed restraints and scruples would reduce the nationalist struggle to pious futility. Gandhi himself was arrested on March 10, 1922, tried for sedition, and sentenced to six years' imprisonment. He was released in February 1924, after an operation for appendicitis. The political landscape had changed in his absence. The Congress Party had split into two factions, one under Chitta Ranjan Das and Motilal Nehru (the father of Jawaharlal Nehru, India's first prime minister) favoring the entry of the party into legislatures and Rajagopalachari and Vallabhbhai Jhaverbhai Patel opposing it. Worst of all, the unity between Hindus and Muslims of the heyday of the noncooperation movement of 1920-22 had dissolved. Gandhi tried to draw the warring communities out of their suspicion and fanaticism by reasoning and persuasion. And finally, after a serious communal outbreak, he undertook a three-week fast in the autumn of 1924 to arouse the people into following the path of nonviolence (Menon 47-50).

Rajchandra, a brilliant young philosopher who became Gandhi's spiritual mentor, convinced him of "the subtlety and profundity" of Hinduism, the religion of Gandhi’s birth (Brown 61). It was the Bhagavadgita, which Gandhi had first read in London, that became his "spiritual dictionary" and exercised probably the greatest single influence on his life (Brown 62). Two Sanskrit words in the Gita particularly fascinated him. One was aparigraha (nonpossession), which implied that man had to jettison the material goods that cramped the life of the spirit and to shake off the bonds of money and property. The other was samabhava (equability), which enjoined him to remain unruffled by pain or pleasure, victory or defeat, and to work without hope of success or fear of failure (Brown 64). These were not merely counsels of perfection. In the civil case that had brought him to South Afr

Some topics in this essay:
Congress Party, Lord Willingdon, Gandhi Mahatma, Bhagavadgita Gandhi, National Congress, South Africa, Hindus Muslims, Durban Johannesburg, Hibbert Journal, India Gandhi, south africa, british government, congress party, passive resistance, gandhi mahatma, mohandas karamchand gandhi, indian national, british raj, gandhi arun, national congress, mahatma 127, gandhi mahatma 127, indian national congress, gandhi returned india,