Ghandi Case

Brief background

The video begins in the late 1800s when colonialism was at its peak. The Gandhi video shows how Africa and India was governed by the colonial rule of European powers. During this time, discrimination against minorities (Hindus/Muslims) of the colonized territories was harsh and ruthless. Such as the colonial setting in India; Great Britain benefited by the raw materials exported from India, the profits it collected from taxation and the manufactured goods it exported to India. However, the people where dying of hunger and they had no say in their countries policy, forced into segregation and privileges being yielded to the British (Attenborough & Kingsley, 1982). When Mohandas Gandhi, a successful Hindu lawyer from the UK, experienced firsthand the wrath of bigotry in South Africa he embarked on a journey to liberate and declare justice, by putting into effect a no violence, no cooperation campaign.

When his means were achieved in South Africa he returned to India, his home country, with the sole purpose of securing it as a nation free from imperialist reign and establishing a sense of nationalism. Not as the British had established, dividing the country into provinces and religions. In concluding the video Gandhi led India in a revolution of nonviolence, noncooperation against British colonial rule. He tried to unite Hindu and Muslim Indians in opposition to the British, and he aroused a massive movement that with time eventually attained their independence (Attenborough & Kingsley, 1982). However, at the cost of a division between Muslim Pakistan and Hindu India, with a civil war killing nearly millions of people and which Gandhi himself became a victim when he was assassinated in 1948.

Relate each to a specific IR theory and/or approach as well as level of analysis.

1. Why did Gandhi's approach lead to a successful independence movement?

The video illustrates the individual level of analysis in International Relations. Gandhi's moral principle and nonviolent ideology was the chosen method to transpire the Indians nations cause; especially during the colonial era. I believe that Gandhi's solution relates to Marxism. The Indian nation was divided along conflicting class lines: those who owned the means of production such as the UK, the bourgeois class; and those who did not such as Muslims and Hindus, the proletarian class. Gandhi realized its subjugation and rose up against the bourgeois class (UK), though in a peaceful way (noncooperation). In the case of revolution Gandhi such as Marxist sees the state as a technical tool and not an entity of inherent worth (Attenborough & Kingsley, 1982). Thus, his successful independence movement can be thanked for his extreme and absolutist non violence ideology against bourgeois class with the help of the proletarian class