WORLD HISTORY

Detailed explanation-1: -In September 1932, while still a prisoner, he embarked on a fast to protest against the British government’s decision to segregate the so-called “untouchables” (the lowest level of the Indian caste system; now called Scheduled Castes [official] or Dalits) by allotting them separate electorates in the new constitution.

Detailed explanation-2: -Gandhi adopted the term “civil disobedience” to describe his strategy of non-violently refusing to cooperate with injustice, but he preferred the Sanskrit word satyagraha (devotion to truth).

Detailed explanation-3: -He fasted for different causes: against violent protest actions of radical factions of the independence movement, in support of the “untouchables” and in opposition to the British constitutional proposal based on the separation of castes, for Hindu-Muslim unity, against communal riots…

Detailed explanation-4: -Believing that untouchability is a religious issue, Gandhi sought to abolish the “pernicious custom” of untouchability not the caste system. He also avoided taking up the issues of intermarriage and inter-dining. Hindus, he believed, owed it to themselves and to Hinduism to eradicate untouchability.

Detailed explanation-5: -In January 1948, Mahatma Gandhi sat on a fast for communal harmony – the last fast of his life. An exclusive extract from Ramachandra Guha’s new book on the leader, recalls that momentous time. It was not merely its status as the new nation’s capital that compelled Gandhi to stay on in Delhi in September 1947.