Module 6

What was the role of Gandhi in India’s struggle for independence?
Gandhi was pro non-violence for independence. He applied an approach of periodic mass campaigns that drew support from Indians, peasants, the urban poor, intellectuals and artisans, capitalists and socialists, and Hindus and Muslims. The British lashed back with periodic repression which provided a greater Indian role in politics. He did not fight for social revolution, but instead he wanted moral transformation for individuals. He wanted to raise the status of "India's untouchables". He also helped women in their efforts to mobilize in their struggle against Britain and their standing in marriage and society. He emphasized the unique efforts that women brought into their society by having a capacity for virtue, self-sacrifice, and endurance therefore suited for nonviolent protests. Gandhi rejected modern industrialization.

Why was African rule in South Africa delayed until 1994, when it had occurred decades earlier elsewhere in the colonial world?
South Africa had been independent of great Britain since 1910, but African rule was delayed because independence had been granted to a government controlled entirely by a white settler minority which was 20% of the populations. The black African majority had no political say in the state. The African people's struggles were internal instead of external. These colonizers were permanent residents rather than colonial intruders. For this reason, it was evidently harder for them to receive their independence.  The book specifically says, "The intransigence of this sizable and threatened settler community helps explain why African rule was delayed until 1994, while India, lacking any such community, had achieved independence almost half a century earlier."

How and why did the anticolonial struggles in India and South Africa differ?
the African government developed apartheid that India did not have. Rigid "pass laws" were enforced in attempts to control the movement of Africans into the cities where they were subjected to extreme forms of social segregation. Racism was present in India but nothing of this magnitude developed there. This may have been a result of the there was an extreme dependence of Africans on the white controlled economy. Unlike India, divisions between the people of South Africa had to do more race, ethnicity, and ideology instead of religion.