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Gandhi receives a donation in a train compartment in 1940. (Wikimedia Commons)
Can we celebrate Gandhi's achievements while also learning from his errors?
While Gandhi is rightly criticized on untouchability and gender issues, his method of struggle has informed countless social movements over the last century.
Mary Elizabeth King	October 4, 2019
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This is part two of a series commemorating the 150th anniversary of Gandhi's birth. The first, which focused on Gandhi's life and work in South Africa, can be read here.
After 20 years in South Africa, Mohandas Gandhi returned to India on January 9, 1915. He was a different man from when he left his homeland as a shy teenager. He had evolved from being a British-trained lawyer — influenced by the racism of the empire — into an organizer, moral philosopher and political leader able to apply his unique experience and insights to the challenges faced by the people of the Indian subcontinent.
Little more than four years after his return, Gandhi would be tested by a major crisis. On April 13, 1919, a catastrophic massacre occurred in Amritsar, Punjab, at the Jallianwalla Bagh enclosure, a walled seven-acre garden area closed in on all sides. While unarmed mostly peasants peacefully celebrated a Hindu festival, British Brigadier General Reginald E. Dyer, without cause, gave orders to troops of the British Indian Army to fire. (The people of the subcontinent had been disarmed in 1857–58, after a mutiny against the British.) Gandhi's associate Pyarelal later wrote, relying on government sources, that more than 20,000 men, women and children were trapped, as 379 were slaughtered and almost three times that number wounded. Horrified, Gandhi admitted to making a "Himalayan miscalculation" in underestimating the forces of violence — a confessional phrase he would use intermittently when admitting error. Cause and effect can be obscure, but not in this case, as his loyalties to British rule dating from young adulthood collapsed.
Gandhi contradicted himself, had inconsistencies, sat astride dilemmas and was extraordinarily open about his own human frailty.
It was only a matter of time until British imperial dominion in India would end. Ahead lay Gandhi's catalytic role in national all-India civil disobedience movements during 1920–22, 1930–34 and 1940–42. No longer seeking reconciliation, he was galvanizing momentous pressures to produce social change, with scant violent episodes. Regrettably, observers of what was happening in India from the 1930s into the 1950s tended to view and characterize Gandhi as a spiritual inspirer, ignoring or not seeing what he himself called the technique, method or process of struggle that he was refining. Bestowed with the title mahatma (Sanskrit for "great soul") while in South Africa, a term of homage that made Gandhi uncomfortable, onlookers attributed his achievements to personal charisma, often oversimplifying his thinking as limited to nonviolence as a matter of principle rather than a form of social power. Early analysts overlooked his discernments regarding consent and popular power, meaning the power from the people, as well as his challenges to mainstream political thinking that then — as now — assumes a separation of means and ends.
Even during the 1920s as Gandhi's profile rose on the subcontinent, he found himself subjected to opposition and controversy for virtually every statement made and action taken, in some ways little different from the allegations made today of racism. His sincerity was questioned on his work against untouchability, with unending controversies about his well-known asceticism and quirky personal traits. Responses to Gandhi were and are still intense. Even so, Gandhi's willingness to criticize himself was a compelling attribute. He contradicted himself, had inconsistencies, sat astride dilemmas and was extraordinarily open about his own human frailty.
As an example, in February 1922, when preparing for national civil disobedience, Gandhi suspended an immense satyagraha campaign because village dwellers in Chauri Chaura, Uttar Pradesh, set fire to a police station, killing 22 officers inside it. He had developed "satyagraha" while in South Africa, perturbed as he was by English speakers who talked of "passive resistance," because submission played no part in his technique. Turning to Sanskrit, he bonded satya, or Truth, which for Gandhi meant justice, with agraha conveying firmness, force, or persuasion. For today's reader, satyagraha can best be understood as corresponding with nonviolent direct action or civil resistance. Ruing his inadequacies in preparing the populace, Gandhi called the violent outbreak a "Himalayan blunder" and undertook a five-day fast of penance, despite being condemned for ruining a countrywide campaign due to one incident occurring among 700,000 villages.
Earnest missteps on untouchability
Unambiguously opposing abuses associated with caste and untouchability, Gandhi showed his seriousness regarding eradication of untouchability by welcoming a so-called untouchable family into the Sabarmati Ashram, formed at Ahmedabad in 1915, as a communal settlement, retreat, sanctuary and place of seclusion. He also adopted an "outcaste" girl.
However, he made a misstep in perceiving that Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar — himself a so-called untouchable, who would become the spokesperson and standard-bearer for those without caste — was an upper-caste advocate for the Dalits. Ambedkar was an economist, jurist, and political scientist who had been able to earn doctoral degrees from prestigious British and U.S. universities, notwithstanding the unreasonable handicaps faced by those without caste in the early 20th century. Gandhi mistook him for an upper-caste advocate, trying to act on behalf of those without caste, which had an alienating effect on Ambedkar. Dalit is a term from Ambedkar's mother tongue. Some Dalits never forgave Gandhi for his misperception.
Previous Coverage
Gandhi and the myth of conversion — The Vykom satyagraha revisited
Though untouchability was found everywhere in India, the Travancore princely state — which was later incorporated into the state of Kerala — condoned practices of extreme caste prohibitions not observed elsewhere, including unapproachability and unseeability. Gandhi was invited to advise the 1924–25 satyagraha pressing for opening roads around a Brahmin temple to all Hindus in the village of Vykom in Travancore. Yet he committed serious errors of judgment, including rejecting outside assistance and proscribing anyone not Hindu from participating, even if only in support functions. He sacrificed 19 key leaders to imprisonment, leaving the struggle directionless, by insisting that "conversion" of the upper castes could be prompted by the poorly-formed notion that attitudinal change would result from their witnessing the suffering of those without caste. No archival substantiation whatsoever can be found that hearts and minds of the upper castes were altered by the end of the campaign, except in an abstract long-term metaphorical sense. Yet despite these and other mistakes, Gandhi's involvement would result in the maharajah's 1936 decree opening not solely the roads but all temples in Travancore.
In 1920, Gandhi wrote in Young India, "We shall ever have to seek unity in diversity," as he wrestled with inter-marriage and inter-dining restrictions of the caste system. A century later his phrase "unity in diversity" is extolled in cultures and languages worldwide, pertaining to any exclusions. Gandhi bestowed an honorific on the so-called untouchables, calling them Harijan, Gujarati for "child of God" and in Sanskrit "embodiment of God." The move later provoked disputes, as many who heard it found it patronizing, and it is no longer in daily use. Meanwhile, some states, including Kerala, have banned the term Dalit.
Gandhi's rejection of a 1932 government proposal to create separate electorates for what the British called "depressed classes" (untouchables) came to be a source of criticism from those who allege that he was an apologist for the Hindu caste system. Ambedkar had primarily persuaded the British to accept the concept and was the person most consumed with the idea of distinct constituencies, as a way that Dalits could vote for their own leaders. Gandhi, however, feared what in modern parlance we might call rejectionism or separatism, in which those without caste would be driven even further away from the Hindu fold.
Gandhi visited Odisha to launch a padayatra (foot march) for uplifting untouchables and abolishing untouchability in May 1934.
Although Gandhi had fasted often for various purposes, it was always for a defined period of time. He now embarked on a "perpetual fast unto death from food of any kind save water," with an unlimited timeframe. An alternative electoral procedure was struck at Gandhi's bedside in which voters from the so-called depressed classes would hold a preliminary election to choose four candidates empaneled for each seat in the legislatures of the British India government, and they would present themselves in a joint election by Hindus with and without caste. On September 24, 1932, as Gandhi's condition worsened, this arrangement, known as the Poona Pact, was accepted by the British government, having been signed by 22 witnesses in Gandhi's presence — including Ambedkar authorizing on behalf of the depressed classes. This doubled representation for Dalits in provincial legislatures while revising the electoral system, leading historian B.R. Nanda to conclude that abandoning of separate electorates for those without caste was "the beginning of the end of untouchability."
Gandhi's deep commitment to ending untouchability cannot be denied, nor the earnestness and tenacity of his efforts to induce social change for those without caste. Yet in Travancore during 1924–25, and in Poona in 1932, it is fair to say that Gandhi did not quite resonate with the impulses of the Dalits themselves, as they sought to transform their own condition. Their self-help anti-untouchability campaigns were in some ways beyond his understanding.
With age, Gandhi became increasingly distressed by practices associated with the caste system. In 1941, he wrote of the "awful isolation" caused by untouchability, "such isolation as perhaps the world has never seen in the monstrous immensity one witnesses in India." Scholars of Gandhi contend that he wrote more against untouchability than on any other subject. Though when his critics claimed that he failed to confront the Hindu caste system with vigor, it held some truth, as he never made an aggressively frontal attack on caste. He was held back by fear of provoking upper-caste denial.
Gandhi and the Dalit controversy: The limits of the moral force of an individual
M.G.S. Narayanan and other historians whom I interviewed in Kerala consider that while advising the Vykom struggle in 1924–25, Gandhi was conservative, cautious and wary of moving uncompromisingly against untouchability. Among critical reasons given by several Keralan historians was his conviction that significant change would require public repentance by upper-caste Hindus, expressing remorse for the bitter suffering they had caused to generations of those without caste. During the 1920s and 1930s, Gandhi spoke of atonement repeatedly: "To remove the curse of untouchability is to do penance for the sin committed by the Hindus of degrading a fifth of their own religionists." By 1945, he had concluded, "The caste system as it exists today in Hinduism is an anachronism."
In 1996, in a letter to me, historian Nanda wrote, "Gandhi's lifelong campaign against untouchability brought the most depressed sections of Indian society into political awareness. It was not only the untouchables, but even middle-level castes which were affected; it was a transition from élite politics to mass politics."
Nevertheless, India's news outlets offer daily evidence for how people who have fallen through the bottom of Indian society as a result of the caste system are still subjected to appalling discrimination. Last year, newspapers reported a Dalit was scalped because he had asked for fair wages. Ironically, the fact that Gandhi has been lauded as the "Father of the Nation" and is engraved on India's currency, locates him in the spaces of everyday life where he can be chronically disparaged by those who perceive him as deficient on ending untouchability.
Putting the nation ahead of the hearth
Gandhi was a captive of a patriarchal worldview still constraining India. For example, he held an essentialist perspective about what is inborn in the basic natures of men and women, which cannot survive scientific vetting. Consistent with Jain religious thought, he sought sublimation of sexual desire, leading him to recommend restraint. This also prompted behaviors such as sleeping next to his grandniece and other women to test his self-control, now a favorite choice for attack by some of his critics. However, he also opposed contraception. Yet in other important ways, Gandhi's outlook was advanced. Having been married in vows arranged by his parents at age 13, from within orthodox Hinduism he attacked social "evils" including child marriage as "unspeakable and unthinkable sin."
Gandhi was outspokenly opposed to dowry (payment of money or property the wife brings her husband, the absence of which has resulted in dowry-related violence) and purdah (a system of seclusion of women from public observation by means of walled enclosures or screens). He also denounced the severe restrictions on widows. Social scientists report that some 40 million widows are currently enduring extreme forms of discrimination, dire enough that India's Supreme Court in 2012 ruled that the government must provide them with food, medical care and sanitary living conditions. Gandhi openly addressed attitudes of male superiority toward women and called for women to have equity even if illiterate.
Early in life, Gandhi's reasoning was that of an upper-caste, middle-class man who thought women should be cloistered at home, while ignoring that most Indian women then were forced by necessity to earn livelihoods by working in fields and laboring in factories. His outlook was conventional on gendered allocations of housework. Even so, his South Africa experiences brought him to rank the nationalist cause ahead of the hearth in advocating women's leadership. By 1921, he was calling on women to become involved in national political deliberations, to secure the vote and to press for legal status equivalent to men.
Gandhi in London with Sarojini Naidu at his side in 1931. (Wikimedia Commons)
By the late 1920s, Indian women were leading local struggles on the subcontinent. Gandhi encouraged the nationalist poet Sarojini Naidu's appointment as president of the Congress Party at a time when few women anywhere led political parties. During the 1930 Salt March, Naidu was the first to be arrested among the 17,000 women jailed for participating. Later, she became the first woman governor of free India.
While not equating the enormity of Gandhi's political efforts to abolish untouchability as comparable to his concern for women, historian Ramachandra Guha concludes that during 30 years of work in India Gandhi personally and significantly brought about alterations in customary gendered hierarchies. Ahead of his time in making this a priority, Gandhi asserted in 1918, "So long as women in India remain ever so little suppressed or do not have the same rights [as men], India will not make real progress."
Historian David Hardiman contends, "Fellow nationalists and women activists never subjected Gandhi to any strong criticism for his patriarchal attitudes. In this, we find a contrast to his other major fields of work, in which sharp differences were expressed in a way that forced him to often qualify or modify his position." Had Gandhi been more assiduously challenged about failures to deploy the creativity of woman, his attainments might have been even more admirable in recognizing their salience as agents of social change.
Gandhi's 1941 book "Constructive Program" sought to accomplish a social order aimed at interlocking goals of societal reconstruction. Though conceptually potent and ultimately more important to him than resistance, his presentation was sketchy and unsystematic. He saw political independence as requiring comprehensive undertakings by millions, including the construction of decentralized institutions to serve as the infrastructure for a just society. Its most trenchant feature was that it allowed advancing toward a new social reality in the midst of the old.
Gandhi at the spinning wheel. (Wikimedia Commons)
The hand-looming of khadi, or khaddar, hand-spun cotton cloth of village production, was among 17 components that would help the poor to decentralize economic production, while nationally (at least symbolically) freeing the country of dependency for textiles on British mills. Also included were cottage industries making soap and paper; village sanitation; adult education; and labor unions committed to nonviolent action. Critics have said the only source of earning for women that Gandhi could advance was hand-looming, which has some validity. Yet it can also be said that millions of women participated in the national struggle (however emblematically) by making homespun cloth, even if poverty stricken or sequestered under purdah.
Fervent opposition to India's partition
Every historical era has its own touchstones for determining what was considered reliable knowledge and defensible truth. The Hindu-Muslim question on the Indian subcontinent long antedated Gandhi's ascendance. Yet Hindu absolutists are heard today blaming Gandhi as having been sympathetic to the country's Muslim minority, accusing him of promoting Pakistan's separation from India during partition.
Those who hold Gandhi responsible for the severing of the Indian subcontinent seemingly ignore the role of the British. On February 20, 1947, a decade after recommending the partition of historic Palestine, setting in motion several wars and military occupation, Britain again promoted partition as a solution to a problem it had partly created. Its plan provided for the British to transfer power to two states, India and Pakistan, implementing partition on Aug. 15, with only two and a half months for effectuating complex transfers of power. Recent research suggests that this timeframe affected the accompanying catastrophes that led to between 10-12 million persons being displaced, with perhaps two million mortalities.
A difference of opinion between Gandhi and Muhammad Ali Jinnah in Bombay, 1944. (Wikimedia Commons)
Embittered controversies raged as the Muslim League put forward a two-nation theory and the secession of the Muslim-majority areas in the northwest and northeast to create Pakistan. Gandhi's view was that dividing the country was not in the interest of the Muslims, who comprised one-quarter of India's population, or that of the non-Muslims. He believed it detrimental for the future. Nanda wrote of Gandhi, "His opposition to partition was an open secret."
Anyone who seriously examines the public record of Gandhi's life cannot question the intensity and duration of his labors to prevent the severance of India. He worked intensively for nearly two years to temper communal fanaticism, from October 1946 almost to the moment of transferring power from Britain.
Gandhi's consequence today
Some of Gandhi's views about transforming conflict are more applicable today than in his own era. He understood that strife cannot be eradicated like a disease and also grasped the more important reality that it can be rearranged, managed and made less deadly. To be sure, civil resistance does not mean the settlement of disputes, although this may be one outcome from a nonviolent struggle. Indeed, actual "resolution" of conflict rarely occurred with Gandhi. Some condemn him for "managing" acute disagreements, akin to dealing with a chronic condition. Yet learning to manage deadly discord is fully compatible with the field of peace and conflict studies as it has gained authority in the 20th and 21st centuries. Acute strife is now more readily understood as being susceptible to rearrangement, able to become less destructive, contained, redefined, or downgraded, rather than presuming the rarity of resolution.
Gandhi gathered from his own experiences that nonviolent methods are effective regardless of whether they are religiously motivated. He appreciated that nonviolent mobilizations are composed of people with immensely diversified beliefs, principles and creeds. Rather than expecting that everyone on the Indian subcontinent share his own religious scruples and personal regimen, he asked for adherence to the policies for nonviolent action. A pragmatic understanding of the practice of civil resistance was acceptable for Gandhi, as he expressed in his 70s. "I admit at once that there is 'a doubtful proportion of full believers' in my 'theory of nonviolence,'" he wrote. "[F]or my movement I do not at all need believers in the theory of nonviolence, full or imperfect. It is enough if people carry out the rules of nonviolent action."
How did Gandhi win?
In today's world, the turn to civil resistance is growing. Its practitioners presuppose that political conflict cannot be eliminated and thus they increasingly tend to turn to Gandhi's substitute method for creatively facing violent discord. This technique relies on a philosophy of action and conscious noncooperation — the withholding, suspension or discontinuance of obedience and cooperation — either spontaneous or planned, legal or illegal.
Gandhi was a product of his time and therefore had certain limitations. His consciousness was anchored in a mindset of experimenting with nonviolent action. Some allegations of racism against him give the impression that he was not paying enough attention to black struggles. Yet he was not a traveling salesman peddling theories but avoiding certain neighborhoods. Neither an ideologue nor theoretician, he saw his experiments as leading to potentially universal application, and in fact his discernments provided much more than mere sustenance to the U.S. civil rights movement.
By the 1920s, pockets of black communities in the United States were reading newspapers owned by African Americans that avidly covered Gandhi's adoptions of strategies for resisting oppression, which might be applicable for them. Historian Sudarshan Kapur's 1992 book "Raising up a Prophet" shows how black leaders traveled from 1919 to 1955 on 12,000-mile sea voyages to India for study of its nonviolent struggles. Some of the trail blazers met with Gandhi. Concepts and lessons were exchanged in an interaction between two freedom movements, one in full velocity, the other emergent, while Indian figures also spoke in the United States.
Using today's standards in judging someone or events occurring within a period wholly different from our own, without appropriate contextualization, cheats comprehension of two realities: first, human beings evolve, and second, today's world is dramatically different from that in which Gandhi labored for two decades in South Africa and for 30 years in India.
Gandhi became tutor to the human race on the forces made operative through social power.
What are now called boycotts, strikes, and other forms of civil resistance were being used in ancient Rome and Egypt, and elsewhere in antiquity. Yet the worldwide historical turning point for knowledge of the practice and theory of nonviolent action is Gandhi. Recognition of embryonic conceptions of human rights and expansion of concepts of equality benefited from the transformations of conflict led by Gandhi in South Africa and India, which placed nonviolent struggle on the world political map.
So-called "universal" human rights often begin with massive nonviolent movements fighting for their recognition, only later to be codified in human rights laws and international conventions. Minority rights, women's rights, rights of the disabled, and other advancements have been institutionalized as a result of campaigns directly or indirectly indebted to Gandhi's provision of a foundational technique for addressing human conflict that can be used by average people. (Laws alone are insufficient and often enshrine wrongs; time and again the most cruel and barbaric practices of gendered inequities are perfectly legal.)
Applying the core sanction of noncooperation, Gandhi became tutor to the human race on the forces made operative through social power. With their civil society leaders often utilizing his writings in the process, within the past half-century more than 50 countries have made democratic transitions from tyrannies and dictatorships. Historian David A. Bell contends, "Since the 1970s, the idea of human rights as the basis for how states should behave has profoundly transformed international politics." That nation-states have for over 70 years benefited from Gandhian insights is a reminder of the folly of applying present-day standards and ideals to individuals who lived in past eras.
Advocates for Gandhi's methods nowadays are generally not found in elected office, although parliamentarians, mayors and governors, chosen by ballot as office-holders, have themselves used civil resistance in parliaments and government departments, termed "constitutional action." Gandhi's successors currently are fighting systemic and technological debasement of democratic governance, rectifying corruption, cleansing democratic elections, battling nativism and neo-nationalism, and assailing white supremacy and the fallacy of racial inferiority — quandaries being deepened and worsened by misinformation rapidly and irresponsibly spread by social media. Contemporary Gandhi apprentices — some of them in their teens — populate environmental networks fighting climate heating. Other inheritors safeguard traditional rural areas, build alliances against impoverishment, pursue women's equity, and further religious harmony and human rights for all, including the LGBTQ community. Their numbers are growing.
Among Gandhi's most notable traits was his admission of vulnerability to error. Demonstrating appealing strength of character, some editions of his 1909 "Hind Swaraj," or "Indian Home Rule" include his note to the reader: "I am not at all concerned with appearing to be consistent. In my search after Truth I have discarded many ideas and learnt many new things … [W]hen anybody finds an inconsistency between any two writings of mine … choose the later of the two on the same subject." Can this be considered an invitation to focus on learning from Gandhi's errors rather than judging them?
Gandhi was a person of color himself, who had to struggle with internalized racism, conditioned prejudices, and unsubstantiated perceptions of purity and pollution. Yet he was able to demonstrate throughout his adult life his willingness to learn and teach what he had differentiated through testing and experimentation. The selective adoption of Gandhian insights, procedures, methods, and practice within the U.S. freedom movement has reverberated to innumerable other nonviolent struggles worldwide. This reality perhaps makes perceptible Gandhi's parting statement to Professor Howard Thurman, of Howard University, and his wife Sue Bailey Thurman: "It may be through the Negroes that the unadulterated message of nonviolence will be delivered to the world."
Mary Elizabeth King is a political scientist and author of acclaimed books on civil resistance, most recently "Gandhian Nonviolent Struggle and Untouchability in South India: The 1924–25 Vykom Satyagraha and the Mechanisms of Change." She is professor of peace and conflict studies at the UN-affiliated University for Peace, Distinguished Rothermere American Institute Fellow at the University of Oxford, Britain, and director of the James Lawson Institute. Her academic specialty in the study of nonviolent action dates to four years working in Atlanta and Mississippi for the 1960s U.S. civil rights movement as staff of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, or SNCC. There she learned the basics of nonviolent struggle from the Reverend James M. Lawson in this profound experience that would define her life. Her website is maryking.info.
Tags: Conflict Resolution, Gandhi, India, Pakistan, Parallel institutions, Self-determination, Women's rights
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Michael Black says:
Gandhi's Truth Force was good enough for WWII pacifists, sitting out the war.
And once the war ended, many took it further, in pacifist activities and the civil rights movement. Jim Peck himself campaigned against segregated dining halls while in prison. Bayard Rustin was a key player in bringing non-violence to the desegregation movement, after doing prison in WWII.
Gandhi's lack of vision doesn't discount his impact on civil disobedience. Bayard's homosexuality doesn't deny his importance, and the civil rights movement keeping Bayard behind the scenes because of that doesn't deny it's importance to us all.
It's okay to write about Gandhi's limitations. But lately people seem so willing to erase people because of something they did wrong, rather than accept their importance without avoiding the bad.
Don't put people on pedestals in the first place because few are perfect.
I can read about people and make my own judgement, but I don't need them erased.
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<p><em>This is part two of a series commemorating the 150th anniversary of Gandhi’s birth. The first, which focused on Gandhi’s life and work in </em><em>South Africa</em><em>, can be read </em><a href="https://wagingnonviolence.org/2019/10/south-africa-forced-gandhi-reckon-with-racism-imperialism/">here</a><em>.</em></p> <p>After 20 years in South Africa, Mohandas Gandhi returned to India on January 9, 1915. He was a different man from when he left his homeland as a shy teenager. He had evolved from being a British-trained lawyer — influenced by the racism of the empire — into an organizer, moral philosopher and political leader able to apply his unique experience and insights to the challenges faced by the people of the Indian subcontinent.   </p> <p>Little more than four years after his return, Gandhi would be tested by a major crisis. On April 13, 1919, a catastrophic massacre occurred in Amritsar, Punjab, at the Jallianwalla Bagh enclosure, a walled seven-acre garden area closed in on all sides. While unarmed mostly peasants peacefully celebrated a Hindu festival, British Brigadier General Reginald E. Dyer, without cause, gave orders to troops of the British Indian Army to fire. (The people of the subcontinent had been disarmed in 1857–58, after a mutiny against the British.) Gandhi's associate Pyarelal later wrote, relying on government sources, that more than 20,000 men, women and children were trapped, as 379 were slaughtered and almost three times that number wounded. Horrified, Gandhi admitted to making a "Himalayan miscalculation" in underestimating the forces of violence — a confessional phrase he would use intermittently when admitting error. Cause and effect can be obscure, but not in this case, as his loyalties to British rule dating from young adulthood collapsed.</p> <p>It was only a matter of time until British imperial dominion in India would end. Ahead lay Gandhi's catalytic role in national all-India civil disobedience movements during 1920–22, 1930–34 and 1940–42. No longer seeking reconciliation, he was galvanizing momentous pressures to produce social change, with scant violent episodes. Regrettably, observers of what was happening in India from the 1930s into the 1950s tended to view and characterize Gandhi as a spiritual inspirer, ignoring or not seeing what he himself called the <em>technique</em>, <em>method</em> or <em>process</em> of struggle that he was refining. Bestowed with the title mahatma (Sanskrit for "great soul") while in South Africa, a term of homage that made Gandhi uncomfortable, onlookers attributed his achievements to personal charisma, often oversimplifying his thinking as limited to nonviolence as a matter of principle rather than a form of social power. Early analysts overlooked his discernments regarding consent and popular power, meaning the power from the people, as well as his challenges to mainstream political thinking that then — as now — assumes a separation of means and ends. </p> <p>Even during the 1920s as Gandhi's profile rose on the subcontinent, he found himself subjected to opposition and controversy for virtually every statement made and action taken, in some ways little different from the allegations made today of racism. His sincerity was questioned on his work against untouchability, with unending controversies about his well-known asceticism and quirky personal traits. Responses to Gandhi were and are still intense. Even so, Gandhi's willingness to criticize himself was a compelling attribute. He contradicted himself, had inconsistencies, sat astride dilemmas and was extraordinarily open about his own human frailty.</p> <p>As an example, in February 1922, when preparing for national civil disobedience, Gandhi suspended an immense satyagraha campaign because village dwellers in Chauri Chaura, Uttar Pradesh, set fire to a police station, killing 22 officers inside it. He had developed "satyagraha" while in South Africa, perturbed as he was by English speakers who talked of "passive resistance," because submission played no part in his technique. Turning to Sanskrit, he bonded <em>satya</em>, or Truth, which for Gandhi meant justice, with <em>agraha</em> conveying firmness, force, or persuasion. For today's reader, satyagraha can best be understood as corresponding with nonviolent direct action or civil resistance. Ruing his inadequacies in preparing the populace, Gandhi called the violent outbreak a "Himalayan blunder" and undertook a five-day fast of penance, despite being condemned for ruining a countrywide campaign due to one incident occurring among 700,000 villages.  </p> <p><strong>Earnest missteps on untouchability</strong></p> <p>Unambiguously opposing abuses associated with caste and untouchability, Gandhi showed his seriousness regarding eradication of untouchability by welcoming a so-called untouchable family into the Sabarmati Ashram, formed at Ahmedabad in 1915, as a communal settlement, retreat, sanctuary and place of seclusion. He also adopted an "outcaste" girl.</p> <p>However, he made a misstep in perceiving that Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar — himself a so-called untouchable, who would become the spokesperson and standard-bearer for those without caste — was an upper-caste advocate for the Dalits. Ambedkar was an economist, jurist, and political scientist who had been able to earn doctoral degrees from prestigious British and U.S. universities, notwithstanding the unreasonable handicaps faced by those without caste in the early 20th century. Gandhi mistook him for an upper-caste advocate, trying to act on behalf of those without caste, which had an alienating effect on Ambedkar. Dalit is a term from Ambedkar's mother tongue. Some Dalits never forgave Gandhi for his misperception.</p> <p>Though untouchability was found everywhere in India, the Travancore princely state — which was later incorporated into the state of Kerala — condoned practices of extreme caste prohibitions not observed elsewhere, including unapproachability and unseeability. Gandhi was invited to advise the 1924–25 satyagraha pressing for opening roads around a Brahmin temple to all Hindus in the village of Vykom in Travancore. Yet he committed serious errors of judgment, including rejecting outside assistance and proscribing anyone not Hindu from participating, even if only in support functions. He sacrificed 19 key leaders to imprisonment, leaving the struggle directionless, by insisting that "conversion" of the upper castes could be prompted by the poorly-formed notion that attitudinal change would result from their witnessing the suffering of those without caste. No archival substantiation whatsoever can be found that hearts and minds of the upper castes were altered by the end of the campaign, except in an abstract long-term metaphorical sense. Yet despite these and other mistakes, Gandhi's involvement would result in the maharajah's 1936 decree opening not solely the roads but all temples in Travancore.   </p> <p>In 1920, Gandhi wrote in <em>Young India</em>, "We shall ever have to seek unity in diversity," as he wrestled with inter-marriage and inter-dining restrictions of the caste system. A century later his phrase "unity in diversity" is extolled in cultures and languages worldwide, pertaining to <em>any</em> exclusions. Gandhi bestowed an honorific on the so-called untouchables, calling them Harijan, Gujarati for "child of God" and in Sanskrit "embodiment of God." The move later provoked disputes, as many who heard it found it patronizing, and it is no longer in daily use. Meanwhile, some states, including Kerala, have banned the term Dalit. </p> <p>Gandhi's rejection of a 1932 government proposal to create separate electorates for what the British called "depressed classes" (untouchables) came to be a source of criticism from those who allege that he was an apologist for the Hindu caste system. Ambedkar had primarily persuaded the British to accept the concept and was the person most consumed with the idea of distinct constituencies, as a way that Dalits could vote for their own leaders. Gandhi, however, feared what in modern parlance we might call rejectionism or separatism, in which those without caste would be driven even further away from the Hindu fold. </p> <p>Although Gandhi had fasted often for various purposes, it was always for a defined period of time. He now embarked on a "perpetual fast unto death from food of any kind save water," with an unlimited timeframe. An alternative electoral procedure was struck at Gandhi's bedside in which voters from the so-called depressed classes would hold a preliminary election to choose four candidates empaneled for each seat in the legislatures of the British India government, and they would present themselves in a joint election by Hindus with and without caste. On September 24, 1932, as Gandhi's condition worsened, this arrangement, known as the Poona Pact, was accepted by the British government, having been signed by 22 witnesses in Gandhi's presence — including Ambedkar authorizing on behalf of the depressed classes. This doubled representation for Dalits in provincial legislatures while revising the electoral system, leading historian B.R. Nanda to conclude that abandoning of separate electorates for those without caste was "the beginning of the end of untouchability."</p> <p>Gandhi's deep commitment to ending untouchability cannot be denied, nor the earnestness and tenacity of his efforts to induce social change for those without caste. Yet in Travancore during 1924–25, and in Poona in 1932, it is fair to say that Gandhi did not quite resonate with the impulses of the Dalits themselves, as they sought to transform their own condition. Their self-help anti-untouchability campaigns were in some ways beyond his understanding.</p> <p>With age, Gandhi became increasingly distressed by practices associated with the caste system. In 1941, he wrote of the "awful isolation" caused by untouchability, "such isolation as perhaps the world has never seen in the monstrous immensity one witnesses in India." Scholars of Gandhi contend that he wrote more against untouchability than on any other subject. Though when his critics claimed that he failed to confront the Hindu caste system with vigor, it held some truth, as he never made an aggressively frontal attack on caste. He was held back by fear of provoking upper-caste denial.</p> <p>M.G.S. Narayanan and other historians whom I interviewed in Kerala consider that while advising the Vykom struggle in 1924–25, Gandhi was conservative, cautious and wary of moving uncompromisingly against untouchability. Among critical reasons given by several Keralan historians was his conviction that significant change would require public repentance by upper-caste Hindus, expressing remorse for the bitter suffering they had caused to generations of those without caste. During the 1920s and 1930s, Gandhi spoke of atonement repeatedly: "To remove the curse of untouchability is to do penance for the sin committed by the Hindus of degrading a fifth of their own religionists." By 1945, he had concluded, "The caste system as it exists today in Hinduism is an anachronism."</p> <p>In 1996, in a letter to me, historian Nanda wrote, "Gandhi's lifelong campaign against untouchability brought the most depressed sections of Indian society into political awareness. It was not only the untouchables, but even middle-level castes which were affected; it was a transition from élite politics to mass politics." </p> <p>Nevertheless, India's news outlets offer daily evidence for how people who have fallen through the bottom of Indian society as a result of the caste system are still subjected to appalling discrimination. Last year, newspapers reported a Dalit was scalped because he had asked for fair wages. Ironically, the fact that Gandhi has been lauded as the "Father of the Nation" and is engraved on India's currency, locates him in the spaces of everyday life where he can be chronically disparaged by those who perceive him as deficient on ending untouchability.</p> <p><strong>Putting the nation ahead of the hearth </strong></p> <p>Gandhi was a captive of a patriarchal worldview still constraining India. For example, he held an essentialist perspective about what is inborn in the basic natures of men and women, which cannot survive scientific vetting. Consistent with Jain religious thought, he sought sublimation of sexual desire, leading him to recommend restraint. This also prompted behaviors such as sleeping next to his grandniece and other women to test his self-control, now a favorite choice for attack by some of his critics. However, he also opposed contraception. Yet in other important ways, Gandhi's outlook was advanced. Having been married in vows arranged by his parents at age 13, from within orthodox Hinduism he attacked social "evils" including child marriage as "unspeakable and unthinkable sin."</p> <p>Gandhi was outspokenly opposed to dowry (payment of money or property the wife brings her husband, the absence of which has resulted in dowry-related violence) and purdah (a system of seclusion of women from public observation by means of walled enclosures or screens). He also denounced the severe restrictions on widows. Social scientists report that some 40 million widows are currently enduring extreme forms of discrimination, dire enough that India's Supreme Court in 2012 ruled that the government must provide them with food, medical care and sanitary living conditions. Gandhi openly addressed attitudes of male superiority toward women and called for women to have equity even if illiterate.  </p> <p>Early in life, Gandhi's reasoning was that of an upper-caste, middle-class man who thought women should be cloistered at home, while ignoring that most Indian women then were forced by necessity to earn livelihoods by working in fields and laboring in factories. His outlook was conventional on gendered allocations of housework. Even so, his South Africa experiences brought him to rank the nationalist cause ahead of the hearth in advocating women's leadership. By 1921, he was calling on women to become involved in national political deliberations, to secure the vote and to press for legal status equivalent to men. </p> <div class="wp-block-image"></div> <p>By the late 1920s, Indian women were leading local struggles on the subcontinent. Gandhi encouraged the nationalist poet Sarojini Naidu's appointment as president of the Congress Party at a time when few women anywhere led political parties. During the 1930 Salt March, Naidu was the first to be arrested among the 17,000 women jailed for participating. Later, she became the first woman governor of free India.</p> <p>While not equating the enormity of Gandhi's political efforts to abolish untouchability as comparable to his concern for women, historian Ramachandra Guha concludes that during 30 years of work in India Gandhi personally and significantly brought about alterations in customary gendered hierarchies. Ahead of his time in making this a priority, Gandhi asserted in 1918, "So long as women in India remain ever so little suppressed or do not have the same rights [as men], India will not make real progress." </p> <p>Historian David Hardiman contends, "Fellow nationalists and women activists never subjected Gandhi to any strong criticism for his patriarchal attitudes. In this, we find a contrast to his other major fields of work, in which sharp differences were expressed in a way that forced him to often qualify or modify his position." Had Gandhi been more assiduously challenged about failures to deploy the creativity of woman, his attainments might have been even more admirable in recognizing their salience as agents of social change.</p> <p>Gandhi's 1941 book "Constructive Program" sought to accomplish a social order aimed at interlocking goals of societal reconstruction. Though conceptually potent and ultimately more important to him than resistance, his presentation was sketchy and unsystematic. He saw political independence as requiring comprehensive undertakings by millions, including the construction of decentralized institutions to serve as the infrastructure for a just society. Its most trenchant feature was that it allowed advancing toward a new social reality in the midst of the old. </p> <p>The hand-looming of <em>khadi</em>, or <em>khaddar</em>, hand-spun cotton cloth of village production, was among 17 components that would help the poor to decentralize economic production, while nationally (at least symbolically) freeing the country of dependency for textiles on British mills. Also included were cottage industries making soap and paper; village sanitation; adult education; and labor unions committed to nonviolent action. Critics have said the only source of earning for women that Gandhi could advance was hand-looming, which has some validity. Yet it can also be said that millions of women participated in the national struggle (however emblematically) by making homespun cloth, even if poverty stricken or sequestered under purdah.</p> <p><strong>Fervent opposition to India’s partition</strong></p> <p>Every historical era has its own touchstones for determining what was considered reliable knowledge and defensible truth. The Hindu-Muslim question on the Indian subcontinent long antedated Gandhi's ascendance. Yet Hindu absolutists are heard today blaming Gandhi as having been sympathetic to the country's Muslim minority, accusing him of promoting Pakistan's separation from India during partition.</p> <p>Those who hold Gandhi responsible for the severing of the Indian subcontinent seemingly ignore the role of the British. On February 20, 1947, a decade after recommending the partition of historic Palestine, setting in motion several wars and military occupation, Britain again promoted partition as a solution to a problem it had partly created. Its plan provided for the British to transfer power to two states, India and Pakistan, implementing partition on Aug. 15, with only two and a half months for effectuating complex transfers of power. Recent research suggests that this timeframe affected the accompanying catastrophes that led to between 10-12 million persons being displaced, with perhaps two million mortalities. </p> <p>Embittered controversies raged as the Muslim League put forward a two-nation theory and the secession of the Muslim-majority areas in the northwest and northeast to create Pakistan. Gandhi's view was that dividing the country was not in the interest of the Muslims, who comprised one-quarter of India's population, or that of the non-Muslims. He believed it detrimental for the future. Nanda wrote of Gandhi, "His opposition to partition was an open secret." </p> <p>Anyone who seriously examines the public record of Gandhi's life cannot question the intensity and duration of his labors to prevent the severance of India. He worked intensively for nearly two years to temper communal fanaticism, from October 1946 almost to the moment of transferring power from Britain. </p> <p><strong>Gandhi's consequence today</strong></p> <p>Some of Gandhi's views about transforming conflict are more applicable today than in his own era. He understood that strife cannot be eradicated like a disease and also grasped the more important reality that it can be rearranged, managed and made less deadly. To be sure, civil resistance does not mean the settlement of disputes, although this may be one outcome from a nonviolent struggle. Indeed, actual "resolution" of conflict rarely occurred with Gandhi. Some condemn him for "managing" acute disagreements, akin to dealing with a chronic condition. Yet learning to <em>manage</em> deadly discord is fully compatible with the field of peace and conflict studies as it has gained authority in the 20th and 21st centuries. Acute strife is now more readily understood as being susceptible to rearrangement, able to become less destructive, contained, redefined, or downgraded, rather than presuming the rarity of resolution.</p> <p>Gandhi gathered from his own experiences that nonviolent methods are effective regardless of whether they are religiously motivated. He appreciated that nonviolent mobilizations are composed of people with immensely diversified beliefs, principles and creeds. Rather than expecting that everyone on the Indian subcontinent share his own religious scruples and personal regimen, he asked for adherence to the <em>policies</em> for nonviolent action. A pragmatic understanding of the practice of civil resistance was acceptable for Gandhi, as he expressed in his 70s. "I admit at once that there is 'a doubtful proportion of full believers' in my 'theory of nonviolence,'" he wrote. "[F]or my movement I do not at all need believers in the theory of nonviolence, full or imperfect. It is enough if people carry out the rules of nonviolent action." </p> <p>In today's world, the turn to civil resistance is growing. Its practitioners presuppose that political conflict cannot be eliminated and thus they increasingly tend to turn to Gandhi's substitute method for creatively facing violent discord. This technique relies on a philosophy of action and conscious noncooperation — the withholding, suspension or discontinuance of obedience and cooperation — either spontaneous or planned, legal or illegal.</p> <p>Gandhi was a product of his time and therefore had certain limitations. His consciousness was anchored in a mindset of experimenting with nonviolent action. Some allegations of racism against him give the impression that he was not paying enough attention to black struggles. Yet he was not a traveling salesman peddling theories but avoiding certain neighborhoods. Neither an ideologue nor theoretician, he saw his experiments as leading to potentially universal application, and in fact his discernments provided much more than mere sustenance to the U.S. civil rights movement. </p> <p>By the 1920s, pockets of black communities in the United States were reading newspapers owned by African Americans that avidly covered Gandhi's adoptions of strategies for resisting oppression, which might be applicable for them. Historian Sudarshan Kapur's 1992 book “Raising up a Prophet” shows how black leaders traveled from 1919 to 1955 on 12,000-mile sea voyages to India for study of its nonviolent struggles. Some of the trail blazers met with Gandhi. Concepts and lessons were exchanged in an interaction between two freedom movements, one in full velocity, the other emergent, while Indian figures also spoke in the United States. </p> <p>Using today’s standards in judging someone or events occurring within a period wholly different from our own, without appropriate contextualization, cheats comprehension of two realities: first, human beings evolve, and second, today's world is dramatically different from that in which Gandhi labored for two decades in South Africa and for 30 years in India.   </p> <p>What are now called boycotts, strikes, and other forms of civil resistance were being used in ancient Rome and Egypt, and elsewhere in antiquity. Yet the worldwide historical turning point for knowledge of the practice and theory of nonviolent action is Gandhi. Recognition of embryonic conceptions of human rights and expansion of concepts of equality benefited from the transformations of conflict led by Gandhi in South Africa and India, which placed nonviolent struggle on the world political map. </p> <p>So-called "universal" human rights often begin with massive nonviolent movements fighting for their recognition, only later to be codified in human rights laws and international conventions. Minority rights, women's rights, rights of the disabled, and other advancements have been institutionalized as a result of campaigns directly or indirectly indebted to Gandhi's provision of a foundational technique for addressing human conflict that can be used by average people. (Laws alone are insufficient and often enshrine wrongs; time and again the most cruel and barbaric practices of gendered inequities are perfectly legal.) </p> <p>Applying the core sanction of noncooperation, Gandhi became tutor to the human race on the forces made operative through social power. With their civil society leaders often utilizing his writings in the process, within the past half-century more than 50 countries have made democratic transitions from tyrannies and dictatorships. Historian David A. Bell contends, "Since the 1970s, the idea of human rights as the basis for how states should behave has profoundly transformed international politics." That nation-states have for over 70 years benefited from Gandhian insights is a reminder of the folly of applying present-day standards and ideals to individuals who lived in past eras.</p> <p>Advocates for Gandhi's methods nowadays are generally not found in elected office, although parliamentarians, mayors and governors, chosen by ballot as office-holders, have themselves used civil resistance in parliaments and government departments, termed "constitutional action." Gandhi's successors currently are fighting systemic and technological debasement of democratic governance, rectifying corruption, cleansing democratic elections, battling nativism and neo-nationalism, and assailing white supremacy and the fallacy of racial inferiority — quandaries being deepened and worsened by misinformation rapidly and irresponsibly spread by social media. Contemporary Gandhi apprentices — some of them in their teens — populate environmental networks fighting climate heating. Other inheritors safeguard traditional rural areas, build alliances against impoverishment, pursue women's equity, and further religious harmony and human rights for all, including the LGBTQ community. Their numbers are growing.</p> <p>Among Gandhi's most notable traits was his admission of vulnerability to error. Demonstrating appealing strength of character, some editions of his 1909 "Hind Swaraj," or "Indian Home Rule" include his note to the reader: "I am not at all concerned with appearing to be consistent. In my search after Truth I have discarded many ideas and learnt many new things … [W]hen anybody finds an inconsistency between any two writings of mine … choose the later of the two on the same subject." Can this be considered an invitation to focus on learning from Gandhi's errors rather than judging them? </p> <p>Gandhi was a person of color himself, who had to struggle with internalized racism, conditioned prejudices, and unsubstantiated perceptions of purity and pollution. Yet he was able to demonstrate throughout his adult life his willingness to learn and teach what he had differentiated through testing and experimentation. The selective adoption of Gandhian insights, procedures, methods, and practice within the U.S. freedom movement has reverberated to innumerable other nonviolent struggles worldwide. This reality perhaps makes perceptible Gandhi's parting statement to Professor Howard Thurman, of Howard University, and his wife Sue Bailey Thurman: "It may be through the Negroes that the unadulterated message of nonviolence will be delivered to the world." </p>
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128 U.S.
THE CHATEAUGAY ORE & IRON CO., PETITIONER
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No. 3. Original.
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THE CHATEAUGAY ORE AND IRON COMPANY, PETITIONER.
Supreme Court of United States.https://leagle.com/images/logo.png
Argued November 13, 1888.
Decided December 10, 1888.
Attorney(s) appearing for the Case
Mr. Edmund Wetmore and Mr. Frank E. Smith for petitioner.
Mr. R.D. Mussey and Mr. L.E. Chittenden opposing.
Supreme Court of United States.
MR. JUSTICE BLATCHFORD, after stating the case, delivered the opinion of the court.
We are of opinion that the writ of mandamus must issue. By rules 67 and 69 of the Circuit Court for the Southern District of New York, which took effect on the first Monday of August, 1838, it is provided that, when exceptions to the opinion of the court are taken by either party on the trial of a cause, he shall not be required to prepare his bill of exceptions at the trial, but shall merely reduce the exceptions to writing, or the court will, on request, note the point, and the bill of exceptions shall afterwards be drawn up, amended, and settled, under the following regulations: The bill of exceptions shall be prepared and a copy thereof served upon the opposite party before judgment is rendered on the verdict; the opposite party may, within four days after such service, propose amendments to the bill and serve a copy upon the party who prepared it; if the parties cannot agree in regard to the amendments, then, within four days after such service of a copy of the amendments, either party may give to the other notice to appear within a convenient time, and not more than four days after service of such notice, before the judge who tried the cause, to have the bill and amendments settled; the judge shall thereupon correct and settle the same as he shall deem to consist with the truth of the facts; but, if the parties shall omit, within the several times above limited, unless the same shall be enlarged by a judge, the one to propose amendments, and the other to notify an appearance before the judge, they shall respectively be deemed, the former to have agreed to the bill as prepared, and the latter to have agreed to the amendments as proposed; and if the party omit to make a bill within the time above limited, unless the same shall be enlarged as aforesaid, he shall be deemed to have waived his right thereto.
A corresponding practice prevails in the Supreme Court of the State of New York, by its rules, with variations as to time. Under those rules, a case, or a case and exceptions, or a case containing exceptions, on a trial before a jury, is to be made, and a copy thereof served on the opposite party, within ten days after the trial. The party served may, within ten days thereafter, propose amendments thereto and serve a copy on the party proposing the case or exceptions, who may within four days thereafter serve the opposite party with a notice that the case or exceptions, with the proposed amendments, will be submitted at a time and place to be specified in the notice, not less than four nor more than twenty days after service of such notice, to the justice before whom the cause was tried, for settlement.
It is apparent that both parties in this case acted upon the view that the rule of practice of the Supreme Court of the State applied to the case; because the plaintiff, instead of serving on the defendant his proposed amendments to the bill within four days after the 3d of March, as required by the rule of the Circuit Court, waited ten days, under the rule of the Supreme Court of the State, and then, on the 13th of March, obtained a stipulation from the defendant giving ten days' additional time to prepare and serve amendments. It may be that the defendant, in serving, on the 27th of March, a notice of settlement of fourteen days, for the 10th of April, on the plaintiff, intended to comply, as it in fact did comply, with the requirement of the rule of the state court that such notice should be a notice of not less than four nor more than twenty days; yet it also sufficiently complied with rule 67 of the Circuit Court, which required a notice of not more than four days, because a notice of four days, served on the 27th of March, would have been for the 31st of March, and Judge Shipman was not then within the Southern District of New York, so as to be able to perform any judicial act there, nor did he come there, so as to be able to do so, until the 2d of April, 1888. Under these circumstances, the notice for the 10th of April was a reasonable compliance with the rule of the Circuit Court.
We are of opinion that the practice and rules of the state court do not apply to proceedings in the Circuit Court taken for the purpose of reviewing in this court a judgment of the Circuit Court, and that such rules and practice, embracing the preparation, perfecting, settling, and signing of a bill of exceptions, are not within the "practice, pleadings, and forms and modes of proceeding" in the Circuit Court which are required, by § 914 of the Revised Statutes, to conform "as near as may be" to the "practice, pleadings, and forms and modes of proceeding existing at the time in like causes in the courts of record of the State" within which the Circuit Court is held, "any rule of court to the contrary notwithstanding."
This court has had occasion several times to construe § 914. In Nudd v. Burrows, 91 U.S. 426, a state statute required a judge to instruct a jury only as to the law of a case, and provided that the written instructions of the court should be taken by the jury in their retirement and returned with the verdict, and that papers read in evidence might be carried from the bar by the jury. The court charged the jury upon the facts and refused to permit them to take to their room the written instructions given by the court or papers read in evidence. This court held that this was not error, because the personal conduct and administration of the judge in the discharge of his separate functions was not practice or pleading, or a form or mode of proceeding, within the meaning of those terms in the act of Congress.
In Indianapolis Railroad Co. v. Horst, 93 U.S. 291, a state statute prescribed that the judge should require the jury to answer special interrogatories in addition to finding a general verdict. This court held that that provision did not apply to the courts of the United States; and that the act of Congress did not apply to a motion for a new trial, nor affect the power of the Circuit Court to grant or refuse a new trial in its discretion. This last point was again so ruled in Newcomb v. Wood, 97 U.S. 581.
In harmony with the foregoing decisions, we are of opinion that § 914 does not extend to the means of enforcing or revising a decision once made by the Circuit Court. Section 914 does not extend to proceedings to enforce a judgment, because by § 916 special provisions are made as to a remedy by execution or otherwise, to reach the property of a judgment debtor, by borrowing from the laws of the State only those remedies then already existing, or which should thereafter be adopted by general rules of the Circuit Court. Lamaster v. Keeler, 123 U.S. 376. The object of § 914 was to assimilate the form and manner in which the parties should present their claims and defence, in the preparation for the trial of suits in the Federal courts, to those prevailing in the courts of the State. As we have seen, it does not include state statutes requiring instructions to the jury to be reduced to writing, or those which permit such instructions and certain papers read in evidence, to be taken by the jury when they retire, or those which require the jury to be directed, if they return a general verdict, to find specially upon particular questions of fact involved in the issues; and, as it does not apply to a motion for a new trial, nor affect the power of the Circuit Court to grant or refuse a new trial at its discretion, so it does not cover any other means of enforcing or revising a decision once made by the Circuit Court. The manner or the time of taking proceedings as a foundation for the removal of a case by a writ of error from one Federal court to another is a matter to be regulated exclusively by acts of Congress, or, when they are silent, by methods derived from the common law, from ancient English statutes, or from the rules and practice of the courts of the United States. The only regulation made by Congress as to bills of exceptions is that contained in § 953 of the Revised Statutes, which provides that they shall be sufficiently authenticated by the signature of the presiding judge, without any seal.
These views were adopted by the Circuit Court for the Southern District of New York, in Whalen v. Sheridan, 18 Blatchford, 324, and by the Circuit Court for the District of Massachusetts, in United States v. Train, 12 Fed. Rep. 852.
In the present case, the defendant prepared and served its bill of exceptions within the forty days from January 25. The expression "prepare and serve," in the order allowing the forty days, clearly meant, in view of rules 67 and 69 of the Circuit Court, that the proposed bill was to be prepared and served on the opposite party within the forty days, so that he might propose amendments to it within the time prescribed by the rules. It was so prepared and served within the forty days. It was retained by the plaintiff for ten days after its service. He then obtained, by stipulation, from the defendant, ten days' more time to prepare and serve amendments. The proposed amendments were served on the tenth day and the notice of settlement was accepted, written admission of its service was given and it was retained. Under these and the other circumstances above detailed, we think the defendant was entirely regular in its practice and that the plaintiff was estopped from raising the objection which he made before Judge Shipman.
On the facts of the present case, the decision in Müller v. Ehlers, 91 U.S. 249, has no application. In that case, on a trial by the court, without a jury, of an action at law, there was a general finding for the plaintiff, and a motion for a new trial. The motion was continued until the next term, when it was overruled, and judgment was entered on the finding. At the latter term, a writ of error, returnable to this court, was sued out, and the term was adjourned without any bill of exceptions having been signed or allowed, or any time having been given, either by consent of the parties or by order of the court, to prepare one. At the next ensuing term, and after the return day of the writ of error, a bill of exceptions was signed and filed by order of the court, as of the day the finding was made, and it did not appear that that had been done with the consent or knowledge of the plaintiff. On these facts, this court held, that the order of the court below, directing the filing of the bill of exceptions as of the date of the finding, was a nullity, on the ground that the parties had, in due course of proceeding, both in law and in fact, been dismissed from the court. That decision has no application to the present case, because the rights of the defendant were saved by the express order of the court, made during the term, and by a sufficient compliance on the part of the defendant with the rules of the Circuit Court, and by what must be held to have been the consent of the plaintiff.
In this view of the case, the question whether the term at which the verdict was rendered expired on the 25th of February, being the Saturday next preceding the last Monday of February, or on the 31st of March, being the Saturday next preceding the first Monday of April, is immaterial. The rules of the Circuit Court clearly contemplate proceedings to perfect a bill of exceptions within the times limited by those rules, without reference to the expiration of a term. By § 658 of the Revised Statutes, terms of the Circuit Court are appointed to be held in the Southern District of New York on the first Monday in April and the third Monday in October, "and for the trial of criminal causes and suits in equity" on the last Monday in February. The defendant contends that the October term terminated at the beginning of the February term, and the plaintiff contends that the October term terminated at the beginning of the April term. We do not find it necessary to decide this question.
A writ of mandamus may properly be issued by this court, to compel the judge of an inferior court to settle and sign a bill of exceptions. Ex parte Crane, 5 Pet. 190. Such a writ does not undertake to control the discretion of the judge as to how he shall frame the bill of exceptions, or as to how he shall decide any point arising on its settlement; but it only compels him to settle and sign it in some form.
The writ will issue in the terms of the prayer of the petition, commanding the judge to settle the bill of exceptions tendered by the defendant, according to the truth of the matters which took place before him on the trial of the aforesaid action, and, when so settled, to sign it as of the 10th day of April, 1888, that being the day when the proposed bill and proposed amendments were submitted to him for settlement.
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redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


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What Makes or Breaks a Choice of School?
How do parents make their school choice? What do they look for? And is it the same across the three countries featured in this year's WSA survey - Singapore, Hong Kong and the UAE?
By David Westley
Sunday 22 December, 2019
Do your children attend a Hong Kong school? Take our survey and help other parents.
Evidently parents want the same thing - happy, well rounded children who achieve their potential - but our survey shows slight differences in what exactly they look for in schools to achieve that. To determine what parents look for when choosing a school we ask two similar looking questions.
The first question, "What do you look for when looking for a school?", allows parents to choose multiple options.
The second question, "What is the single most important criteria in your choice if school?", demands a single response for the respondent, and therefore forces the parent taking the survey to really think about that one thing that swings his or her decision.
While the two look similar, they tell us two different things. There are criteria that all parents would want to see in a school that would not however be a deciding influence for many, if any, and there are criteria that would be a deciding influence for some, but not even a passing requirement for others.
When allowed to give multiple reasons in their school choice, the most popular response is teacher to student ratio. The qualifications of teachers comes second, and quality of facilities comes third. Only qualifications of teachers features in the top three of both lists. Click here to see the chart.
Given the amount of global press Singapore gets regarding the exam performance of its schools, you would be forgiven for thinking results, not happiness, would top the list of requirements for parents when choosing a school, and yet, "A Happy School" weighs the heaviest when it comes to parents asked to give a single reason for their choice of a school.
To be fair, happiness is the single biggest reason for choosing a school everywhere: In our survey it is also the biggest single consideration in both Hong Kong and the United Arab Emirates. However, the numbers of parents citing it as their single biggest determinant in school choice is much bigger in Singapore where 54% of parents cite it, compared to 38% of parents in Hong Kong, and 33% of parents in the UAE.
We can give two possible reasons for this. The first is that Singapore has a higher percentage of respondents with children in KG and Primary education, compared to Hong Kong (although not the UAE). As the age of child increases the survey shows changes in parental concerns away from intangibles like Happiness towards the demonstrable - most notably Success in Examinations.
The second reason is that private, international schools are not the same as the local schools of their host country. When stats in exams are quoted globally (usually related to PISA and TIMMS benchmark testing), the scores will not, in the main, have come from the international schools of that country, but from government schools. A focus on exams, and therefore you would hope exam success, will be a reflection of the culture of its education system. Private, international schools while existing within that culture, bring something else to the table, reflecting the more rounded interest, and international make up of parents. They are, for the most part, subject to less government scrutiny and allowed greater self regulation, although the UAE is something of a hybrid in this regard.
The second largest single consideration by parents when choosing a school, ahead of teacher:student ratio, is the qualification of its teachers. This tells us parents are already aware of what the research is proving: The size of a classroom is less important than the effectiveness of a good teacher.
While qualifications do not tell you directly how effective a teacher will be in the classroom, given the intangible nature of "good teaching", they are the closest proxy a parent has.
While the qualifications of teachers is important in all markets, parents in the UAE are the most likely to cite it as their biggest determinant in choosing a school. Our survey shows that, in general, parents in Indian, American and MoE based curriculum schools are more likely to quote teacher qualifications as a concern, than parents in British or IB based schools where teacher qualifications may be more of a given. To be an official IB school, teachers need to be IB trained. UK curricula schools tend to be more expensive, premium fee schools with a large percentage of teachers coming from the Anglo Saxon universe.
The relatively higher percentage of parents in the UAE quoting teacher qualifications as their biggest determinant in school choice, is therefore at least partly a reflection of the greater diversity of curricula choice in the country compared to the IB, UK dominated markets in South East Asia.
Finally, the third largest consideration when choosing a school is the most measurable, but also the most controversial: School results in external examinations. 13% of Singapore parents cite it as the reason they chose their child's school, followed by the UAE (10%), and finally Hong Kong (8%). Schools across the countries we cover are getting better each year at communicating their results, and all countries do significantly better than the UK, or IB global averages.
Hong Kong 2019 A' Level Results Roundup
Hong Kong 2019 IB Results
WhichSchoolAdvisor.com has long argued that international schools show greater transparency in the publication of results in third party examinations, and the better schools are now doing so. The challenge for publications like ours, as well as for parents who read us, is to balance academic success with both the value add, and the holistic education a school brings. Both are much harder to measure, but in the development of a child, far more important. Parents clearly but implicitly recognise this in placing happiness so high up on their list of requirements in a school.
WSA Survey


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Ottoman Empire Map at Its Height, Over Time
8 December 2022 by Serhat Engül
Ottoman Empire was founded in 1299 by Osman Ghazi (aka Othman) and consistently grew from 1299 to 1683. The first 10 rulers of the Ottoman Empire is considered as the most successful kings. In this article, you can discover facts about Ottoman history accompanied by map of the Ottoman Empire.
Ottomans Kings carried these titles: Sultan (Arabic: King, Ruler), Padishah (Persian: Shah Of the World), Khan (Turkish: Referring to ancestors from Central Asia)
Additionally the first two rulers, Osman I and Orhan were called as Ghazi (The warrior) since the Ottomans were no more than a warlike principality then. Murad I (1362-1389) considered as the first Sultan, since he built the foundations of Ottoman army, society, laws of the Ottoman State.
The Ottoman Sultans also carried the title of Caliph (Halifa) from the time of Selim I (1512-1520). Caliph is an Islamic title. Meaning the spiritual leader of Islamic World. This religious title was used by the Ottoman Sultans after the conquest of Mecca and Medina.
Ottoman Empire Map Over Time with Facts
1. Foundation of the Ottoman Empire
2. Founding Sultans of the Empire
3. Ottoman Empire Map Over Time
4. Ottoman Elite Infantry: Janissaries
5. Conquest of Constantinople
6. Capture of the Holy Cities
7. Reign of Suleiman the Magnificent
8. Ottoman Empire Map at Its Height
9. Rise of the Valide Sultans
10. Reforms in the Empire
11. Decline of the Ottoman Empire Map
12. Fall of the Ottoman Empire
13. Foundation of Modern Turkey
14. The Capital of Turkey
The Ottomans were one of the principalities that emerged after the collapse of the Sultanate of Rum. You can find the facts about the history of the Ottoman Empire, which turned into an empire over time, in this article. I tried to describe the rise and fall of the Ottoman Empire on maps and various images as much as possible.
The foundation of the Ottoman Empire took place thanks to Ertugrul Gazi, who is also the subject of TV series today. The Ottomans, who settled in the Sogut and Domanic plateaus of northwest Anatolia, were located in a very strategic area.
There were two dominant states in Anatolia at that time. One was the Byzantine Empire in the West, the other was the Seljuk Sultanate of Rum in the east, heir of the Seljuk Empire.
Seljuk Sultanate of Rum could not resist the Mongol raids from the West and was destroyed. Many big and small principalities emerged in Anatolia. One of them, the Ottomans, a medium-sized principality, attracted attention with its neighboring to the Byzantium.
Since the foundation of the Ottoman Empire, its goal had always been to spread westward. Neighboring cities such as Iznik (Nicaea) and Bursa (Prussa) would be the first targets of the Ottomans.
Osman Ghazi inherited a warrior tribe from his father, Ertugrul Ghazi. Osman (aka Othman), who established an army and captured strategic places, turned the Ottomans into a rising power in his region.
Osman's son Orhan became the first ruler to make ground breaking conquests for the Ottoman Empire. Taking over two important cities such as Iznik and Bursa, Orhan declared Bursa as the first capital of the Ottoman Empire.
The foundation of the Ottomans is considered as 1299, the reign of Osman. However, among the founding sultans, Murad I, the third sultan, made the Ottoman Empire a real state.
Murad I, who established the first artillery unit in the Ottoman Empire and organized the janissary army, advanced towards the interior of Europe. Murad I, a skilled commander, died on the battlefield.
The map of the Ottoman Empire you see above shows the spread of the empire over time. These conquests took place in the 400 years between 1299 and 1699, during the rise of the Ottoman Empire. The Ottoman Empire, which reached its peak in the years following the death of Suleiman the Magnificent, went through a centuries-long decline from the 1700s.
The successful period you can see on the map of the Ottoman Empire took place during the first 10 sultans. These sultans are Osman Ghazi, Orhan Ghazi, Murad I, Bayezid I (the Thunderbolt), Mehmed I, Murad II, Mehmed II (the Conqueror), Bayezid II, Selim I (the Resolute), Suleiman I (the Magnificent), respectively.
During the rise of the Ottoman Empire, its driving force was elite infantry units. These units, called Janissaries, consisted of Christian children who were collected from villages in the Balkans.
These children, who were brought to Istanbul and received military training, were growing up as full soldiers. The promising ones were specially selected and sent to the school in Topkapi Palace.
The imperial school, called Enderun, was located in the 3rd courtyard of the Topkapi Palace. These children, who grew up with the sons of the Sultan, became the senior bureaucrats of the future.
Selim I's son Suleiman grew up with Ibrahim in Enderun. While Suleiman was building a career to be called "the Magnificent", the secret power behind it was Grand Vizier Ibrahim Pasha. The friendship of the two began at the Enderun School as a child.
The Ottomans turned into an empire after the conquest of Constantinople. Istanbul, the most important city of Late Antiquity and Middle Ages, was the crossroads of trade routes. Captured during the reign of Mehmed II (the Conqueror), Istanbul became the third and last capital of the Ottoman Empire after Bursa and Edirne.
On the map above, you can see the borders of the Ottoman Empire just before the fall of Constantinople in 1453. The ancient Byzantine Empire was in the process of collapse and nothing was left except the Historical Peninsula.
This area, which is Istanbul Old City today, cannot be seen clearly on the map. However, Istanbul's most important historical monuments such as Hagia Sophia, Topkapi Palace and Suleymaniye Mosque are located there.
The Ottomans, who rose after the capture of Constantinople, spread to the entire Middle East during the reign of Selim I (1512-1520). Selim I doubled the Ottoman lands, even though he was the sultan for only 8 years. Holy cities such as Mecca, Medina and Jerusalem were captured in his time.
Selim I (the Resolute), who filled the Ottoman Empire's treasure with gold and conquered fertile lands such as Mesopotamia and Egypt, left a great legacy to his son.
Suleiman ascended the throne peacefully as one of the rare Ottoman sultans without a brother. He inherited an empire at the center of the Spice Route from India and the Silk Road from China.
The reign of Suleiman the Magnificent is considered the height of the Ottoman Empire. Suleiman, who ruled between 1520 and 1566, truly lived in a "Magnificent" period.
During this period, the Ottomans had an architect like Mimar Sinan and admirals such as Piri Reis, Oruc Reis and Hayreddin Barbarossa. While Ottoman Istanbul was equipped with monumental structures, dominance was achieved in the Eastern Mediterranean.
The period of Sultan Suleiman was an epic period in world history that was the subject of movies. During this period, powerful characters ruled the world's greatest empires. For example, first Henry VIII and later Elisabeth I in England, Francis I in France, and Charles V in the Holy Roman Empire were contemporaries of Sultan Suleyman.
The momentum created by the Sultan Suleiman period continued after him. Although those who came after him remained in the shadow of Suleiman, the empire continued to live on the solid foundations established by the first 10 sultans.
The map of the Ottoman Empire shows us the 17th century when the empire was at its height. During this period, the Ottoman Empire spread over three continents and reached its largest borders.
During the reigns of Selim II and Murad III, the successors of Sultan Suleiman, powerful Grand Viziers such as Sokullu Mehmed Pasha masterfully ruled the empire. Mehmed Pasha took office in Suleiman's last years and ruled the state with Suleiman's mentality for two generations.
The seven sultans who ruled between Sultan Suleiman and Murad IV were not active warriors. However, during this period, architectural masterpieces such as the Blue Mosque were built in Istanbul.
Sultan Suleiman's wife Hurrem Sultan was the most influential woman in Ottoman history. The position of Valide Sultan, the title of the mothers of the sultans, gained great power after Suleiman.
Women such as Nurbanu Sultan, Safiye Sultan, Kosem Sultan and Turhan Sultan, who lived in this period, had an influence on their sons. This period, when women had an influence in the palace administration, is referred to as Sultanate of Women in some sources.
In this period when the sultans were less interested in the state administration, the Valide Sultans and the able Grand Viziers took the initiative. Thus, the success in Suleiman's time continued.
The sultans regained full control during the reign of Murad IV, whose name I have mentioned above. During the reign of Murad IV, a warrior sultan, Baghdad and Yerevan were conquered, and two pavilions named after these cities were built in Topkapi Palace to celebrate these achievements.
Developments such as the Renaissance and Reformation in Europe did not resonate with the Ottoman Empire. For this reason, during the 1600s and 1700s, the Ottoman Empire started to fall behind in many fields.
Seeing the decline of the empire, some sultans wanted to reform. However, the reforms in the empire did not get enough response from the bureaucracy or the public. Sultans who wanted to reform such as Osman II, Ahmed III and Selim III died or were dethroned in the revolts.
The Janissary army, which was very successful in the past, turned into a big problem in the empire. The Janissaries, who delayed military reforms for more than a century, were finally eliminated by Mahmud II.
Mahmud II, who established an army in modern order, also made serious reforms in social life. His successors followed in his footsteps throughout the 1800s. However, the empire did not have its old economic power.
You can see the decline of the Ottoman Empire on the map above. Endless wars with Russia and Austria led to the economic collapse of the empire. At the same time, the colonialism of England and France caused land losses in the Ottoman Empire.
The lands shown in orange on the map were lost during the 1800s. Among them, the loss of the Balkans and Egypt caused great damage to the empire. Especially the loss of Egypt caused the Ottomans to lose their dominance over the trade routes.
The First World War caused the fall of the Ottoman Empire. The Ottoman Empire, which entered the war alongside Germany and Austria, was dragged into a disaster.
Ottoman army was decisively defeated in major battles except for the Battle of Gallipoli. The allies pushed hard to pass through the Dardanelles to seize the capital, Istanbul, but they failed.
The Ottoman resistance was unexpectedly tough in Canakkale (aka Dardanelles). The defence operations were lead by a young General, Mustafa Kemal, the future founder of Turkish Republic.
Modern Turkey was founded by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk. But of course this was the result of a long and difficult process.
The Ottoman Empire, whose army was disbanded in 1918 and its capital was occupied, was desperate. The successful generals of the first world war gathered around Mustafa Kemal.
Mustafa Kemal gathered a liberation army in Anatolia. At the end of a struggle that lasted for nearly 4 years, the allied forces that occupied Anatolia were defeated.
The National Assembly, which was established during the war in 1920, became the sole authority after the war. The Sultanate was abolished and the Republic was declared.
Istanbul had been the capital of Roman, Byzantine and Ottoman empires throughout its history. However, in the period after the first world war, the war of independence was directed from Ankara.
When the Grand National Assembly of Turkey founded in Ankara, Istanbul was under occupation by Allied forces. For this reason, it was decided that the capital of Turkey would be Ankara.
Istanbul is no longer the capital, but still is the most important city in Turkey. With a history of 2700 years, Istanbul is one of the most visited cities in the world.
Reme says
Excellent work! Love the maps!
Peace be upon u.
Serhat Engül says
Hi Reme, thank you for the review.
Joe Patterson says
I love these maps. I hope to travel to each of these cities some day. My grandparents have been to every single one of these cities. I have loved Geography for as long as I can remember.
Hello Joe, thank you for your comment. I hope you will have the chance to visit these beautiful places again as an adult. So you can enjoy it better.
Wolfgang Strack says
Hi Serhat.
Thanks for this article, very informative. One question: you are referring to Anatolia as the heart of the Ottoman Empire. But hasn't it been Istanbul? I recently came across this book, which argues, that you could regard the Ottoman empire also a European Empire, since at its beginnings the economic heart was in the balkans.
According to the books I read and the education I have received so far on Ottoman history, the heart of the empire was Anatolia.
The Ottomans were one of the states established after the disintegration of the previous Turkish state in Anatolia, the Seljuk Sultanate of Rum.
The Ottoman policy of expansion towards the West was ideological rather than economic. The Ottomans did not rule the Balkans directly. After conquering those lands, they left the administration to Christian rulers who were loyal to them.
The important thing for the Ottomans was that those lands were subject to them politically and they paid taxes. Orthodox Christian rulers were appointed to regions on the western outskirts of the empire such as Hungary and Romania.
For both Byzantium and the Ottoman Empire, Anatolia, Mesopotamia and Egypt were economically more important than Europe. The provisions of both states came from these lands. These were also the crossroads of the Silk Road from China and the Spice Road from India.
The Ottomans inherited Anatolia from the Seljuk Sultanate of Rum and bequeathed to the Republic of Turkey. When the empire collapsed, indispensable lands were the borders surrounding Anatolia. For this reason, these lands were defended to death (by the former Ottoman generals) in the War of Independence after WWI.
PS: I see Istanbul as a small model of Anatolia. Istanbul represents Anatolia, which acts as a bridge between East and West. In fact, when I say that Anatolia was the heart of the Ottoman Empire, I do not exclude Istanbul from this. Having the Bosphorus does not mean anything unless you control the passages through the Dardanelles. And these straits should be controlled from both the Anatolian (or Asian) and European sides.
Pharm says
On the modern map of Turkey, there is a sign called Kurdistan near the Hakkari region. Is this a mistake or did you know what you were doing?
It is very difficult to find an accurate scaled map of Turkiye in English. Since I am not a graphic designer, I need to use the quality maps I can find. This image was designed by a mapmaker named Rand McNally.
If the map was violating the borders of the Republic of Turkiye, I would not use the map. However, I think the person who prepared the map wanted to highlight the region where Kurds live in Turkiye, Iran and Iraq.
This did not seem strange to me, because the Kurds have really lived there for a long time. For this reason, I did not see any harm in using the map.
P.S. Actually this issue bothered me as well and I licensed another map from a stock illustration site. Thank you.


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Loyalty is defined as the firm, unwavering devotion to a person or cause. In business the term loyalty can refer to customer, brand, or employee loyalty.
Customer loyalty is very important in any business because it is the customer that comes back repeatedly to buy more of the same or related products that keeps a company going for a long time. New customers are, of course, always valued but a one-time customer will not have as large an effect in the company's long-term well being as a loyal customer will.
1. Contracts/commitment periods – This business model is prevalent for service providers. When customers sign up for a service they usually also enter a commitment period (i.e. 12 or 24 month commitment) during which the customer cannot cancel their service without having to pay stiff cancellation fees. In some cases the basic service won't entail a commitment period but to get premium services or very nice "freebies" a commitment period will be required.
2. New customer discounts – Discounts that are paid out in installments (in a period of 6 months or more) are given to new customers to ensure that they cannot cancel a service. Another type of new customer discount will be giving discount coupons for the next product purchased, which will entice the new customer to come back for more.
Brand loyalty refers to a customer's loyalty to a company's brand, or what it represents, above and beyond the particular product it sells. For example, many Americans are loyal to all of Apple's products, because they see them as high-quality and cutting-edge. People loyal to a brand are more likely to buy a new product from that brand based on their positive perception of what the company does. They're less likely to consider the competition. This is why companies covet brand loyalty.
This refers to employees being loyal to a company, because they believe in what the company does, like the culture, or generally have a good experience working for that company. A loyal employee wants to do a good job for her company. This, in turn, helps the company build a better product or service, because employees are engaged in their work. While employee loyalty doesn't matter much to some companies, others see it as a competitive advantage and work to build it.