Mahatma Gandhi – Father of the Nation

Leadership: Mohan Das Karam Chand Gandhi – Father of the Nation Mahatma Gandhi (1982) Director: Richard Attenborough

Leadership could have different meaning to different people. It can be defined by

many different definitions but all have the similar meaning. Leadership is a

philosophy, it’s an attitude, and one could understand leadership as a person who

leads or guide a group of people/workers towards achieving a common goal. For

someone else it could mean a person having the authority to make others follow his

directions/guideline. According to Peter F Drucker “The only definition of a leader is

someone who has followers.” And on the same lines Warren Bennis define it as

“function of knowing yourself, having a vision that is well communicated, building

trust among colleagues, and taking effective action to realize your own leadership

potential.” So basically all the definitions lead to a similar conclusion, that a leader

are those personalities who are in power and by virtue of their position / authority /

charisma makes people follow their footsteps. In this essay we would be talking

about one of the greatest leader of the world “Mahatma Gandhi“ who understood that

you cannot fight with British with force so by the power of his non violence he

helped India to gain its independence. This essay is based upon the facts collected

from the research on the web, movie Mahatma Gandhi directed by Richard

Attenborough, and also from what I have learnt about him since childhood.

To start with a little background of his which would help us to know whether leaders

are born or made, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (Mahatma Gandhi) was born on

2nd Oct, 1869 at a small town Porbander (India). He completed his schooling in

nearby Rajkot, where his father served as the adviser to the local ruler. Though India

was then under British rule, over 500 kingdoms, principalities, and states were

allowed autonomy in domestic and internal affairs: these were the so-called 'native

states'. Rajkot was one such state. He was a very average student in studies. His

father died at a very early stage and he was married to Kasturbai when he was just

13. After his college he went to England to do law. He returned to India after 3 years

and after a year of an unsuccessful practise in India he accepted an offer of an

Indian businessman to join as a legal advisor in South Africa. He was then 24 when

he decided to go to South Africa and that was the turning point of his life and in fact

a turning point in the lives of many Indians staying there in South Africa and

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afterwards for all the Indians staying under the British rule. This was the point when

a leader was born. Now by using some leadership theories we would judge whether

Mahatma Gandhi had the leadership qualities since birth or he learned them in the

process of growing up. A trait theory of leadership is actually a range of theories

which believe that leadership qualities are there in successful leaders since their

birth. It was developed from the “Great Man Theory” of leadership by Thomas

Carlyle which assumes capacity for leadership is inherent and great leaders are born

not made. However saying that leadership character is inborn can be challenged as

there can be a possibility where two people possess similar qualities but both are not

leaders. The top five characters amongst the twenty qualities associated to leaders

are Honesty, Inspiring, Forward looking, Competent, and Intelligent. These qualities

can be learned over a period of time. It may be difficult but with time you can become

inspiring, with practise you can become honest and with maturity you can become

competent. We saw the similar kind of traits in Mahatma Gandhi.

According to Mahadev Desai writer of Mahatma Gandhi’s autobiography “The story

of my experiments with truths” there is an incident described in where Mahatma

Gandhi misspelled a word “kettle” on a spelling test, and the teacher help him to

copy the word from a classmate, but he would not. He simply could not cheat. This

was one feature of his honesty which he learnt and was not inborn. We know that he

learnt this trait because he wrote in his autobiography that he used to attend a play

after his school about an honest boy called Harish Chandra who was very sincere &

truthful and he got influenced and was determined to grow and become honest like

him. Another aspect of his numerous traits was that he treated every religion every

person equally. While his stay in South Africa he got to know through his Indian

Businessmen & other colleagues that how Indians were treated and inequity was

part of day to day life. Indians and dark skin people in South Africa were not allowed

to walk along the pavements with the Christians .Gandhi himself was being victim of

this discrimination and once was thrown out of the 1st class compartment and he

rebel against this practice. He justified it by saying that we all are children’s of God

and should get equal treatment. This trait was also learnt by him while growing up.

He grew up in a place where people of every religion lived. Being a Hindu the temple

he used to go to the priest over there used to read from the “Muslim Quaran” and the

“Hindu Geeta” moving from one to the other as if it mattered not which book was

being read as long as God is being worshipped. There are numerous other traits

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within him which shows that leadership qualities within him were not in born but

made.

While working towards the independence of India he did many acts which could be

related to various leadership models. One of them are the Path-Goal Theory of

Leadership developed by Robert House (1971) which defines that leaders make a

clear and easy path for their followers and to fulfil the goals encourage and supports

them to take it. The leaders clarify the path for followers and remove the roadblocks

that might stop them from attaining the goal. For laying the path for followers a

leader can follow any of the given leadership behaviour. First the directive leader in

which the leader lets the follower know what is expected of them, schedules work to

be done and give specific guidance as to how to accomplish task. This could be

seen in the movie where Mahatma Gandhi called up all the community who were not

being treated equally and made a speech to them asking all the non Europeans to

burn their passes which showed their symbol of status. By doing so he was asking

government for the right to claim them as equal citizens of the empire. We can see

that he was making sure the followers know what is expected from them and he

gave specific guidance what and how it would be accomplished. And for scheduling

he made sure there is enough public gathered so he asks his wife to encourage

some female along with her. The second kind of behaviour is supportive leader who

tries to promote good friendly relation within the group and shows concern for the

welfare of the followers. This kind of leadership was depicted by Mahatma Gandhi

throughout the movie. At the beginning while he was in South Africa he worked for

getting equal citizenship to all the Indians who were treated as bonded labours. Then

while he was in India he got India its Independence from the British rule and before

reaching there in one of the incidents he went to Champaran and worked for uplifting

the farmers condition. While Mahatma was undoubtedly the most effective leader

during that era there were few other leaders as well, one of them was Muhammad Ali

Jinnah who worked together with Mahatma in getting independence but just at the

end before independence he worked for only Muslims and helped them make a

different independent country Pakistan. In a way he was a leader of a different kind

working for just his community and not for the mankind. The third kind of behaviour is

participative leader where the leader consults his followers and uses their

suggestions before making a decision. In the movie Mahatma while working for the

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Mahatma Gandhi – Father of the Nation

independence of India used to consult other leaders like Pandit Nehru, Gokhale,

Maulana Azad who were his followers as well. The last kind of leadership behaviour

according to the Path-Goal theory is achievement-oriented leader where the leader

sets a challenging goal both for self improvement and work. The leader shows and

expects high demonstration and has faith in the capabilities of the followers to

succeed. When Mahatma decided with others to call one day off for prayers across

whole of India he expected everyone to follow and had faith in his followers. In other

few incidents he had his faith in followers when he gave a speech in Delhi about

burning all British clothes & items and then in one other incident he challenged the

British govt on having monopoly on making salt and he trooped with his followers to

the sea and made salt.

The other very important leadership quality of any leader is his charisma and

Charismatic theory will help us understand this. Charismatic leadership was first

discussed by Max Weber, a German sociologist. According to him charisma means

“a certain quality of an individual personality, by virtue of which he or she is set apart

from ordinary people and exceptional powers or qualities. These are not accessible

to the ordinary person, but are regarded as of divine origin or as exemplary, and on

the basis of them the individual concerned is treated as leader.” Mostly all

charismatic leaders have similar kinds of behaviour like being extraverted, self-

confident and achievement oriented. The most important things that make

charismatic leaders influence their followers is vision. A vision is a long term strategy

for how to attain a goal or goals. It provides a sense of continuity for followers by

linking the present with a better future. We can say Mahatma Gandhi was a

charismatic leader because he had a vision of independent India which he shared it

with everyone and the path he choose to accomplish his vision was a non-violent

path. He was so effective in his speeches and his actions that people used to follow

him. A good trait of a charismatic leader is that he should transfer his passion into

action and Mahatma Gandhi always did the same. He used to go on hunger strike,

lead the Dandi March which is also known as the famous salt march then he used to

go jails with his followers. Keshvan Nair in his book “the code of silence” (Nair,

pg.35, 1996) mentioned that the most destructive factor for a good leadership is not

to share what’s happening and what the vision and path is. He said to become a

successful leader one should be crystal clear in his ideas and should display a

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transparent discussion. And above all there should be honesty. These all traits were

there in Mahatma Gandhi to be considered as a great leader.

Situational leadership will help us explain that Mahatma Gandhi examples fit best

into this theory of leadership. According to Mosby the manager chooses a leadership

style to match a particular situation (Mosby, 2009). The more weight-age is given on

the need of the situation. So sometime aggressive decisions are taken and

sometimes importance is given to negotiations. While giving importance to

negotiations participative leadership is also used where the leader gives emphasis

towards the involvement and assistance of his teammates. In the movie Mahatma

Gandhi depicted both kind of leadership in various ways. He used to access the

situation and used to decide accordingly. Some of the incidents of situational

leadership were when he went to fasting while there was war going on between

Muslims and Non Muslims. In my opinion it was the right decision as Mahatma

Gandhi has been an inspirational image to many of the Indians at that time and none

of the religion could have taken a burden of his demise due to hunger strike so

eventually it was because of his fasting that the situation was controlled. We can

also witness the incidents where he went to jails, the Dandi walk and the burning of

British cloth were all situational. He didn’t had any strategy before, he was a thinking

leader and used to take action on determining the situation and coming up with a

plan that would hit most to the opposition and also which would involve and reach a

huge number of people. One more thing could be seen through his decisions is that

all of them were in align to the vision he had of independent India. The other incident

where we can club in situational and participative leadership is when he together

with all the Indian leaders met with the British emperors just after the Amritsar

massacre. He was a leader who was confident and determined in achieving his

vision. When the riots were on between Hindu’s and Muslim’s he told Pandit Nehru

that he would fast and stop the riots. Pandit Nehru replied to him the people are

aroused and wouldn’t stop even if we ask them to. He just replied I will ask them to

stop. This shows his charisma, determination and belief in his followers.

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Conclusion:

Leadership is a process whereby an individual influences a group of individuals to

achieve a common goal it’s a philosophy, an attitude. Richard Attenborough’s main

inspiration behind making this movie was his father whom he and his brother used to

call a general. His dad’s always held Mahatma Gandhi in high esteem. Throughout

the movie Richard Attenborough wants to depict that Gandhiji's leadership style was

a situational leadership style. He wants to show that Gandhiji wasn’t a leader since

childhood but because of certain incident he developed the leadership role. Richard

has shown that it was in South Africa that Gandhiji’s transformation from Mohandas

Gandhi to ‘Mahatma Gandhi ‘took place. It was the incident that happened with him

in the train that changed his life forever and he decided to fight for the Rights of

Indians. When he was in south Africa , he launched his protests in suit & a tie but

when he came back to India he thought of ‘khadi ‘and launched non violent protest

on greater scale. The concept of partition was proposed by him even though

personally he was opposed of the partition and even today it’s a controversial debate

whether what he did was good or bad. “But there has never been a leader before

him nor after him who could have unite us all and bring us out in streets to demand

for what was rightfully ours” (Arindam Chaudhuri). Arindam Chaudhuri refers to

Mahatma Gandhi’s management style as a Theory “I” style which attempts to define

the Indian worker and develop a theory on management style for him, keeping in

mind the Indian conditions. Gandhi can be considered the most modern political

thinker India has ever had. He imbibed the best from the East and the West and

evolved a political philosophy that worked miracles. As remarked by Winston

Churchill, this ‘Little naked fakir’ from India has single handily non-violently defied the

great empire and brought it a shame which was incomparable and irreversible.

The father of the Nation is now being held up as the master strategist, an exemplary

leader and someone whose ideas and tactics corporate India can follow. Gandhi

provided leadership by example; the best example of this was his use of homespun

cloth that provided employment for the poor masses and revived the village

economy. Today, in a polity steeped in corruption, perhaps there is a need to

rediscover Gandhi.

The person I believe to be the greatest leader of the twentieth century held no official

political title; he commanded no army and neither had great wealth. He did, however,

have tremendous influence on people and he was the leader of the masses.

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Although there are some flaws in the film that Richard didn’t focused on, he did not

delve enough into the deeper meanings and more focused interactions between

important characters and “Every relationship is treated on a superficial level and

every character other than Gandhi is virtually a straw figure” (Geduld 1983). The

purpose of this essay was to outline leadership qualities with the example of

Mahatma Gandhi had with his philosophy of non-violence and its influence worldwide

as well as the strategies and characteristics that made Mahatma Gandhi a

successful leader.

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References

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Division of country

http://www.gandhiserve.org/whos_gandhi.html (Accessed on 3rd march 2009)

Desai, M. (1927) The story of my experiments with truths. Ahmedabad: Navjivan

Publishing house

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Gandhi, M.K. edited by Parel, A. J. (1997) Hind swaraj and other writings.

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Mosby (2009) Medical Dictionary, 8th edition. Elsevier

Path Goal Theory:

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House, R. J. (1971) "A path-goal theory of leader effectiveness". Administrative

Science Quarterly Vol.16: 321-339

Picture review:

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feb 2009)

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The word Mahatma

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