Gandhian Perspective on Tribal Development in India

Abstract

The purpose of the present chapter is to know the Gandhian perspective on tribal development. It throws light on the culture and the atmosphere where the future Mahatma was brought up. Every great man’s early life bears testimony, and gives a necessary background to the readers to understand his perceptions, concepts, his attitude and approach to life, and his personality as a whole. It is well known that more has already been written about Gandhiji than about any other leader in modem Indian History, and that numbering among these thousands of works are, to date, more than four hundred biographies of him. The innumerable works produced on Gandhiji show what kind of man he was, and his influence on people throughout the world in general, and India in particular. The present study makes an attempt to estimate Gandhiji’s contribution to tribal development, as a great leader who fights for the welfare of the masses. Gandhiji contributed most to the uplifting of a demoralized nation from a state of passive submission to foreign rule to becoming heroic fighters against tyranny and injustice. He was a moral force who created a consciousness of great oppression and injustice within the Indian society. It is, therefore, not his private ideas of moral life which made him a figure of historical significance, but his contribution to the basic ferment relating to India’s emergence as a new nation and a new society. His political ideas were intelligible even to the illiterate masses of the country.