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

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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
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

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“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
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

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participative leader where the leader consults his followers and uses their
suggestions before making a decision. In the movie Mahatma while working for the
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

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

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have tremendous influence on people and he was the leader of the masses.
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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Burns, (1978) ‘Leadership’. New York: Harper & Row

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Copley, A. (1987) Gandhi: against the tide. New York: Basil Blackwell Inc

Division of country
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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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Http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_man_theory (Accessed on 25th Feb 2009)

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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

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Picture review:
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Yukl, G (2006) Leadership in Organizations 6th edition. London: Prentice-Hall

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