[00:03.68]Lesson 77 1 Reading comprehension
[00:11.26]Read the text fast to find answers to these questions.
[00:17.32]1 In which countries did Gandhi work for the liberation of Indians?
[00:24.58]2 What successes did Gandhi gain?
[00:29.94]GANDHI:HIS LIFE
[00:33.88]He was called"Bapu,"meaning"father"--because he was the father
[00:41.35]of the Indian nation of the twentieth century.
[00:45.90]Even before India won independence from its British rulers,
[00:52.06]it was clear that Gandhi was the key figure
[00:56.32]and leader in the struggle of 380 million Indians to govern themselves.
[01:04.18]Mohandas Gandhi was born in India in 1869 and was married at the age of 13,
[01:12.54]following local custom.
[01:15.70]In September 1888 at the age of 19,
[01:21.55]he sailed to England and after three years'study became a loawyer.
[01:28.03]On his return to India he had the chance to travel to South Africa
[01:33.88]to work on a law case.This experience was to change his life.
[01:40.73]At this period Indians livling in South Africa
[01:46.08]were badly treated by South African whites,
[01:50.45]and very few of them had the right to vote.
[01:54.70]Gandhi was thrown off a train and later a mail bus
[02:00.35]for insisting on travelling in the whitew-only section.
[02:05.20]He was so shocked by this lack of equality and fairness
[02:11.16]that he formed an organization leading the Indians'struggle for equal rights.
[02:17.64]He quiockly became the leader.
[02:20.98]For twenty years Gandhi played an important role
[02:26.34]in working for equal rights for Indians.
[02:31.01]He wrote about socialism in newspapers
[02:35.66]and started a magazine called"Indian Opinion".
[02:40.91]When he returned to India he spoke in public about the situation in South Africa.
[02:47.76]South Africa passed further laws designed to make life difficult for non-whites.
[02:54.60]All the Indians over the age of 8 had to carry their permits at all times.
[03:01.76]The Indians declared that this"Pass Law"was unfair.
[03:07.51]Some of them publicly burnt their permits and many of them were put in pison.
[03:13.57]Other Indians were killed
[03:17.43]when police officers fiercely attacked their political marches.
[03:22.76]Finally,as a result of the unrest among the Indian population,
[03:28.72]the leader of South Africa had to give in.
[03:32.87]Gandhi won his first non-violent struggle against racial discrimination.
[03:38.93]Gandhi returned to Indea in 1915 and was honoured as a hero.
[03:45.78]Over the next thirtytwo years he fought for human rights
[03:51.52]and the rights of workers who were badly treated by their employers.
[03:56.88]Finally,he demanded an end to the British rule over India
[04:02.63]and independence for his country.
[04:06.39]Because of his revolutionary views,he spent many years in prison.
[04:12.13]He had a gift for thiking up ways of making political points.
[04:17.49]He encouraged Indians to start making their own cotton cloth
[04:22.95]and to refuse to buy cloth made in England.
[04:27.31]Thousands joined him when he led a march to the coast,
[04:32.17]with the purpose of"making a little salt"when he reached the sea.
[04:38.41]At that time only the British government had the right to sell salt,
[04:44.34]which was taxed,so Gandhi encouraged the whole nation to make their own salt.
[04:50.90]Following this,60,000 Indians,including Gandhi,were put in prison.
[04:58.06]In the end this political movement succeeded
[05:02.73]and Indians were allowed to make and sell salt.
[05:07.46]Many other struggles follwed.
[05:10.99]Finally,India won her independence on August 15th,1947,
[05:18.75]but Gandhi himself was shot five months later by an Indian who opposed his views.
[05:25.90]He died on Januauy 30th,1948.
[05:31.18]Lesson 78
[05:39.54]1 Reading comprehension
[05:43.59]Read the text fast to find answers to these questions.
[05:49.86]1 What did Gandhi mean by"the force of truth"?
[05:56.21]2 Which event is described in the text?
[06:01.48]GANDHI:HIS BELIEFS
[06:05.43]Gandhi was much more than a clever lawyer,a fine speaker
[06:10.89]a determined fighter for human rights and a political leader.
[06:16.16]He was a model of a different kind of politlcal leader.
[06:21.02]The secret lies in the title of the book which he wrote about his early life,
[06:27.50]"The story of my experiments with truth".
[06:32.46]He felt free to talk about his failures or his difficulties.
[06:37.92]Where he made mistakes,he admitted these willingly.
[06:43.20]Above all,he refused to make any personal gain from his political work.
[06:50.25]Before he returned to India,
[06:53.73]he decided to live as a poor man and not to possess wealth.
[06:59.60]When he travelled across India,
[07:03.05]he travelled"hard-seat,unreserved",
[07:07.62]together with peasants and other ordinary people.
[07:11.88]In cities he refused to travel in a rickshaw,
[07:16.74]a two-wheeed cart pulled by a bare-footed man.
[07:21.18]He ate simply,and never ate meat.
[07:25.44]He rose early in the morning and worked at his wheel,making cotton thread.
[07:32.10]he believed that everyone should be prepared to do heavy work,
[07:37.74]from the leaders to the poorest peasants.
[07:41.79]He was interested in all spiritual matters,not only in the Indian gods.
[07:48.45]He read many books and paused in his work at six every evening for prayers,
[07:55.01]even when he was with other world leaders.
[07:59.27]One day a week he would spend the whole day in silence.
[08:04.91]All his life he reached out for the truths of spirits and gods.
[08:10.95]Gandhi believed that one should be able to
[08:15.18]"love the most ordinary being on earth as oneself."
[08:20.74]Gandhi hated the custom that had divided Hindu society into separate groups
[08:27.59]for thousands of years and his goal was to end this.
[08:32.86]He became a supporter of the poorest group in society,
[08:37.83]who did the lowest-paid jobs.
[08:41.48]Because of his actions
[08:44.83]all Hindus were finally free to draw water from the same village well,
[08:51.20]to go to the same temple to pray and even marry each other.
[08:56.84]Gandhi paid great attention to the equality of women.
[09:01.91]Perhaps his greatest belief was in an Indian phrase
[09:07.84]which he called"the force of truth".
[09:12.07]If an unfair law existed,
[09:15.70]and there were many that had been passed by the British rulers in India
[09:20.95]and South Africa it was the duty of everyone to disobey this law,
[09:27.43]but without using violence.
[09:31.38]People should be ready to go to prison for their beliefs,
[09:36.34]but they should never take up arms to fight.
[09:40.99]The death fo Gandhi gave India a chance to mourn
[09:46.27]and express how he had become"father"to all Indians.
[09:52.12]Millions watched the slow march that took his body through the capital.
[09:58.28]A further million watched as the fire,
[10:02.54]following Indian custom,turned his body to ashes.
[10:08.00]Twelve days later,millions more Indians lined the railway tracks
[10:14.45]as a slow train took the jar containing his ashes 584 kilometres
[10:22.18]to a place by the river.
[10:25.35]Three million people watched as the ashes of this great man
[10:30.60]were gently poured into the brown waters of the river
[10:36.06]that would carry them to the ocean.
[10:39.71]At the time of his death,one person praised him as follows:
[10:45.67]"Future generations,it may be,
[10:49.74]will hardly believe that such a person as this walked upon this earth."
[10:55.49]The speaker was Albert Einstein. |