Mohandas Gandis and Imam Husseins Leaderships - Essay Example

A Comparative Analysis of Mohandas Gandi’s and Imam Hussein’s Leaderships From Kouzes-Posner Framework of Leadership Mohandas K. Gandhi was a great sociopolitical leader whose leadership seems to validate “Kouzes-Posner Leadership Framework” to a large extent. He often claimed that he had been inspired by the example of Imam Hussein, a prominent figure in the history of Islam, as he said, “I learnt from Hussein how to achieve victory while being oppressed” (Gandhi 12). Even though he acknowledged it, his leadership was significantly different from that of Imam Hussein. It is true that Imam Hussein adhered to his righteous denial to submit to the unjust authority of Yazeed Ibn Muyawia and sacrificed his own and his people’s lives for what he thought to be right, he never excluded the option of using arms against Yazeed’s army. Here, Gandhi’s leadership significantly differs from that of Imam Hussein. There are other differences too. Gandhi had been able to establish the model of his goal and successfully shared his vision with the Indians. This success further enabled him to challenge his own model in numerous sociopolitical movements, and subsequently to bring some minor changes in his way. Thus, taking lessons from those challenges, he had been able to encourage others to act effectively against the sociopolitical evils. But the question is whether Hussein himself used this tactics and traits of effective leadership successfully. In fact, a critical analysis of Hussein’s and Gandhi’s leaderships will necessarily reveal that Gandhi took the only lesson of adhering to one’s righteous claim nonviolently from the example of Imam Hussein’s martyrdom. In other cases, Hussein was not a successful leader at all. If he were a successful leader, he would possess all of the characteristics of effective leadership. Necessarily, he could convince more people and take them with him to the Battle Field of Karbala. In that case, he might not have faced such a tragic end. Mohandas K. Gandhi was one of the most influential sociopolitical leaders of modern history. He is famous for his contribution to the fate of Modern India, a country which is, to a great extent, indebted to him for her freedom in 1947. In fact, this association of Gandhi with the emergence of India made him a political figure. He passed a considerable part of his life as a political campaigner in the Congress, a political party of India under the British rule. Even if Gandhi was an active political activist, his activities involved innumerous social and political reformations in his country. It successfully brought him the landslide popularity among common Indians. Indeed the question whether he was primarily a political figure or a social will continue to engender debate till one fails to pursue the true Gandhian nationalist zeal. The son of a senior British Government clerk, Gandhi adamantly believed in the soul of democracy and the formal democratic politics.1 Once he was a devout British patriot who motivated the Indians’ to support the British Army against Zulu Kingdom in 1906. Anticipating the Indians’ weakness to confront the British Empire militarily, he chose to play the game of dissenting against the British tyranny within the British-induced political system in order to avoid the path of bloodshed and wanted to provoke his nation to be aware politically and then to oppose it from within.2 In this regard, his early experience of successful civil-disobedience or non-violent protest against the segregation Act of the Transvaal Government in 1906 helped him a lot to developed and adopt the ‘Satyagraha’ as an effective nonviolent demonstration against the British while causing mass sociopolitical awarneness among the Indians.3 Indeed Gandhi’s political insight and experience urged him to assume the role of a social reformer. His stance as a social reformer helped him greatly to attain his political goal of uniting the Indians to turn into a strong political force. Indeed Gandhi was a great political leader under the apparel of a social-reformer. In fact, Gandhi’s leadership exemplifies all of the five practices –“modeling the way”, “promoting a shared vision”, “challenging the process”, “Enabling others to act” and “Encouraging the Heart”- which have been prescribed by Jim Kouzes and Barry Posner. The main tenet of his leadership goal was to raise a sociopolitical awareness among the Indians and, hence, to oust the tyrannical British Rule from India. Referring to Gandhi’s expertise to share his vision with others, Lavanam notes, “Mahatma Gandhi very much wanted to inculcate a sense of…self-confidence…self-reliance to promote the power of decision-making among the people. He very much wanted that every individual would acquire the capacity to resist the abuse of power”.4 In order to achieve this goal, he did not resort to violence; rather he modeled the way to his goal as a nonviolent strategy to force the British Government to succumb to the Indians’ rightful political demands. He further had been able to set and, subsequently to promote a ‘shared vision’ about his nonviolent strategy, which he called “Satyagraha”, among the Indians. Gandhi set the premise of the model of his leadership and action, as following: “Truth (satya) implies love, and firmness (agraha) engenders and therefore serves as a synonym for force. I thus began to call the Indian movement Satyagraha, that is to say, the Force which is born of Truth and Love or non-violence”.5 In fact, while modeling the way to his goal and promoting a shared vision, he had to take risks to experiment to the validity of his goal. He developed the policy of Civil-disobedience policy as a means of political demonstration which was intended to sustain the state while creating pressure on it to fulfill his goal. Indeed this protest policy of civil disobedience could sustain the basic form of a government through non-violent defiance, while forcing her to compromise with the defiant civil group.6 As in this regard, Dr.Shandilya Perminder Kour comments, “Before going for any political demands, Gandhi ji always sought to bring about necessary reforms in the society and get his ideas and methods well accepted by the society.”7 Gandhi could perceive the weight of the protesters’ nonviolent defiance against the British tyranny. Therefore, he aimed at raising sociopolitical awareness among the Indians by sharing his vision of nonviolent protest against the empire so that his goals get mass public supports. In order to provoke his followers to participate actively in his goals, he himself implemented, in his own life, what he advised others. But Hussein initially failed to create a model of action and to share his vision against the political authority of Yazeed. History does not tell much about what policies and programs Hussein adopted to share his vision with the common Arabs. Simply, he adhered to his denial against Yazeed’s rule. Since he failed to identify his people’s personal perception of Yazeed rule and what he had to say and to convince them about the threat of Yazeed’s tyranny, he could not envision the future of goal and share it with the people effectively to win their support. Necessarily, failure pursued him in challenging the process of opposing Yazeed. Historical evidences show that he tried to communicate with the elites of Kufa in order to win their support. But he, in fact, skipped the first two steps of create a model of action for his goal and to create a shared vision. So, though the elites of Kufa initially agreed to support him, they ultimately turned against him. If he completed the first two steps of Kouzes-Posner leadership framework successfully, he could move to the next three steps respectively. He could neither provoke his people in Hejaj nor encourage their heart. So he failed to challenge Yazeed’s governor in his own country. Unlike Hussein, Gandhi fulfilled this very need of a leader who could raise political awareness among the common Indians only to strengthen the Indians’ voice for independence.8 Gandhi’s sociopolitical programs such Kheda, Champaran Satyagraha, Swadesi, Campaign against untouchability and racial divide, spreading education, eradication of poverty, etc were strategic enough to fulfill all the first three steps at a time. On Gandhi’s part, these programs were essentially setting his model of action, spreading his visions among the common Indians and gaining momentum by self-amendment by taking lessons from different experiences. At the same time, the British Empire could do very little against those activities which were naturally very civil and social. Indeed, the successful completion of these three steps provokes innumerous Indians, to act his behalf, who, by then, began to think that Satyagraha and other movements, initiated by Gandhi, meant for their benefits. He was preparing them through social reforms to gather enough political momentum to raise their voice against the mighty British Empire. Indeed, Gandhi did not wish to repeat the history of failed armed rebellions who took place in the past in India. But unlike Gandhi, Hussein failed to fulfill the demands what Kouzes-Posner model sets for a successful leader. Works Cited Cribb, R. B. "The Early Political Philosophy of M. K. Gandhi, 1869-1893". Asian Profile 13 (4) (August 1985): 353–360. Gandhi, Mohandas Karamchad. Satyagraha in South Africa. Ahmedabad: Navajivan, 1928. Gandhi, Mohandas Karamchad. “letter to P. Kodanda Rao, 10 September 1935; in Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, electronic edition, vol. 67, 2010. Gandhi, Rajmohan. Gandhi: the man, his people, and the empire. California: University of California Press, 2006. Herman, Arthur. Gandhi and Churchill: the epic rivalry that destroyed an empire and forged our age. Random House Digital, 2008. Kour, Shandilya Perminder. “Social Reform Movements: Role of the Buddha and Gandhi”, Available from gujaratisbs.webs.com/.../Abstract%20S%20perminder%20kaur. accessed 8 December 2012 Lavanam, “Gandhi's Revolutionary Personality”, Available from http://www.positiveatheism.org/india/lavgand1.htm. accessed 8 December 2012 Read More