Mao and Gandhi Comparison

Gandhi

Þ    Believed in peaceful resistance, Gandhi used peaceful protests and never wanted to use violence or war against the British;

Þ    Held peaceful passport burnings to show the people they were equal;

Þ    Wanted democratic rule;

Þ    Commitment to non-violence meant that his plans went much slower than Mao;

Þ    He didn’t develop an overall plan for rural India but believed that the peasant and urban workers needed meaningful labor to financially support their families;

Þ    Didn’t separate the rich and poor using violence, he tried to reconcile the two so that the rich would help out the poor;

Mao

Þ    Used violence to achieve his goals;

Þ    Killed many of the landlords so the peasants gained more economic power;

Þ    Was not known for being a great speaker and reached out and gained support by the things he did he gave his people better education, gave woman more rights by stopping foot binding and eliminated Confucianism;

Þ    Mao gave women rights yet ironically kept many young girls with him at home and slept with them;

Þ    Gandhi became celibate and was also a vegetarian;

Þ    Wanted Communist rule;

Þ    Wanted an industrially developed China so he instituted a number of mammoth plans;

Similarities

Þ    Impacted their countries socially, politically and economically;

Þ    Wanted very similar things but used very different tactics;

Þ    Both broke rules/laws to make their countries stronger economically: Gandhi had the salt march to protest the British tax and he encouraged Indians to spin their own clothing so they wouldn’t have to rely on British imports. Mao took land from the landowners while he was on his Long March who had been keeping the peasants who worked the land in poverty;

Þ    Mao and Gandhi both wanted the same things - to get rid of the same kind of people, yet they used very different tactics in achieving this;

Þ    Made their countries stronger politically by changing key parts of the old rules and making people as a general rule equal = more political support;

Þ    They had many of the same tactics but a different way to use their own laws;

Þ    They both wanted to get rid of the social classes: in India this was the caste system while in China it was Confucianism;

Þ    They both shared their people’s hardship: Gandhi spun his own clothes and lived simply and Mao ate the same food and wore the same clothes whilst on the long march;

Þ    Economically Gandhi liberated India from Britain which opened up a new era of trading for it – today it has a free international control trade market and he eliminated the caste system so everyone could participate in trade;

Þ    Mao created the Great Leap Forward which led to famine;

Þ    Disliked the Western path, for Mao this meant a continuing subservient role to the West and Imperialism while Gandhi the West meant mindless materialism;

Þ    They were social and political activists who practiced what they preached;

Þ    Sympathized with the poor;

Þ    Faced a form of Western Imperialism/Colonialism.

Gandhi's Intentions	Mao's Intentions
Reform political leadership	Reform political leadership
Distribute the wealth - rich help the poor	Reformed farming to Commune Movement Farming
Resist industrialization	Industrialize China
Alter the caste system for more equality	Distribution of the wealth - no landlords