Mahatma Gandhi

Lore & Background

Born and raised in a Hindu family in coastal Gujarat, Gandhi was trained in law at the Inner Temple in London and was called to the bar at age 22. After two uncertain years in India, he moved to South Africa in 1893 to represent an Indian merchant in a lawsuit, living there for 21 years. In South Africa, he raised a family and first employed nonviolent resistance in a campaign for civil rights. Returning to India in 1915 at age 45, he organized peasants, farmers, and urban labourers to protest discrimination and excessive land tax. Assuming leadership of the Indian National Congress in 1921, Gandhi led nationwide campaigns for easing poverty, expanding women's rights, building religious and ethnic amity, ending untouchability, and achieving swaraj (self-rule). He adopted the short dhoti woven with hand-spun yarn as a mark of identification with India's rural poor, lived in a self-sufficient residential community, ate simple food, and undertook long fasts for introspection and political protest. He led the 1930 Dandi Salt March challenging the British-imposed salt tax and called for the British to quit India in 1942. He was imprisoned many times in both South Africa and India.

Reader's Guide

Gandhi's vision of an independent India based on religious pluralism was challenged in the early 1940s by Muslim nationalists demanding a separate homeland. In August 1947, Britain granted independence, but the British Indian Empire was partitioned into Hindu-majority India and Muslim-majority Pakistan. As displaced Hindus, Muslims, and Sikhs moved to new lands, religious violence broke out, especially in Punjab and Bengal. Abstaining from the official celebration of independence, Gandhi visited affected areas and undertook several hunger strikes to stop the violence, the last beginning in Delhi on 12 January 1948. The belief that Gandhi had been too resolute in defending both Pakistan and Indian Muslims spread among some Hindus, leading Nathuram Godse, a militant Hindu nationalist, to assassinate Gandhi by firing three bullets into his chest at an interfaith prayer meeting in Delhi on 30 January 1948. Gandhi's birthday, 2 October, is commemorated in India as Gandhi Jayanti, a national holiday, and worldwide as the International Day of Nonviolence. He is considered the Father of the Nation in post-colonial India and was commonly called Bapu, an endearment roughly meaning 'father'.

Did You Know?

• Gandhi was born into a Gujarati Hindu Modh Bania family; his mother came from a Pranami Vaishnava tradition whose texts include the Bhagavad Gita, the Bhagavata Purana, and teachings believed to include the essence of th
• At age 13, Gandhi was married to 14-year-old Kasturbai Gokuldas Kapadia in an arranged marriage; they had four sons: Harilal, Manilal, Ramdas, and Devdas.
• Gandhi's father, Karamchand, served as dewan (chief minister) of Porbandar state and later of Rajkot.
• The honorific Mahātmā was first applied to Gandhi in 1914 in South Africa.

Notable Quotes (Wikiquote)

"Times of Natal, October 26, 1894, in Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, vol. 1, pp. 166-67." — Mahatma Gandhi "Address given in Bombay (26 September 1896), Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, Vol. 1, p. 410 (Electronic Book), New Delhi, Publications Division Government of India, 1999, 98 volumes." — Mahatma Gandhi "Letter to Dr. Porter, Medical Officer of Health for Johannesburg (15 February 1905); later published in The Indian Opinion." — Mahatma Gandhi "Kaffirs are as a rule uncivilised—the convicts even more so. They are troublesome, very dirty and live almost like animals." — Mahatma Gandhi